Name: Membership by the Numbers: Unlocking the Power of Membership Metrics
Uploaded: 2025-08-27T19:31:05.526Z
Duration: 53 min 32 s
Description: Membership by the Numbers: Unlocking the Power of Membership Metrics

Transcript for "Membership by the Numbers: Unlocking the Power of Membership Metrics": Hello, everyone, and welcome to today's webinar. I'm gonna get started here. Okay. Great. Hello, everyone, and welcome to today's session on membership by the numbers, unlocking the power of membership metrics. There we go. There's a couple of housecleaning items we're gonna go through first. So in this webinar, audio for this webinar is broadcasted through your computer speakers. So if you're having issues, please refresh your browser, and, also, please use the q and a to submit your questions or to raise your hand. If you click on the documents link, there you will find the deck that I'm using today, which should have all the hyperlinks and resources that I'm gonna talk about available to you, to utilize. And then as always, you know, use the cogwheel to adjust your settings. You'll see that on your screen as well. And last and certainly not least, please provide feedback. Your feedback is important to us. So please complete the survey found in the follow-up email to this presentation. So today, I'm your guest, Rosita Bradham. I am a customer success manager, senior principal here at Blackbaud. I've been with the company for, just over twenty years, and I'm based out of Austin, Texas. So welcome to everybody. To get a free, brief, agenda here, what we're gonna be talking about today, we're gonna do a quick welcome, and then we're gonna go through some membership metrics framework. We're gonna talk about some acquisition metrics. We're gonna then go through and talk about some retention metrics, then we're gonna follow with some engagement metrics and then revenue metrics, and then I'm gonna call out some specific niche trends that we found. And, of course, at the end, we're gonna talk about some dashboard and action planning on how you could put all this stuff we're gonna talk about into good use at your organization. So before we get started, the information that I'm using today is gonna comes from two main places. First being the membership consultants. This is a group that, specializes in membership, and they do a survey each year. So I have the link here. You'll have the link in the documentation as well So please, reach out to them, to get a copy of their, actual, data. And then, also, if you would like to participate, because they're always looking for, more people to, join so they can get some more data. So definitely feel free to reach out to them. I'm also using, information from Giving USA, the 2024 infographics, which is their compiled survey and results from, Giving that happened across all nonprofit sectors, and it's actually has some great information there for you to take a look at as you plan for your own organization. So first, I wanna talk about why are we why are metrics important? Like, why do they matter now? And, of course, you know, with the the times being that they are, it's important to track metrics so you can gain, how your organization is doing in terms of are we meeting goals and also where we can improve. So in these important metrics, you need to track that growth and retention. And you could do that at looking at, like, new memberships, renewal rates, and churn rates. This is gonna be the typical stuff that you hear about. I'm gonna walk you through, walk you through these and a couple of lesser known metrics that would be very beneficial to your organization. The second reason why, metrics are important is to understand your member engagement. It's not enough just to get them as a member. Once you have them, you wanna keep them. So how do we keep them? It's gotta be through that engagement. So what are you doing? So there, you're gonna look we're gonna look at even attendance, content usage, platform logins, and all of this is gonna reveal how active your members are and participating with your organization. And in high engagement has has been proven to have good results for an organization. So it also correlates with that higher retention advocacy and, don't forget in our, overall fundraising cycle, you know, once we have them as a member, we definitely wanna move them into being a major donor as well. So this is just a step in that journey. Also, metrics are gonna be used to make those informed strategic decisions. So knowing which segments are growing or shrinking helps you tailor your marketing, programming, and support for your members. And then, also, we have metrics to guide, resource allocation. So where to invest your time and money to get that maximum impact. And I got some great numbers, to share a review about some benchmarks and, numbers you can, like, add to your portfolio to make sure you guys are up to speed with what the rest of, your peers are doing. So just continuing on, we have two more items for importance of metrics to demonstrate value. So clear metrics help prove the value of your membership to your stakeholders, including leadership, investors, or members themselves. They also support reporting and storytelling about your organization's impact. This is gonna be key for when you're doing grant writing as well. And then finally, enable forecasting and planning. So knowing