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Workshop discussion forum. Please add your comments below. If posting an anonymous comment (by not logging into WordPress please add your name and u3a.
Recruitment and Retention Workshop Forum
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24 responses to “Recruitment and Retention Workshop Forum”
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Firstly, thanks to Angie Grain for organising the workshop on Friday. And thanks to all who attended. Great to hear Paul Martinez on the National R&R Toolkit, some great tips.
Meanwhile, we are formulating our own ‘toolkit’. You can find it on the YAHR website here
https://yahru3a.uk/yahr-information/recruitment-and-retention/
And one request. Pauline of Caves u3a is looking for a poster to publicise the movement in her area. If anyone has something which might be of assistance or could be adapted, please contact her via cave@kermode.co.uk Let’s try and spread the word.Best Wishes
Nick DavidLikeLike
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This is the discussion forum for everyone to make comments.
Just type a comment in the “Leave a Reply” boxLikeLike
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The only observation I have since joining and finally doing my job is that we do not re-emphasis the fact that the u3a is a volunteer organisation, run by volunteers for its members.
So reframing conversations around “give a little to get back a lot” show up ready to contribute along with gaining knowledge through a group, “why not run one too”, or put yourself forward to befriend a new member or help a GL with running the group they’ve just joined….. I know the thought of offering ones time to be more involved in the running of u3a may seem daunting to some, but it’s how u3a will remain, move forward and become an even better place to be part of.
If folk complain about not being able to join a full group, the response could be, why don’t you set up another one alongside?
We are all in similar situations after all.
Samantha Triggs
Groups Co-ordinator, YorkLikeLike
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To try and capture people who are coming up to retirement this year, we have written to Managers of local companies to introduce and encourage people to join u3a. We didn’t contact the Human Resources of the companies as they are located in distant regions and believed that to contact firms locally was more efficient.
For further promotion we are producing a tri-fold leaflet to distribute to the local companies and businesses. Of course, also displaying the leaflet in the Tadcaster & Villages u3a shop window and local shop windows
If we are not able to attract further members this year we are considering amalgamating with another u3a near to us. The reason for this is that we are not accumulating enough funds to pay for Speakers who seem to want high fees (one cannot blame them as some travel quite a distance and car fuel is not cheap), nor stalls when invited to local events and so forth. For those we will be unable to travel to another location, we know that most of our activity groups will continue to meet since they are now well established. It would be a great pity if were forced to close down.
We will keep trying and hope some new people will join us in the near future.Chrissie
Vice Chair, Tadcaster & Villages u3aLikeLike
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An update from Ilkley & District u3a.
Summary: During the year to 1st October 2023 we grew from 1752 to 1837 members and as at today (10th November) now exceed 1,900.
Retention on renewal: We regularly lose around 300 members each year through non renewal. 2022 we phoned most of the non renewals but it was largely a fruitless exercise. Very few reversals of decision already made.
This year when sending out renewal notices we promised not to send reminders if those not intending to renew told us “up front” with some feedback on reasons. Over 100 responses. Top of the list was age and health, followed by relocation, engagement in other activities and failure to take advantage of u3a activities. Our average age is 76 so RIP is also an issue. Perhaps at the end of the day, we should just accept that u3a isn’t for everyone.
Keeping the existing membership engaged: We use a fortnightly newsletter and social media (see previous post) to update members on new group ideas, events, promote the online TAT presentations and have recently had some success in running short courses. We are also starting to take a more centralised view of waiting lists and using that data to encourage the creation of second groups. In addition, we have partnered with the gym at our local tennis club who provide off peak reduced price membership and bespoke activities for u3a members. Read more about this on our website.
Increasing the number of active groups and encouraging members to take on leadership roles, particularly around the management committee table, remains a challenge.
Increasing awareness locally: We try to raise our profile locally through various newspaper articles, social media postings, regular drop in sessions and the use of ambassador teams in locations of our district where we have gaps in our membership.
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Barnsley u3a seems to be doing very well. We reached 1,300 this week.
We lost 100 last April at renewal time but have replaced them now and at this week’s Monthly Meeting 8 people signed up. At our New Members meeting three weeks ago there were 20+ new people there.
We have lost three Committee members through copyright, partner’s serious illness and dislike of Committee discussions. But with 12 Committee members plus 2 Co-opted to start with, we are coping.
We have perhaps become rather ‘forensic’ in detail and that doesn’t always make things easy.
Derek
ChairLikeLike
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Renewal feedback from Howden and district u3a as requested.
