You Are Here: A membership campaign report

I ran a paid membership drive for Future Community in September. It was, if I'm being honest, an experiment partially driven by exhaustion and frustration. Compliments, conversations, and thank yous are appreciated and valued when running a newsletter. But they don't pay bills.

So I ran an experiment. It wasn't intended to be the campaign to solve all problems. It was a space that made room for telling the story about what Future Community is (and Future Community Jobs, in particular), what it takes to run it, the value it provides, and how you dear reader make this possible.

Here are some stats that I shared on the Future Community Jobs page today. I'll get into a few takeaways after that.

Observations

• It takes a LOT of persistence and posting to get the message out there. I included a piece on the membership drive in every newsletter and the jobs page.
• Was that enough? I don't think so. Perhaps this could be approached as a straight up fundraising campaign and emails focused only on this, not just newsletters, need to be sent to my list.
• I posted about it on LinkedIn a few times. Probably not enough. I'm also running a paid Newsletter Nerd Club workshop on October 7th (you should join us!). Talking about both of these at once seems like a lot of pitching - and they're related but conflicting asks.
• I focused the membership drive on Future Community Jobs, the time/costs involved, the value it provides, and the need to make Future Community Jobs available to all, not just paid subscribers. The membership drive created space to share that story. It's unclear if that story resonates or makes sense when the only metric is paid subscriptions.
• Alongside this drive I set up a $4/mo membership option. The idea is that this is more approachable for people looking for jobs. It's $1 per week. Anyone can do that, right? Sure. That said, quite often the choice is simply between paying or not paying. The amount is less relevant.

Takeaways

• Benefits: I didn't emphasize benefits other than the general positive value of supporting a human-curated jobs list (and the human behind that project). There are some "membership benefits" for paid Future Community members but most members don't take me up on them. And I'm not at all sure that benefits (and adding more of them) have anything to do with why people choose to become paid members. This tracks with something I tell nonprofit clients all the time: people don't give to you or become members for the hats and discounted tickets or whatever. They give because they believe in you and your work or info provides less tangible but more powerful value to their life.
• September is/was tough: After a summer of inaction everyone is pitching something in September. I was rolling out a paid workshop alongside this. Every politician under the sun is clogging inboxes and text messages. People go from fresh and curious on September 3rd to annoyed and furious by September 24th.
• Talking about membership and value can't be a one-off: One reason I hadn't done a membership campaign before is that, like any fundraising campaign, it needs to be a consistent always-on message. People are busy. Most folks miss 80-90% of what you send or post. Seriously. The campaign created a place to create, share, and test membership and value stories. But it needs to happen all the time.
• Confidence in your value and worth doesn't mean asking is easy. There's 25+ years of experience and network building coming through all the content, work, and jobs shared here. That's worth your time and money. Period. I shouldn't be giving it away (and neither should you). That doesn't mean asking is easy. And hearing no (or nothing!) always sucks. But it also isn't about you.

Maybe this is useful if you're running any sort of membership or funding campaign. I'd love to hear feedback from your experience if you're up for sharing.