these trends and tracking these trends with your membership data will help predict future growth or challenges, and this supports also your budgeting, staffing, and goal setting as well. So all very, very important. So let's dive right back in. So as I mentioned earlier, the data I'm using for, this, webinar today is from membership consultants giving to giving sorry. Giving USA and our Blackbaud Institute. All three of these organizations are great for finding data, to look at what trends are doing, and also for you to, see how things are going, not only with in around your world, but also the world of your, colleagues. Okay. So I'm gonna approach this, using the four pillars of membership metrics. I totally made this up. So this is just all my, like, you know, what I envision, what membership, is is like. So in these four pillars, we've got our acquisition, engagement, retention, and revenue. So with acquisition, we're gonna be discussing what are you doing to acquire new members, What task are you what methods are you using to find those new members? Second, of course, we talked about this earlier, engagement. How are you keeping your members engaged other than just ticket discounts? Right? What is the other value to having a membership at your organization? When we talk about the retention pillar, this is where we're gonna discuss how are you keeping how do you keep your returning members? What things are you doing to allow to have them renew and stick around? And then finally, revenue. Revenue is a big part of this because in the end, we are looking for those funds to support our organization. So are you maximizing your revenue to support your organization needs with your membership program? So first, let's just take a minute and take a look at what our membership climate is right now, like a little snapshot. So in 2024 between 2023 and 2024, year, end of year membership totals saw 44% increase from the previous year. So in 2024, they, most working at forty four percent saw an increase. 38% saw a decrease from this, previous year, and 18%, they, stayed the same. Now how does this correlate to what we see on the giving side? So this is our membership side that we're looking at this, end of your membership to be increased or decreased our our numbers. When we look at the total giving, this is coming from our GivingsUSA, snapshot. Last year, in 2024, $5,592,500,000,000.0 was given to nonprofits. Of that, we will see that if you look down, you'll see where arts and culture is, where we're down there at the third from the bottom, where we had a 95% increase from the previous year, 9.5% increase. And, overall, we contributed 4% of that, you know, five almost $600,000,000,000 came from that. So as you know, as we all know, membership is is, you know, it's at a crossroads. With today's climate, uncertain, funding sources, we really have to keep track of what we're doing because we need to maximize our efforts. So, you know, for every penny we spend, we need to make sure that we're making that and double. So taking a little bit deeper dive into this. So if we're looking at our, you know, in context of that, you know, 529 or $592,000,000,000, that of that, most of that came from our individuals. That's something we totally see. By comparison, corporations grew, 9%. That's their funding group for 9%, and there was a small decline in our giving by bequest. And this is a nice little infographic that kinda shows the breakdown. You know, individuals are always gonna have that, you know, biggest piece of the pie. But we can see there that it was only about an 8.2% increase from the previous year. So what do we do with this data? Well, let's talk about acquisition metrics first. So remember with acquisition metrics, we are talking about how do we get new members, or what are we doing for that? According to the survey, when comparing new member acquisitions between 2023 and 2024, you know, acquisition is a little volatile. Right? It's challenged to balance all the different entry points that you're trying to get these numbers. And we're gonna talk about some of those entry points, those most, used entry points in a second. But the average organization new member acquisition in 2024 was stable to slightly positive. So as you can see here, you know, most of this, 36% acquired more. Another 36% was about the same, and only about 20%, was fewer. So let's take a little deeper dive into how these numbers came about. This will give us some good tips on what you can use in your membership program. So looking at the actual methods that were used to acquire new members, this shouldn't be a a big, surprise. You know, your membership and on-site sales are gonna be your main source of how do we acquire new members. Because when they're on-site, you can got them right there. You can get them to sign up for that membership. And as far as your website, that's where most people go to get information about your organization. So definitely keep up the, acquisition programs, on your website and on-site. Now taking a look at the VISTA first five, we're gonna focus on the email campaigns, the gift of membership programs, and also your social media campaigns. What I think was really interesting about this particular, graph here is I'd like to also point out, like, you know, member member get a member campaign. So that's a small, small pie here. This is a really interesting