Name: Blackbaud Arts and Cultural Solutions: Membership Best Practices
Uploaded: 2026-01-21T20:30:04.847Z
Duration: 41 min 44 s
Description: Blackbaud Arts and Cultural Solutions: Membership Best Practices

Transcript for "Blackbaud Arts and Cultural Solutions: Membership Best Practices": Hello. Hello, everyone. Thank you for joining me today. I see our numbers are climbing. We're gonna get started in just a moment. I'm just giving people time to come in and say hello. Those of you joining us, we'll start in just a moment. I'm just saying hello. Getting everybody in. Hi, Kathy. Hi, Jennifer. Alright. Numbers are still climbing, so we'll just relax a little bit. How's everyone's winter going? How's everyone's 2026 been? Exciting things for anyone at 2026? I'm up in Maine where it is currently very, very cold, and we're I was just talking to Jessica about how this weekend, it's only gonna be six degrees. Super exciting. Hopefully, you guys are all excited for all that 2026 has to offer. I hope you guys got really good things planned for your years. And, you know, we're gonna have some stuff like this membership webinar today coming out every other month or so. So keep an eye out, and we'll help you guys have a great 2026. Oh, Kathy, you got major winter storm heading. Oh, that's not good. Emily had to cancel because it was so cold. Yeah. That sounds like awful, Emily. Negative 20 '2 at Blue Lake. Oh, gross. Alright, everybody. We're rocking and rolling, but keep it coming in the chat. I love to see you guys engage. Texas bracing for ice. Negative 30. Oh my god, Barbara. So just to get started off, you guys can keep chatting. I'm gonna say hi again. For those of you that don't know me, my name is Evan. I'm a customer success manager here at Blackbaud, and I've been with the company for, like, six years now. And, I live in Maine. I am a lover of the outdoors and a consumer of pies. Those of you that have been in any of my sessions know that for some reason, I always manage to talk about pie. But this time of year, I'm, you know, very much interested in sitting at home in a fireplace and just cozying up with pie. But I'm gonna be talking to you today. So, you know, I'm glad that you guys have decided to show up, and you're gonna let me talk to you. But use that chat to talk to me. And lot of you have already put this in there, but I would love for us all to get acquainted in that chat. So, you know, maybe share your location, tell us a little bit about yourself, and recognize that this is just a great networking opportunity. And so we can also be group resources for each other as well. What that means is as I'm talking, you know, you guys might come up with questions. Oh, I saw another Mainer in there. Hey, Valerie. I saw you know, people might come up with questions today. So as you're putting things in there, you put questions in there. Don't be afraid to answer them yourself. Don't just wait for me. This is a best practices workshop today. We're talking about some stuff, so you have some best practices to share with your peers. This is a great chance for you to network and see what other museums are doing for their memberships. So let us know, you know, what works for you as we talk about this stuff. And I really want you guys to engage in that chat. So I'm seeing everyone saying hello and who they are. One inch to 3,000 inches in Dayton, Ohio. That's that's pretty big scale there. So thank you guys for going in there in the chat and writing in there. I see our numbers are still climbing. So excited you guys are all here. This is great. Alright. Let's see here. Webinar housekeeping. We have to put this in here. Right? If you can't hear me, though, you'll need to read this. So the audio is broadcast through your computer. So if you're having trouble hearing me, just turn up the volume. Use that chat to put that questions in. You guys have all found it. It's in the top right. You can refresh if there's any technical issues, and you can do the settings. Your feedback is important, so there's gonna be a survey that's gonna come up. Please fill that out. I'd like to know what you're doing. Okay. Let's start talking about what we're here to talk about. Right? We're gonna talk about membership programs today. And I know, hopefully, most of you already have a membership program in your organization. If you don't, however, you should definitely consider getting one going. There are so many benefits to having a membership program for a nonprofit. Not only does it help bring in revenue, but it keeps people interested in the organization, And members are great ambassadors, and they can be involved with the organization on a much deeper deeper level than typical constituents. And we're gonna talk about that a little bit today. So, hopefully, your membership coordinators are here. I'm gonna answer a question that always comes up before we get too far into it. Yes. This is being recorded. Yes. You will get a copy of this when you're done emailed to you. So if you're like, he's going too fast, don't worry. Just so you guys know that, Christine Lucas has invited us all to come down from the North to stay with her when it's, nice and warm down there. So, yeah, pack up your bags, and, we'll see you this weekend, Christine. Hope you've got room for about 75 people. Alright. Let's talk a little bit about our agenda today. We're gonna just talk a couple things. One, we're gonna talk about ideas for getting new