| At the March 1998 meeting, General Council discussed a report from NSW Branch on the recruitment program undertaken in the Branch from August 1997. General Council requested ALIA national office to modify the NSW program to enable results to be tested and from there to develop a strategy for a national recruitment program.
NSW program
The NSW program targeted library managers in public, university and TAFE libraries. The category of membership of managers and institutions (ALIA personal and/or institutional membership and ACLIS membership) was identified. A letter was forwarded to all library managers in the group thanking them for their support of ALIA in the past and urging involvement in the future. The letter was subsequently followed up with a personal telephone call. A copy of the report supplied by NSW Branch will be circulated to general councillors prior to the meeting, for information.
Modifications to NSW recruitment program
Suggested modifications to the NSW program which could enable the effectiveness of the recruitment program to be more readily measured so that it could be developed into a national strategy include: - Develop different programs to target personal membership growth and institutional membership growth. Such a program may be devised to target individuals working within particular institutions. This could involve providing information on the benefits of individual membership and how to join the Association to potential ALIA members within a specific sector or organisation. At an institutional level this could involve working with an institution to raise awareness of the benefits of ALIA membership;
- Establish a specific timeframe for the program, for example the September - December quarter when 15 moth membership is available;
- Target one sector or area of professional activity for the identified period, for example school libraries, cataloguers; and
- Develop follow up interview questions for non-joiners from the target groups.
Such a program could be modelled and trialed as the basis of a national recruitment strategy to be applied in all Branches. Support could be enlisted from Sectional Groups active within the Branches to assist in identifying possible target groups and suitable timeframes. To be most effective target groups and a timeframe for a recruitment program would need to be developed in consultation with Branches in order to use similar groups and timeframes in each Branch to allow comparisons to be made. By adopting a target group/timeframe approach it would be possible to repeat the recruitment program using similar techniques as required. Were this approach to be adopted it would provide the opportunity to determine the effectiveness of such a program across sectors and across Branches.
Testing results
Where a Branch introduced a program targeting a sector and set a specific timeframe for the program, ALIA national office would be in a position to monitor through the membership database applications for membership by: category of membership; sector; institution; geographic location; and date of joining within time period of recruitment program. Information relevant to a specific Branch could then be forwarded to the Branch so that memberships achieved from the target group could be compared with the total number in the target group. This would then be able to provide a quantitative measure of the effectiveness of the recruitment program. The development of a series of interview questions to be used by all branches taking part in a recruitment program would enable a branch to obtain information from members of target groups who did not join the Association which could be standardised and used to further develop recruitment programs.
Retention
This paper has not addressed the issue of retention of members. General Council may wish to consider avenues through which retention issues may be addressed, for example: Branch mechanisms to welcome new members; mentoring schemes for new members; and exit survey. |