concept that a couple of organizations are, piling in and looking at where they have incentives for members to go bring their friends and family into their membership program, and they do it in a really innovative way. So it's interesting to see I'll be interested to see how these numbers change as the survey comes out in a couple years to see how the numbers, pan out. So focusing on those top five acquisition methods between 2023 and 2024, they took a look at what was successful, what was about the same, and what was less successful. No surprise. Your website was very, was successful, but, you know, most of it was about the same. So people have been doing the same thing and just seeing the same excess success there. I do like, how the on-site sales are doing slightly better. So they've got a really strong, more successful organizations are getting those on-site sales and about the same as, you know, just a close, really close in in that first position. Also no surprise, email campaign, people are just making about the same. Whereas we do see a couple of opportunities where, you know, we had a couple of, organizations that have been more successful with their campaign. And then, of course, social media. If you don't have a social media presence when it comes to your membership campaign, we're gonna talk a little bit about that as well. You should really think about, looking at your working with your marketing department to see what type of influence you can have on their campaigns to include, you know, hey. Can we throw in some information about how to be a member or, you know, letting people know, hey. Don't forget to renew your membership. But just keeping that in mind. So anytime you have anything out social media wise, there's always a little discussion or topic that's, surfaced around your membership program. So how do we calculate the new member, acquisition rate? So for here, it's really pretty easy. You're gonna find the total numbers at the end of the period minus your new members acquired in that period, and you're gonna divide it by the total members at the beginning of the period times a 100. For those of you who are on our Altru, product, I did, link into the document are, ways that you can figure this out. So it tells you how to build those queries, that you need so you can calculate your new members new member acquisition rate. So definitely check this out and take a look at that rate. We're gonna talk about, some of what these metrics look like in just a second. So let's talk about retention. So with our retention, it's gonna be our like, our renewal rate we're gonna talk about now. With this, we've got our total, members renewed divided by the total members eligible to renew times 100. Again, for those of you who have our Blackbaud Altru product, we have a link in there on how you can report on your membership retention rate. For those of you who are not Altru, customers, just please let us know, and we can get you that this information to go along with our Raiser's Edge, products as well. So with our renew weight, this is gonna be something very, very important. This should be a metric that everybody is looking at and using because this tells you how you're doing. So what we're looking for is a really good, tracking of these rates. So your next question is probably gonna be, what's a good rate, Rosita? Like, what are we looking at? So in this study, they asked people that exact question, and here's the results of that. So they, you know, basically started from, like, below forty percent to over eighty percent. And this is what they found that most people, have said what their, actual retention rate. So that a little bit deeper into these numbers, I am very concerned about the bottom section where the 11% of the organizations did not know what their renewal rate is. So, you really should know what your renewal rate is. So definitely take the time, to look that up, track that because this is how you're gonna be able to tell if what you're doing is successful or not. And as a result of this, the median renewal rate is around 57%. So you wanna look for, you know, that kind of medium range with goals you wanna look for. Anything really over that 50% is gonna be considered, a good membership renewal rate. Now as you're looking at this and comparing your organization, definitely jot down these numbers and calculate yours to see how you guys are doing and see whether you're close to that or if you're well over that, which will be great news. So we had talked about before about the acquisition of new members. Another type of retention rate we need to be mindful of is how many of your first year members actually renew. So with this, very, which is kinda sad, we obviously, a lot of people don't calculate that. The reason why this is important because this will really kinda tell you that value of your membership. Right? You once you got them, the work shouldn't stop there. We need to continually cultivate and engage our members just like a donor. So if you, haven't tracked yet first year member renewal rate, definitely start tracking that and see where your where your organization lands. The median first year renewal rate is around 32%. So anything really over, that 30%, 35 is really what you're gonna be, striving for. So the next that we'll take a look at is, like I said, it was you know, they're disconcerting