members. Right? Because every membership has a purpose. And we're gonna talk about benefits and making things clear and easy and what to do with first time joiners. Then we're gonna talk about maybe how to keep current members, which is different than getting new ones. Right? Let me see. We'll talk about involvement, promotions, making changes, and then we're gonna talk about how members can help you. Oh, Jessica's heading down to Florida in a couple weeks. There you go. I actually will also be heading down to Florida at the February because most Mainers, at some point, abandon and run to Florida for a week. Alright. Remember, the best way to get members is to give them a good reason to be a member. Right? Think that's a simple sentence. It's really easy, but sometimes people forget that. Like, how am I gonna get members? You gotta have good reasons. So why should somebody become a member? Alright. Think about them from your like, go into their mind. Why would they wanna join your program? Ask yourself this. What makes them become interested before you even talk to them? Well, someone is going to look into a membership program because they like what you do. This is a thing that you guys forget about sometimes. Everyone that's signing up for a member or even considering a membership, they're already a fan of yours. So you've done most of the work right there. They've already like you guys. You just need to see them a value for joining you. So depending on what software you use to manage your memberships and your front desk, you can create member discounts, free admissions, and make seamless visits for your members. You can even set up membership perks and online forms that only members can use to purchase member only tickets online. Think about why you've joined present programs or clubs in the past. Why did you buy that particular level of the gym membership that you have? If you're like me, it's so that you can never go to the gym, but I always say you have a gym membership. So think about all these things that you're doing that get you involved and try to apply those to what you're thinking about with your own membership. Okay? Most of you are gonna have a software called Blackbaud, you know, Altru. That's the most common membership software. But there are some of our customers here that use RNXT as well. So you're gonna have to think about how you use your software best. But remember to try these things, discounts, early access, hot tickets, free admission, whatever it is, it's gonna bring him in there. What I would like, and hopefully, guys are not too shy to do this, is for you guys to think about some of the benefits that you offer that might surprise other people and put those in your chat. What is it about your organization that you do that gives people coming in to be a member? I know some places just have really great concerts or exhibits, and being a member is a really good reason to get in there because you get good access. But what about you guys? I see a jazz series and special exhibitions discounts to summer camp. Oh my god. Summer camp is huge if you're a children's museum. Oh, a member only hour. You said not exciting, but, Patricia, that's actually really nice to, like, be somewhere with just the regular people. Gift shop discounts, camp. Yep. Member receptions. Yes. There's that summer camp again. If you guys have a summer camp, think about that. Right? Yep. Special curator talks, tour of banner and exhibitions. If you're an art museum, that's really great. Oh, a virtual lecture series for members. That's nice too. You guys have some great stuff out there. And if you're hearing these and you're like me and you're going, these are great ideas, hopefully, you're thinking, I'm gonna write that one down. Member mornings and member nights. Oh, I like that. Members mix and mingle. I like that, Caitlin. I like that a lot. Free passes for guests. Yeah. Coffee and chats. Take that. Reciprocal memberships are a great thing to look into doing with other membership programs. It really helps. And parking vouchers is huge if you're in a city. Oh god. I go to the Portland Museum all the time, and parking is so hard. Unlimited admission to both of our museums. Nice. Yeah. These are some great benefits that you guys have out there. I'm really happy, and thank you so much for sharing all these. These are great ideas. So we're gonna talk yeah. Let's keep going. Let's talk about member perks. Right? Blackbaud Altru, which is one of the programs we hear, has great software for memberships, and a lot of you probably use it. So I wanted to show you this area right in here where you can set up your membership perks and put them in there. So you can also set up tickets for events, right, and make them member only so that the tickets are available only to members online and only people that our members have the ability to buy when they walk in the front door. It's a great incentivization for your membership programs. This way, if you hold tickets to a special event, members can even get early access to it. So if you think it's something that's gonna sell out. Benefits is what you guys have been putting up in the chat, and I really do appreciate that. You can, like, set up benefits to associate with each level of a membership. And, hopefully, you guys are really taking an opportunity to look at levels in your membership and set those up so that there are benefits for each levels. They can be discounts, special