4. The Membership Committee

The BNI Membership Committee is a super important part of the success of a BNI chapter because it has the ability drive the culture. This podcast explores the different roles in a BNI Membership Committee.

Transcript

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Well, hello there, ladies and gentlemen. It is once again Wendy Lloyd Curly coming to you with the Imperfect Podcast, which is my podcast that I do, and I talk a lot about what makes people successful in BI. I give hints and tips about strategic networking, and who knows, I might even make comments on other things in my life. But right now, I've decided that I would like to talk to you about the membership committee in BI. I think it is worthwhile for everybody in BI to understand the different parts of the membership committee and enable you to see that the membership committee is very much responsible for the success of a chapter and that their strength and their ability to hold people accountable is so important. One of our core values is, of course, accountability, and it's the membership committee that can either make it a very lax environment in a BI chapter or a very strict one and overburdening. And what we really want is something in between that enables us to hold people accountable and still have a really fun and prosperous environment. So let's go ahead and get started. I'd like to share with you the different elements of a membership committee. So why don't we start with members? The members that we already have. So member engagement. The members, we want to get feedback from our members, and we do have a mentor coordinator which helps brand new members, but we also have the membership committee which is responsible for making sure that all members get the support that they need and provide some mentoring if they need it. Now, the mentoring can be done by members of the membership committee or could be done and delegated to the mentor coordinator or the passport mentors. But nonetheless, when people are struggling in a BI chapter and perhaps their traffic lights are showing areas of concern either from participation, like the quantity of things that people are doing, the quantity of visitors or one-to-ones or or chapter education units and the like, or the quality. You know, when someone's giving a lot of referrals but not getting a lot of closed business thanks, that indicates that maybe their referral quality could use a little bit of improvement, and we can mentor that and help them. Or alternatively, if they're doing a lot of chapter education units but they don't seem to understand how to do the weekly presentation well, maybe we can guide them and give them some good insight into improving their skills. So we do this on a regular basis every month. We look at the participation and the traffic light performance of each member, and the people who need assistance, we ask if we can help them. And we also do this on a regular basis at the seven-month check-in. The seven-month check-in is a regular process for all members, and in the seven month, seventh month of their annual membership, we do a check-in, and there's a question that gets asked, uh, a questionnaire that gets gets processed, and we get feedback from people on how they're doing, how they're feeling, what feedback they have for us, and if they had to decide right now, would they would they be interested in renewing? Because by asking it at the seven-month mark, it enables us to really understand and be aware of their uh value that they're getting out of B and I. So that's one of the things that uh the member engagement responsibility is. The other one is renewals, and of course, we we work with our members to renew each year. We do have goals for retention. We want to keep our members as often as we can when they are good, solid, participating members, and so the renewal process is another thing that the member engagement person manages. Now we have a community builder as well. So the community builder has a different responsibility. Uh, they manage the attendance because we want to make sure that people are present because visibility leads to credibility, which leads to profitability. So attendance is so important, and it's also important that people are on time and that they stay for the entire meeting because that shows a discipline to our visitors and to our fellow members that we need you here the whole time. The community builder also helps facilitate a balanced chapter. So they might work with the growth coordinator or with other people within the chapter, like the support director or the president, to create opportunities to balance the chapter in different contact spheres. So if your trades contact sphere is very robust and firing on all cylinders, but your personal services contact sphere is only got one or two members in it and doesn't have as much activity, the community builder would highlight that and identify that there might need to be some effort put into developing that contact sphere and inviting more people. They also might be looking at chapter balance when it comes to gender balance, making sure that men and women are well represented, and just making sure that we've got a diverse and robust chapter group. So that's the community builder. Now, of course, we also have member relations. Now, member relations is responsible for making sure that members are really comfortable in the chapter and that if there's any discomfort, if there's any complaints, disputes, or conflicts that they're dealt with in a professional and a succinct manner. We've all got training on the membership committee on how to deal with member disputes, and of course, members are going to have issues come up. There may be commercial disputes that come up between members, and we need a way to deal with those, and there is a distinct process for that. There may be problems when one member is actually representing a position or a specialty that they don't hold in the chapter, and someone else might feel like their specialty is being infringed upon. Or perhaps someone is simply asking for business in an area that they don't hold in the chapter, and the membership