seeing, like, how many people don't track that. But it's important because we need to make sure, like, once we whatever we're doing to acquire them, we still wanna keep them. The work's not over. So let's take a look at those, you know, what methods people are using to drive their membership renewals. So in this particular, in this particular case, we have, identified, about nine or so of these different, methods used to get the membership renewals. So we've got, no surprise, our direct letters. So our direct mail letters, our email campaigns, and our on-site renewals is the major ways people drive their memberships. But, also, see I like to see how that little auto renew option you see down there, that's starting to creep up, coming in a strong fourth place at 36%. And you should really take, take into consideration if you have a system that does do auto renewals because that is a sure way to not only maintain and keep your customers, but it's kinda like a almost like I set it and forget it for the auto renewals. Right? The customer opts in. You get their credit card information. And then, as the, as their life cycle with you progresses, you know, their cards, their credit card cards will be charged on an annual basis until they say stop. Now another thing that you may wanna consider if you're thinking about doing some auto renewing, is as you process those credit cards, you know, don't forget with our Blackbaud, it has the credit card updater service. So the credit card updater service, which is, free, it comes with your Blackbaud. This will go and check credit cards for any changes, such as change in expiration dates, changes to the card number, maybe it was lost or stolen, and was replaced. That type of information will get updated automatically. The system looks at your database every evening to see if there's any changes, and then it makes those updates. So then you don't have to worry about running behind your members and donors trying to get their, get their credit card, credit card numbers because it's changed. Okay. So next, let's take a look at let's review what we were talking about. Like, what is a good renewal rate? So, looking at the numbers, if you have, like, over 90%, that's excellent. You are on track. You're you're doing awesome. It's it's people some people have it, but it is rare. But some people do do have it. In terms of if you have anywhere from 80 to 90%, this is a strong benchmark that most organizations strive for. Right? They wanna have a really high renewal rate. That's what you're looking for. That's when you're in, like, that nice little golden spot. If you're 70 to 80%, it's decent, but there's still some room for improvement. You may wanna look at, you know, what, methods you're using to, engage and keep your members, and maybe make some tweaks there, whether it'd be programming or benefits to see if that moves your needle. And if you're below 60% and often seen as poor, it may indicate some declining membership. So definitely check out, like, what's changed. Now some key takeaway, also, you wanna strengthen your onboarding. So that's like when we go and say we wanna keep our new members. Let's keep them. How do we keep them? You know, once we got them. So that onboarding experience is gonna be very important. That's their introduction to your organization. Invest in auto renew options. So if you have it, let's try it. You know? No harm in trying. Like I said, it's very easy. There's no real setup other than, having the option available for your members to choose from. And then, you know, also, you know, let's track that first year stickiness. So let's take a look at those, how many new members are retaining. That's gonna be important. So definitely look, then track that information as well. I'm gonna pause real quick because I've got a couple of questions here. I have a question, that someone asked. Like, what's the difference between a renewal rate versus a retention rate? Is there a difference? Honestly, it's gonna depend on who you talk to, who you talk to. The formula can be slightly different between a retention rate and a renewal rate. Retention rate focuses on people who are already members. So your retention rate typically, does not include, members, in those calculations. Renewal rate does include, some of those it's some of those calculations. It does include the, members or takes some consideration what's my total minus those those numbers. So it does, vary depending on the specific organization. My tip for you is pick the formula that you wanna focus on and do that every single time. As far as, how you might wanna compare to the other people, any type of if you do look at surveys and things like that, it should tell you, what how they calculate these differences. So just be mindful if you're looking at studies and things like that before, you know, is there a specific difference? Because some people might call it retention, some people call it renewal, but, technically, there are some differences between the two. I got another question I got another question here. When you look at, renewal retention, would you measure the upgrades, downgrades as a whole? So in the renewal retention, you would include your upgrades and downgrades in that total. So the renewal is not just the same level. It's the as long as they renewed something, doesn't matter. So in that in that respect, yes, you would