access, like we talked about, free merchandise. Has anyone tried giving away, like, items to people? Like, I know some places will do a benefit. Like, when you sign up, they send you a gift. It could be a T shirt or a magazine or something like a gift bag. Does anyone in here do anything like that for members? Oh, a raffle. I like that. So you did that when the membership program launched? That's good. I like to hear that. Welcome packets. Excellent. Yep. Oh, I got my first real question. Is there a way within Altru to limit the number of benefit usage? It would depend on how you have it set up. Magnets for new members, logo stickers, good. New books. Yeah. Free totes. That's a good one. I love that it's in person only, though. You gotta get those people in there, Katie. One thing that I I've talked to a lot of customers about, and I try to lock work with you guys is making your memberships clear and easy to understand. Okay? This is something that if you're struggling with, you really wanna reach out and make sure that you've got a lot of eyes on this. You wanna be well defined and not overcomplicated. This should be an easy transaction. There should not be room for interpretation on what your things are describing. Take your time. Have others look over your program before going live with it. Send it around the office. Gather feedback. Make sure your website has everything possibly answered. You cannot make it foolproof, but that should be your goal. Make sure that your levels are clear and they are not requiring explanation. A family level is preferred to something like silver level. What does silver level mean? If you have to then define it later, you're kind of wasting words. Try and limit the number of levels too to make it easier to navigate and make it clear what the benefits of each levels come with. If your levels get more expensive, you should expect that you're getting better benefits as you go. Make sure it's very clear if the previous benefits are part of this package or if they're not. So make sure you know what's going on. And give members the option to sign up for automatic renewals when they purchase and make sure that they to test that process so it's easy and you get exactly what you expect. Again, this really comes down to applying something and testing it and checking it out. If this is something that you're working on, this is something you should engage with your Blackbaud customer success manager on, like me. We also wanna talk about maximizing online conversion opportunities. That's a great question, Yvonne. Yeah. You can the in memberships, that's where you can set up your benefits. So when you're using Blackbaud Altru, you can apply tickets to a membership so that a ticket buyer can only spend a little bit more to upgrade to a membership. This is a great way to get a member right at the door. You should also be looking to make it easy for people to get membership from everywhere they can, like your donation forms. So on your donation forms, you can actually have a link for a membership right below it. You should even have memberships options being mentioned in all of your appeals, basically, of your outreach. Okay? Come up with your own ways to incentivize patrons to become members when they visit. Also, maybe have an incentivization for your staff, like a contest to see which front desk staff can sell the most memberships. Has anyone that's here today done something like that? We have, says Katie. Caroline, there is an article for how to apply ticket sales to membership. I'll look for that. We have commissions on memberships. That's good. Anyone else do anything to incentivize things? Physical card. Yep. That's good. My friend Jessica is looking for that article. Commissions membership sold. That's good. Oh, I think the article's already in there. Yep. Incentives, food, gift cards, subscriptions. I don't know what you mean by automate, Yvonne, but there are there's a way to set up a query to grab the right people. Yeah. Ali was fast on that one, Jess? Alright. So a lot of people are putting in there, like, these things that are great, and I want you guys to make sure you're doing that. But, again, trying to incentivize your front desk staff to get members is a great place. Those people that are at the front desk, they already like your museum. They're already interested in it. Maybe, though, they need to think about it, so they buy a ticket. But on the way back, they say, you know what? I would really love to have just bought a membership. So give that and make it easy for them to do. You want people to be able to sign up so easy and be a member. So we have a couple of tips too to think about. Remember, analyzing act activities. Right? How do your members and donors interact? What exhibits and programs are your members going to? A lot of this stuff you guys can pull from a database. So what programs and initiatives do your members respond to? Knowing your data. Like, look at your nonmember ticket buyers, event attendees, lapsed members, members who are not donors. Make sure you have all that data in there, and you're utilizing it when you're thinking about reaching out for memberships. Ask your patients all the time. Solicit donations on ticket and event web forms. You should also segment your post visit surveys and include membership or donation asks when appropriate. Also include nonmember ticket buyers in any acquisition campaigns and include members in annual