Client

The client is a not-for-profit organisation established with a wide brief to support Kings Park & Botanic Garden and represent the community's views on management and development issues.

Support is provided to Kings Park by raising funds for specific projects and staff development, and hands-on volunteer work on Garden and bushland projects.

The client had 300 members and employed a part time office worker for a total of eight hours per week. Volunteers handled the rest of the organisation's work.

The brief

The client first contacted Glide seeking assistance in growing its membership base from 300 to 1000 (with a six month goal of reaching 450).

As an organisation with virtually no paid staff, it was clear that they would have to look to their membership base for more time and expertise input.

Goals of the project

We identified a series of goals as steps towards lifting membership:

• Develop membership recruitment strategies.
• Develop promotional strategies to increase the organisation's public profile.
• Develop a plan to implement agreed strategies.

What we did

Membership input

It was important, in the first instance, to find out how the existing membership felt about the organisation – why they wanted to be members, whether their reasons for joining were fulfilled, how they saw the future for the organisation.

This input was sought by two mechanisms:

• An intensive half day of analysis and brainstorming with a small representative group of members.
• A mail survey of the total membership.

Canvass other similar organisations

Similar organisations were identified and researched for information about sources of new members, member benefits and promotional ideas. Locally, information was gathered by telephone interview; interstate and overseas organisations were researched via their websites.

Propose strategies

A comprehensive array of strategies was proposed for recruiting new members and for improving the media profile of the organisation. Strategies drew upon the research material and Glide's marketing experience, offering packaged solutions that maximised the return on the organisation's limited resources.

Ongoing input

As the project proceeded, Glide gave suggestions and advice to improve the marketing potential of existing projects.

Results

Suggestions were implemented progressively through the research and planning stage. Membership after five months – before the full program was implemented – was 430.

Comment from client President:

Glide has provided outstanding professional assistance to us that has allowed us to raise our community profile and to grow so we can further support Kings Park.