include your upgrades and your downgrades. Let's see. Is there a knowledge based tip on how to calculate the first year renewal rate? There, I I thought I don't think there is, but we can create one, Debbie. So, we'll, put a little bug in our support ears, and we'll, get make sure we get those knowledge based tips added, after that. Okay. Let's see. Make sure I got all the questions. Let's see. Alright. I think that you guys got some great questions. Great questions. Keep them coming. Okay. Let's go and let's talk about our next section, which is gonna be our engagement numbers. So in next engagement metrics. This topic, you know, some people kinda think about it, but, I'm not sure if we really kinda put all the different pieces together. So for instance so when we're talking about engagement, you know, we are talking about visitation, but not just visitation. So looking at from the survey, they asked the different, organizations, hey. What's your visit visitation or usage patterns? Usage means we're going to, any sort of engagement, not just coming to your site, but or coming to your physical location. But are they engaging with you online? Are they engaging with you, in other ways? So that's what we mean by visitation and usage. So most saw an increase from the previous year, at 41%, almost 42. And then, of course, we see the decreased from previous years at 30, stayed the same 22, and 5.5, they don't know. So when looking at some of these engagement, totals, like, a little bit closely, we wanted to also look at what type of promotions are you guys doing for your membership. So let's take the big our normal big fundraising times. Alright? Black Friday, Cyber Sunday, Giving Tuesday, and your local Giving Day. What I found really interesting here is in the number of people that are not participating in any of these any of these, promotions, like Black Friday or Cyber Monday. The Giving Tuesday and Local Giving Days, I wasn't too shocked at because when you think about it, membership, it's really we're trying to sell ourselves for to give our members an experience. So, it's not so much like give us a donation. It's like, we want you to give us money. We're gonna give you some, like, products, services, things like that. So I could see how, you may focus more towards a Black Friday, Cyber Monday type of deal where you can be like, hey. We're gonna give out just like you're getting discounts at Amazon. You're gonna get some discounts for our membership. And kinda using that as, like, a promotion, to gain new members or even retain, the ones you have. Maybe give them a little break on that. Now with this information, the next thing that we had asked them was, okay. How successful was it? So one thing we need to be mindful of is as we're looking at the promotions, remember what we talked about before. 9.5% was an increase of our arts and cultural funding, for last year. So that means we got more money coming into our organizations. So this is why it's so important. So with that, this is clear evidence that, you know, that the engaged cultural organization audiences are really philanthropic. So while they're kinda hot with us, giving us you know, supporting us, this is a great time to highlight your membership to show also that value as well. Oh, I got a great, comment about, how to query on how many times a member came into the building for your events. There's a couple ways you can do that. And, actually, there should be a couple of different knowledge based tips on how guide you through on how to do that. So, there's definitely, check out some knowledge base and, my pal Jessica is monitoring to chat. She's given you guys some great answers there too. So thank you so much, Jessica. Okay. So as I said before, we were looking at how successful were those promotions. Right? We're looking at the Black Friday, Cyber Monday, Giving Tuesday, and the local giving days. So we've got, this is the success that we're seeing, which was also very surprising as well. So, as I said before, the Black Friday and Cyber Mondays are a little bit of of a, better fit for promoting your memberships than, what we're doing for, like, a Giving Tuesday and, the local Giving Days. You can see how unsuccessful people were at Giving Tuesday and Local Giving Days, and we get it. Like, I've been trying to promote, more arts organizations do Giving Tuesday, and it's just a really hard sell for our type of organizations. I'm hoping that will change. But, yeah, it's this definitely gives you that, you know, back end, you know, real science. Like, yeah, we shouldn't be doing that because hardly anybody's successful at that. Maybe you should focus on a different approach. So, so what other ways can we calculate engagement? So not only just on, how many people, like, visit you, but also look at your analytics. Look at the analytics of your website. So I'm not saying just specifically your web forms or your, online forms, but what is your traffic on your website? How many people are hitting your membership section of your site? Are they on that site on that page for a while? Really pay attention to that. If you're not seeing a lot of traffic there, what can you do to get that traffic to get notice of your, of your membership program? So definitely take a look at at how that looks. And then, of course, the one thing that a lot of people use a lot of, that's gonna be our email