fund appeals. You guys are still sharing tips, and I just love it. I'm just appreciate it. Some of you have already mentioned this in your chat, which has been great, by the way, but you should make a special effort to reach out to new members. Obviously, when somebody buys a membership online, they get an email with, you know, the thank you and stuff like that. That's not what I'm talking about here. I'm talking about a special effort for your new members so that they feel welcomed to the fold. You have new members joining all the time, and undoubtedly, you have some from automated system. But think about the ways to show gratitude. Maybe it's a one time gift or a nice letter explaining the benefits that they have. Kelsey calls members to personally thank them. That's fantastic. Think about what you look for when you become a new member somewhere. Does anyone have any other suggestions that you guys do for brand new members? I see calling them. I've heard people say that they send them a packet of information about how their benefits work. That's fantastic. Answering questions before they're asked always makes you look good. I see a lot of people are doing phone calls, a welcome series that's web based. Oh, an ornament. Oh, that's a great gift idea. It's also gonna depend on how big your membership program is. Sometimes people are gonna say, Evan, I just we don't have the bandwidth to do this stuff. Email welcome series is good, Mike. Yeah. We wanna make sure that these people feel like you reached out and you wanted to engage with them and you're wanting to welcome them, and it doesn't feel just like some kinda automated thing. I love what you're saying there, Anna. People love a pin as they feel pride and ownership. That is such a great, great comment and a great, great thing to talk about. Pride and ownership. These members are a member of your organization. That's what they're joining. They want to feel like they're part of something. So giving them that ownership is a great way to get make them feel special. So what keeps your members happy and returning year after year to support you? Remember, your organization offers a lot to new members, but after a while, that can sort of seem old for people who have stuck with you for years on end. So think of some benefits that you give to existing members to make renewing a great idea. Right? Does anyone know this? This is a question I'm asking just to see. What is the longest running membership you have? Not including a lifetime member. And what I wanna know is who here can say that they've had a member for more than fifteen years or a member for more than twenty years in their membership program? Since 1989, Forty consecutive years. Oh my. Those are great ones. Ninety six, several long ones. That's so good. If you've only been around for twenty years and you have a few that are there for twenty years, though, that's fantastic. Thirty years, some from 1965. That's fantastic, Al. That's a great one. You know, a three year membership and when you've only been around for three years is great news. That's what you wanna see. You wanna see that people are seeing value and sticking around. Make sure that you guys are thinking about renewal promotions, something special to incentivize maybe early renewal or setting up automatic renewals. Some systems you can configure automated discounts or promotions for a renewal. Altru does have that ability to do so. Can make promotions for early renewal or for signing up for an automatic renewal. These can be things that are either discounts or an extended term, makes their money goes further. Has anyone got any other promotions that they run during renewals to kinda get people to come back? Discounted code for a free month. That's a good one. Yeah. Oh my god. Yeah. Discount for a three day Oktoberfest. Yeah. Katie, why am I just hearing about this? Renewal promotions are fantastic, and you should really consider doing one if you don't have something going up. It's a great way to incentivize people that are considering renewing. Katie, I'm probably gonna be there. Alright. The other thing to think about for existing members and to keep those people that have been since 1965 coming along is keeping things fresh. Right? So when was the last time you guys made a change to your membership program besides a price hike? Right? If you guys haven't changed up your membership program, start thinking about one what you could do to make it nice. Right? Everybody has to raise prices. There's nothing wrong with that, but don't make that the only changes you're making. From time to time, revisit them. Do those still reflect the goals or what makes your organization great? You guys are gonna get a new coat of paint every few years, so why not look at your membership program and make it that look a little shiny? Right? Do your membership levels still offer the best choices for customers? Are these benefits still something attractive? Fanny packs went out of style, but now they're coming back, or at least I want them to. Maybe you guys can make some changes to your membership program to help things get a little more sharp. Has anyone made any changes recently? Barbara says they revamp every two or three years. That's good. I see Kathy just revised hers. Yeah. And Katie says we should do that because the last change was fourteen years ago. It's good that you're recognizing, though, and moving forward. Good, Kelsey. Doing that. We