committee would want to work on that too. There may be disruption in the meeting, someone might be talking a lot during the meeting or coming and going or on the phone the whole time. These are little things that, of course, each member has a responsibility for dealing with because we are a team and the whole chapter has an opportunity to, you know, just tap someone on the shoulder and say, listen, I wanted to let you know that this is an issue for me. But if it becomes an issue that needs to be raised to the membership committee, they've been trained to deal with it. That's what the member relations group does. And to be honest, it's a very quiet part of most membership committees when a chapter is running very well. But it's still important, necessary, and always available when things do come up. If it is an area that has a lot of activity, then the support director should probably be involved with the chapter more to deal with the cultural issues that are impacting that and making the member disputes or conflicts more of an issue than it normally would be. So those three roles are part of supporting existing members, and of course, the membership committees responsible for assisting in evaluation of new members. So they manage the new member application process, which is quite robust to be honest. The new members have to fill in an application form, which we review in its entirety. We also have a thorough interview that we do with them. There are reference checks that we make, and we have a script and a questionnaire that we use in order to call those references. We get feedback from the chapter and anybody who has experience with the applicant and get feedback from people to make sure that they see a good fit for that person within the chapter. And we also do social media checks. We Google people and we look them up on social media and we check out their website because quality matters. BI has in its mission statement that we will have high-quality members. And so it's very important that we live up to that and that the membership committee makes sure that when they let someone in, that they have represented the needs of the chapter very well. The membership committee also makes sure that the new applicant understands the commitments that they're making to the chapter and understands the specialty that they have been given and how BI works. Because BI does not represent your B and I seat doesn't represent your business. It represents your business specialty. And so sometimes we need to explain that to new applicants so that they understand that we're not trying to change your business, but we are trying to give you referrals in a specific area and how that will influence your weekly presentations, your feature presentation, and your one-to-ones, and how having a robust and well, what's the right word, populated, a well-populated contact sphere with each specialty represented will ensure that there are more referrals passed between members. So that's a very important part. So those are the four different areas of a membership committee that are roles that need to be understood by all of the members of the membership committee because as it gets busy in the new application process, everybody needs to participate in help. When it gets a busy time in the mentoring or the seven-month check-ins or the renewals, everybody comes on board to help with that. If the community builder needs help with driving a balanced chapter, everybody can get involved in developing those activities. And of course, when member relations issues happen, the entire membership committee can be involved with that. And so, therefore, there isn't one person responsible for doing each of these activities, but there is usually one person responsible for managing them to make sure that they get done properly. And that's why we can have membership committees that have three members, five members, seven members, nine members, all the way up. Odd numbers of people. Four people that are assigned to the membership committee. I'm sorry, the odd number of I'm not speaking well. Sorry, but it is the Imperfect Podcast. There's the Vice President and then an even number of membership committee representatives in addition to the vice president. That's what I meant to say. So what's the vice president's role in addition to all of these other things? Well, the vice president is the chair for the meetings that the membership committee does and participates in those. They submit the POLMS report each week, which is much more robust than simply an attendance report, but in case you didn't know, POLM stands for present, absent, late, medical, and substitute. And so that's part of the attendance, isn't it? And the vice president also prepares the weekly reports for the chapter that get presented during the vice president report of the meeting. Who prepares the weekly report for the membership committee? Well, that usually rotates between membership committee members. And that's discussed in maybe a WhatsApp channel or a Facebook group or even an email group that someone might have set up that the membership committee works on on a weekly basis to make sure everything's moving along smoothly. And that's it. That's the membership committee. It's a very important role in the BI world because, as I said earlier, the membership committee really does drive the culture of the group. And we want to have people who are new in the membership committee, people who have experience in B and I in the membership committee, and we want to change membership committee members over time. Probably not all at once, because it's important that we make sure that we've got some continuity. It's also very important that the membership committee relies on the support director for the chapter in order to ensure that continuity really does go through as well. So I hope that you enjoy the music on the outro. Of course, my very good friend Ben Little wrote this song. It's about driving through Texas and going all the way across, and it's a long trip. I hope you have a wonderful day, and I hope this has helped you. Have a wonderful, wonderful time, and I'll see you next time on the Imperfect Podcast.