campaigns. Are you running a robust email campaign for your members? So here we go. This is also another $64,000 question of how many times do we connect with a member throughout the year. So we got some numbers behind that now. So how often do you do members receive email communication? So in this particular, answer, we had a lot of people go for a few times a month. You see 43%, do that. We actually had a a couple of people answer a few times a year or once every couple of months. You really wanna shoot for a 24 to 48 email slash touches a year. That's gonna be a good place for you to kinda judge, like, where we're going, like, are we getting that communication out there enough? So when you're doing that, type of you know, as you're planning out your email communications, how does that look? And this also gets into when we're doing this talk about these email campaigns, this includes your membership renewals. Right? That's a communication. That's a touch point. Typically, people will do, a, email campaign where they have, like, three months before expiration date, two months before, one month before, month of, and then one, two, three months after their, expiration date has passed that they'll send out renewal notices. That's like the typical standard way, but I've seen other people kinda shake it up, do it differently. But that seems to be the the the standard practice that people technically use. So, the other thing that I'd like to talk about in terms of this, you know, engagement is going to be ticket member ticket to membership conversion rate. This is also very important to understand. So the calculation for this is you're gonna get the number of ticket buyers who became members divided by the total number of tickets sold times a 100. Now there's a couple ways you can do this. I have the knowledge base tip in here on how to report on applied tickets to your membership. Those of you who use the applies ticket, that is the best practice, and that is gonna be the best way for you to kinda track these numbers of, like, how many people, actually bought tickets. The reason why we wanna look at this not look at this particular number is we just wanna see, like, are we really doing as much as we can on-site? Or or do we have, because that's really where these ticket conversions happen. Is your box office visitor services staff equipped to have these, very important membership conversations as they talk and deal with the public. So if you don't already, you should definitely have some sort of nice little, you know, script or, talking points that they can use to encourage people, you know, once they buy that ticket. Hey. On their way out, stop by and and get a membership. You could do this by providing promotions if you want, or just really, you know, letting your membership benefits speak for themselves is making sure they know about it. So do you have information posted around your around your site, physical site, whether it be museum, zoo, aquarium, whatever about your membership program. You gotta make sure they have that information. So next, and I got some great questions in here. Let me just scan them real quick. Are there any good resources for Ultra with gaining knowledge on how successful the promotions are? Jessica answered this for you. I will say this. I have been speaking with our Blackbaud Institute, who will not only look at Ultra, actually, they're gonna look at all of our Blackbaud customers, to surface these type of membership numbers. We're just trying to figure out how we can compare, how people track in Razor's Edge and how people track in Altru in order to bring those numbers up, but we were, like, been working on it. So we just started those talks actually when I thought of doing this session. So definitely keep an eye out next year, for any updates around, that. Well, most likely, what we can do is we will you know, we have, access to some of those numbers behind the scenes. But another thing you may, hear about, and I do actually recommend is, you know, reach out to the membership consultants if you wanna be included in their, in their survey. And, also, you can, like, Google and go to your different conferences to see who else is doing any sort of surveys and get involved with that. The, I think it's American Alliance of members, member managers, AMMC, I think it's that group, which focuses on membership. They also have some great, community and resources there, about all around membership. So definitely take a look at that. So let's talk about some, revenue metrics. So these shouldn't be, surprised of doing that. Oh, sorry. Real quick. I did get one question I did wanna actually read out loud. Someone asked, going back to the Black Friday and the Cyber Monday, being more effective than giving Tuesday. Do you recommend trying both or trying to leverage both? You may wanna shoot for one, you know, test out which day does better. Right? So if we wanna test, you know, when you're let's do, you know, cyber Monday. Maybe the next, you might do Black Friday or something like that. But I would do those kinda independently, like, I like a AB testing to see what works best because it might depend on your location and area too. You might be in a a place where people, might, be more active, in those Black Friday, Cyber Monday deals. And thank you, Paige. It's the American Museum of Membership Conference. That is the AMMC. This is I went for the first time this year, and it was amazing. So definitely check them out. I think they have, conferences every eighteen months. So they just had one in the spring, and I think they should have another one in the fall. But I'm not sure, but definitely check out their website. They're a great, great resource for for memberships. That's what got me all excited to do this. So back to revenue metrics. Okay. So, of course, with, revenue, we're gonna talk about changes to your dues, categories, or benefit offerings. Categories, same thing as levels, your membership levels. So they ask, you know, how many or how many of you actually changed anything about your membership program? 