added an ultimate membership that covers both the zoo and the adventure park. Nice. Great idea. You guys should be doing this a lot. You decreased your prices. Heroes over there. A membership lounge. That sounds great, Anna. Great idea. I'd like that. Something fancy. Right? So if you're looking to shake things up, make sure you reach out to everyone in the office, gather some opinions. Right? But mostly, talk to your members, especially those that you have a good relationships with. Also, talk to your team here at Blackbaud. Your customer success manager is always here to help. I just recently had a meeting with one of my customers where we talked about their membership levels at length, and I was happy to do it. And we came up with some great ideas together that really helped them. But here's some things that you really need to consider when you're making any changes. First, how will you communicate these changes? Second, how will you implement those changes? And third, who's gonna be affected, and how are they gonna be affected? Okay? When you talk about communicating the change, the most important thing I can say is that this is exciting. That's how the message needs to come across. These changes are exciting. You're excited. This is gonna be great for them. Make sure that it just radiates joy when you say we're making these changes. And, also, give people a heads up. If the changes are gonna take place in July, start talking about it now just to get people out so they know it's coming up. Changes. It's gonna be great. You're gonna love it. When you implement the changes, make sure you have worked it all out and you know what you're gonna do before you're ready to pull the trigger. Maybe do a couple of tests. Be ready. When you're talking about who's gonna be affected and how they're gonna be affected, maybe just think about anybody you've got that's a squeaky wheel, a member that you have, and maybe prepare for them. Maybe reach out to them ahead of time. You guys knows your members, and you know what they need. So we're gonna talk a little bit about member involvement for just a moment. Okay? Do your members get involved in your organization beyond member perks? Have you thought about asking them to help organize an event? Maybe invite them to a roundtable on what they liked about last season? Have a membership drive at an event and have some power members speak to potential new members. Hopefully, you guys are sending your members special appeals for your campaigns. Your members are a great source for donations beyond their membership dues, so make sure that you're asking. But what do you guys do at your place to get your members involved? Does anyone have a suggestion that they're doing that their members love? One thing I'll say is we talked earlier about what to do with new members. And I know one organization, when people sign up for new members, there's a volunteer crew that calls the new members, and those volunteers are existing old members. Barbara, there is a way to report on membership visits as long as those members are checking in at the desk. Yes. Kelsey. She says her members become docents, which is great. Fourth of July walk. Yes. I don't know if there's an article, Barbara, but you would just you can do a a query on visits and look for members in that query. I'll I'll see if there's an article about it. But, yeah, you can report on which members visited. Does anyone else do anything to get their members involved? Like I said, we're we have parades. We have docents, volunteering, things like that. Has anyone used, members on your board or members as a think tank for next things coming up? If this is something you're interested in, consider making that also part of a level maybe for a member. Anna says you have an annual member meeting, sort of a state of the org and a reception. That's good. Keeping them involved. Jessica, thank you for sharing that. There's your article on seeing the number of visits for memberships. Annual membership meetings. That's always good to hear. Alright. One last thing I wanna say about this is that we're here to help too. You might be missing some of your best resources if you haven't talked to your customer success manager at Blackbaud. We have lots of experience and can offer some wonderful advice to get you moving in the right direction. Blackbaud has hundreds of nonprofit arts and cultural organizations as clients. So in a moment like this, when you're all sharing, there's so much to learn. But we are also talking to you guys all the time, and we're here to help share resources with you. So we've heard from a lot of you guys, and we take these to know. You've given me ideas that I can share with my customers. So thank you guys so much for everything you've shared. But remember, you reach out to us if you guys have any questions or if you're working on something that you feel is difficult and you need help. Something else I wanna bring up is if you're looking to get more out of your Altru, your Razor's Edge, whatever it is, and you're looking to just get more out of your Blackbaud subscriptions, you might wanna consider signing up for something called Blackbaud advisory plus. Advisory plus is basically a subscription that gets you one to one consulting, designed to help your goals. It's tailored guidance using your data, focuses on team and organizational objectives. It's deep experience, product expertise. You basically pair it off with a