B03-16

B O A R D D O C U M E N T

TO: Board of Directors

FROM: Linda N. Broussard, Director, Leadership/Member Services

DATE: December 20, 2002

RE: Membership Recruitment and Retention Update

As of the report, SLA has 12,080 members. This is two percent below membership figures at this time last year. The membership trend this year has deviated from previous years. Instead of total membership peaking in August prior to deactivation, it peaked in February at 12,565. July was a secondary peak at 12,168.

New member recruitment is up fourteen percent over last year and 37 percent over two years ago. A featured marketing incentive during this time has been the opportunity to register for Annual Conference at the member early-bird discount rate; a strategy which proved very successful last year.

In April, Marketing General was retained as SLA’s membership marketing partner bringing together a team of association membership marketing professionals to assist the department in lieu of filling the membership development director position which had been vacant for some months. A direct mail campaign combined with member referral e-mail recruitment campaigns have produced 1,478 of the 2,263 members recruited during the year.

Retention continues to be a challenge. One of the most common complaints is integration with their chapter and division affiliations.

The option to join and renew memberships via the web has been successful. Since its beginning in June, 684 members have joined via the web and 699 have renewed membership via the web.

SLA has members in 81 countries – a larger number of countries than previous years. The highest concentration of membership continues to be from the USA and Canada, which account for 95 percent of the membership.

Member Category	Member Count
Full Member	10,282
Student Member	1,141
Retired Member	424
Organizational Member	100
Forty-five Year Members	68
Life Member	50
Honorary Member	15