22% said they were doing it this year. 28%, they said they did it last year. And then you see the other, the other options there. I've had a lot of my own customers come to me in the last two years to be like, okay. We're ready. We're gonna adjust our pricing. How do we best do that? What's really nice about this is, you know, this, again, gives you validation. Hey. We should be looking at our dues pricing because, again, it's all about maintaining those numbers. In order to keep them engaged, are we offering things that are interesting for them? Are we offering things, and have things priced accordingly? You know? So definitely make sure you take the time to review. Is it time for us to make some adjustments? And that could be something as small as renaming levels so they might fit a certain theme that your organization is trying to get to or actually, you know, looking at changing up pricing based on maybe changes that have happened in your organization or exhibitions or special programming not be coming up. So of the people you know, one of the things people worry about when they make changes is how's that gonna look to people? Are they gonna be, completely, you know, really mad at us if we're going in and changing up things? Well, according to the survey, you know, really, it was, you know, a neutral reaction to, you know, changes in their categories and benefits and their dues. I was really, happy to see how low the moderately negative and the very negative numbers were, and, how positive people have as well. So if you're thinking about it, don't be afraid. You know, discuss it within your, you know, with your group and, you know, take a mindful look and and actually try to, you know, look at making those changes. It'll be good for you and good for the revenue line item as well. So with that, the next thing I wanna talk about in terms of revenue, which is a big one, and that is auto renew. So if you're not using any auto renews, you definitely wanna look at maybe getting that started with your organization. It is so easy, and it really helps with those retention numbers as well when you have auto renew. I was a little concerned that there were 21% that did not know if they have auto renew. So please check out your system, see if they have it. And, that should, get you, into the, you know, get you up to date with everybody else of doing, your auto renews. What's nice is the audio renew, median rate is you for between 46%. That's where we see that's, like, kinda like that sweet spot. Honestly, if you are one of our, you know, Blackbaud, customers, we can get that number up, you know, closer to, you know, a better higher percentage. I do think that, you know, the auto renew program is a great addition to help you have a strong membership pool. So, definitely, if you haven't done it already, consider having that type of turning on that functionality. I have a question here. Is there an industry standard for how frequently membership dues should be reassessed and modified? I have not found anything specific around that. Most will, I've had a few customers, talk about, you know, whenever they do their strategic planning is when they kinda when they're looking at the entire organization as a whole, that's when they also dive deeper into those membership programs and things like that. But, you know, we don't you know, most people don't do strategic, you know, plans, you know, every single year. So you may wanna think about, you know, setting up a, you know, three to five year just to check-in and see how things are because it also depends on the climate. Right? Climate meaning what's going on in the world. If all, you know, arts fund is gonna be stripped or we're gonna be, you know, censored, then that might change, you know, our timeline of when we need to look at dues. So there's a lot of different factors you'll need to to look at. Okay. So wrapping up some, revenue metrics. So, this in general, we saw about 54% of our org saw an increase of revenue, in our membership revenue in 2024, which is amazing. Dues changes were generally well received, especially, benefit adjustments. Also, another little, metric here for you to take a look at, tracking the average revenue per member plus your member lifetime value. And what this is gonna give you is kinda like a a actual, you know, how much is your member's worth to you? Like, what, is the, you know, determining factor how much money per member are we looking at for your organization? So I and here I put in what the, specific, metrics are for that and what it means, taking a look at the average purchase value, purchase frequency. And there are ways that you can find this information in, you can