all true or razor's edge expert depending on what you're using. That is something that you're interested in. It's really a great thing. I have a lot of customers who use it. They love it a lot. If it's something you wanna know more about beyond this, just write in the chat. I'd like to know more about that, and I'll have somebody send you some information about that. There's no charge or anything. It's just information for you to share about. But it's something that I share in something like this because this is this is something that a lot of people are really getting advantage of, and it's how you can help, like, grow a membership thing like that. Let's see. Yosaline says the pages under the docs tab for different topics are private and not available to the public. I will look into that, Yosaline. I I apologize that. I'll try to if I can get that fixed. Allison shares that she did a one to one consulting and that it was very nice. Thank you very much for sharing that. Katie, who has an advisory plus says she's used it for the last two years and that they love it. So, again, if it's something you guys are interested in at all, let me know. You can talk to Katie about it. But I can have somebody send you some information about it. And if you can, you know, sit down and talk about it with somebody, it'll be great. I also wanna talk about other resources that you guys have. The things that we have out there, Blackbaud University, that's something that you guys can have access to. Those are classes that are being real world applications and, help you achieve things. They're really great. There's a lot of courses out there, and we're making new ones all the time. We just started to release some new ones for this season. The Blackbaud community, which is sort of what you are in today, is what you were talking in your chat. But the Blackbaud community has actually got an actual link. It's a place that you can go to to get best practices and support the people and organizations who change the world like you. There's a lot so go in there, and there's a lot of resources in there. Obviously, you guys hopefully know about customer support. It's a highly trained associates right at your fingertips, and they're available actually twenty four hours a day for emergencies. And a lot of people don't know that. If there's an emergency and you think it's not regular hours, you can still reach them. Also, our knowledge base, we have a thought thousands of real time published solutions, and you can visit that site and check those and read them to learn more about it, and you'll get out of that. But, obviously, another resource, you know, we mentioned before is you're just customer success manager. You should be reaching out to us and talking to us and, you know, getting as much as you can. I see. I saw a question in there. Does Altru have an online member portal? It doesn't have an online member portal, Jess. But with Altru's web pages, they do allow for login, which allows members to receive discount prices on scheduled programs and special events, or they can create an account to just see things that are members only. So yeah. But we do have partners who sell that, which is what Jessica just said. She's always one second ahead of me. There is a docs section that's up right next to the chat, and it's got some resources in it. And the first resource you'll see is today's slides, which should if someone is having a hard time opening the things that are in the docs, you might be having better luck with from the slide. But those resources are fantastic. Please make sure you get a chance to go up there and utilize them. They are really there. I put them all together just for you guys because I want you guys to be able to be successful. I'm also gonna send out right now a survey. This survey is just a couple of quick questions about how things are going today, how things have been in the past, whatever you wanna say. I really appreciate it if you guys take just a few minutes to do the survey. Actually, it takes about one minute. That really helps me tailor what I'm gonna do going forward, so I appreciate any insight you guys have. While you're doing that, I do wanna just take one quick minute and just say thank you. You guys have been such a active and participating audience, and you guys have shared a lot of great information in that chat. I really appreciate it. So thanks for showing up, and thanks for talking. Thanks for engaging with each other. I hope you guys learned something here today. I hope you got some great ideas. I hope you've managed to pay attention to some people in the chat who were just really being great and get some information from them. If there's anything else you need, don't hesitate to reach out to Blackbaud. We have a lot going on, and we're here to help you guys. Look in your invites for coming up webinars. We've got a bunch coming up next month. There's, I think there's one a month planned right through June. So keep an eye out for those, and keep an eye out for any new exciting things coming out. I know that we're expecting to have at least one thing from Altru related to group sales that's gonna be announced this year. It's gonna be great. Any other questions before we sign off? Well, that being said, everyone, thanks so much for coming. I've been Evan. You've been fantastic. I really appreciate you guys being in here today. Thanks for everything that you shared. Enjoy the rest of your day.