Seven Suggestions for Better Member Needs Assessment Surveys

What do members want? As an association executive, you probably ask yourself this question every day. Knowing the answer is a primary key to the success of any membership organization.

Unfortunately, using anecdotal experiences based on staff interaction with members to answer this question, while quick and cheap in the short run, usually defaults to squeaky wheel management. This is reactive, not proactive, and most likely will please the most vocal members, not the general membership.

Conducting a member needs assessment survey can help uncover your members’ needs and has numerous advantages over squeaky wheel management, including:

• being more objective and quantitative, which makes your resulting actions more defensible to your board of directors, committees and members;
• obtaining feedback from a representative sample of your members, not just the most vocal or most active, which are usually among the most likely to renew their membership;
• being proactive by assessing unvoiced needs and concerns, as well as future needs, by testing ideas for products and services;
• allowing segmentation of feedback according to member demographics, which can be useful in developing valuable niche products and services;
• showing your members that you care about what they think; and
• providing an opportunity to educate your members about your products and services.

While some survey questions are almost generically applicable, you should really consider gathering input from the senior management of your organization. Be forewarned, though, that the primary obstacle I have found as a consultant is not the lack of questions to ask, but how to bring focus to the survey. Typically (and understandably), all the senior staff in the organization (and, often, the board of directors and the relevant committees) want lots of questions about their respective areas. The problem is that there simply is not room enough for them all.

The key is to ask your members for the most important, actionable information. The following general guidelines are designed to help you do just that:

1. Very few members want to answer a 200-question survey. For each question, ask: "What action will we take based on this question?" If you cannot come up with any actions, then do not ask the question. Asking only actionable questions has the advantage of reducing the cost and effort of conducting the survey, increasing the response rate and reliability of the information and reducing the burden of response for your members.
2. Use rating questions, not ranking questions, to prioritize services. Rankings do not reveal how far apart the various options are in your members' esteem; ratings do.
3. To the extent possible, use the same rating scale throughout the survey. I generally recommend a 5-point scale. It is simple for participants, but measures strong, weak and neutral opinions.
4. Be considerate of your members' time. Whenever possible, use demographic information from your member database to avoid asking unnecessary questions on the survey. This leaves you more room for new, useful information.
5. Conduct a reality check. Pre-test the survey on a handful of representative members. This group should number between four and ten. These volunteers should not all come from your board of directors and committees; they should also come from the rank-and-file members. Balance this pre-test group with regard to relevant factors (e.g., type of member, length of membership, years in field/industry, type of organization, etc.). Ask these volunteers for feedback on clarity, burden of response, relevancy and significant omissions.
6. Use the right method to contact your members. If you have email addresses for the vast majority of your members and they have ready access to the Internet, conduct a web-based survey. Web-based surveys can survey your entire membership, not just a sample, and you can get the results faster. They also eliminate data-entry costs. If you think that a web-based survey would not yield representative results, then consider paper or fax surveys that members can complete at their leisure.
7. Consider outsourcing the survey. This can result in responses that are more candid and a survey that is more professional and useful. It also provides an easy scapegoat for when you cut out unnecessary questions!

Asking your members what they need can provide highly useful insights into the future of your organization. Just ask them!