find that information in, your Altru system, maybe of Altru, or even in, Razor's Edge. So taking a a real quick drilling down to some specific museum types that we have, we have one here where we kinda look at, our our top different types of memberships that we have. So our art, botanical, children's history, science, and zoos and aquariums. The median renewal for our art museums that you can see is around 62%. The median for our science museums is, you know, around that 45%. I know you're all probably staring at that children's museum. I was like, what? Now remember, this is looking at '23 and '24. If you recall, we had this little thing called COVID. And once COVID got done, which was would have been around 2022 before we really got back out there, 2023, that's when the children's museum saw a huge jump because, you know, they were able to have their doors open. So that's why there was a little a little skewed there. So as we see these types of reports come out in the future, that should even out, to where it should typically be. Okay. So dashboards and action planning. What type of dashboard should you be or what type of dashboards do you have? What should be in it? So we talked about all throughout this presentation that I threw a bunch of different, like, metrics and stuff that you hear some other things, other metrics you can consider for that dashboard. As we talked about, new members acquired, our membership growth rate, our membership conversion rate, our auto renewal, rates. This is all for our growth metrics, as far as retention in turn, looking at renewal rates and first time renewal percentage rates. That benchmark, if you wanna jot this down, you're doing your first year renewals, 32%. That's what, you know, you wanna kinda go for. So with the revenue metrics, we've got the membership by income. This is where you can look at your dues reports and projected dues reports so that looks into the future based on what the current membership is, how much should we be looking forward to in the future from a financial perspective, and then also that ARPM versus our dues pricing. I did have a quick question here. First question, is there a way to discount auto renewals? I had many members who opt out of auto renewals because they qualify for a discount. So with the, if you wanna do discounts for auto renewals, technically, you can, but the thing is you gotta get it in there before you actually charge for that next month. So you really gotta plan it, in order to provide that to them. So, you know, if you have the discount, you may need to put some, guardrails around the timing of that. Like, they have to let you know or you need to, you know, get that discount in before the system goes in and charges them, but there's a way you could you could do that. Got another question here of how do I calculate the revenue by member, not just with the dues, but overall revenue that shows their purchases. So this would be a a combination of queries that you could do this with. So to calculate the revenue by member, what you're gonna be looking for, if you're in Altru, is is you're gonna be looking at the revenue for your members. So you're gonna have a query where their constituency code is member, that will bring all of your active members. And then, also, you're gonna take a look at what they purchased. So that's when you're gonna bring over any sort of revenue, looking at your application and your application details, and revenue type to see what type of, revenue they've been given to you. So that's how you can kinda calculate what's the total number of of of revenue that member has come in. And I think also if you Google, how to, calculate, you know, the member that whole, like, you know, taking their total revenue divided by how much they spend with membership, there's actually a good step by step formula for that. But we can definitely after this call, I'll make sure we talk with our friends at support to see what additional KB tips and things that we can provide since, we've been talking about all these metrics. So we'll definitely take a look at that. Okay. So I do have a challenge for all of you. So I want you to pick two or three metrics that, you saw on this presentation, and I want you to try and I want you to start tracking them. And then when you track that, I want you to look at, you know, what your totals are, and we're gonna and compare that to that pulse, of membership benchmark from that, from the, membership consultants, survey to kinda see how you stack up, see where your organization lies. The only the only way that we can get this information out and have better and more data is we need you guys to participate. So please, you know, take a moment to go out and search for those opportunities, so we can gather some data and get some, some more more numbers for you. So that is all that we have. I just made it to underneath the time. I think we have been answering all of, everyone's questions. If not if we didn't get to you, I will make sure after this that we, do respond to you. So thank you, again for everyone for joining today. I really hope that you, got something, good out of this or got some things, you know, to think about, when you're going back to your organization and you start being successful with your membership program. So I hope you all all have a great rest of your day, and thank you for joining me today.