We recently completed our first renewal since covid. Retention rate was 85%, which to us seems quite good. Many people join for 1 year & do not renew: that’s true not just for u3a but for any similar activity. I’ll get some figures when I have time.
One way of countering it is to have a standing order or direct debit facility, so that the default if you do nothing is that you stay rather than that you go. It also saves a lot of work. Is there a reason why we don’t promote this?
Phil Green.. membership sec.
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You sent an email requesting experiences at renewal. Easingwold & District have renewal in January, so nearly on us again.
We were in the fortunate position to be able to give our members a free year in 2021, so everyone was kept on our books unless we were informed they had moved away or died. This may explain why we had 20% non-renewal in 2022. This dropped to 15% in 2023. Where a reason was given for non-renewal the most was moved away followed closely by health reasons.
We recently did an analysis of our membership. Only 71% are members of a group and most of those only one group. The more groups they are a member of the more likely they are to be either a present member or previous member of the committee. A further 15% only attend the monthly speaker meeting. Leaving 13% who only pay their membership fee. The only thing they get is TAM and our newsletter. We had thought of targeting these members, but as some have been doing this for a few years, we feel we might loose them if it is pointed out that they are paying for nothing!LikeLike
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Really interesting reading everyone’s responses. I think what chimes with me is that some time before covid we also conducted a telephone survey of those not renewing and many of the same reasons were coming back. Unfortunately because of our age profile many of our members will leave because of ill health or even death and that was the same back then. It’s a fact of life, and it’s a reason for us to look to recruit at the younger end of our demographic. When I joined u3a I was still in my 50’s…as were many of my fellow members. Most of them have remained members and we are all ageing together. To keep our u3as going we need to keep recruiting….I certainly hope to be still around in 10 years time and enjoying u3a but I ‘d like to think there was someone else running the show!
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Many thanks for all your interesting and informative replies – keep them coming!
It seems that the large majority of us are suffering high rates of non-renewal and for pretty much the same reasons – most of which we can do little about. This makes the task of recruitment all the more essential if we’re to keep our memberships level, never mind increase them. More on this soon.
NickLikeLike
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Scunthorpe & District u3a
Compared to most of the responses so far, we are a very small u3a with 179 members. In April, we were forced to move premises for our monthly meeting, just at renewal time. We lost 22% of our members for all the same reasons stated as well as those unable to get to the new location, although it was only a mile away from our previous location! We have since recruited 10% back. We have another u3a within 8 miles of us and have several joint members.
We have 23 Interest groups and find that several members only attend interest groups and several only attend our monthly meetings (which I now see as a large interest group.).
We welcome the resolution for TAT to be more proactive in advertising who we are and what we do, there is only so much we can do locally. We have sufficient funds for good speakers & don’t seem to have problems recruiting committee members. I’m not being smug , we keep working on improving our offer to members as word of mouth is, by far, the best recruiter.
Pat Ackland ChairLikeLike
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Wetherby & District u3a
Since Covid we are managing to grow our membership by 1.5 to 2 per cent a year but, like everyone else, we keep losing around 10% at each renewal. A disproportionately large number of non renewals are those who have been members for just a year but it’s interesting to note this seems to be a common issue. Also, interesting to note, that following them up proved a fruitless task. Should we be doing more with these new members to keep them onboard? Or is it a case of they gave us a go and decided it wasn’t for them.
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Do you have new members meetings to get them going and encourage them into groups? I think it can be daunting to go to things sometimes …. you may already do that so forgive me it that’s the case
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I think Bradford u3a has been fortunate in that we have stabilised our membership numbers over the past two years.
We have a Comms Group that oversees the membership drive and reports back to Committee.
We have held 4 publicity events so far this year, 3 in the Broadway Centre and a stall at Saltaire Festival. We have two such events planned, one in the central
library and one at the St Blaise Festival.We have partnered with other organisations including Age UK, Barclays Digital Eagles and Bradford Arts Centre. With the latter we are planning joint community events.
We work with the health sector, the social Prescribing teams know all about us and refer their clients to the u3a. We also work with the NHS Talking Therapies team.
All this activity so far has meant we are at least not shrinking in numbers but we hope our partnerships will mean our numbers grow in the future.
Paul Webley
Bradford u3aLikeLike
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Tadcaster and Villages u3a
We have nine members who have yet to renew their membership and 4 members who joined last year but have never been seen since so we are not sure if they will rejoin. That leaves us with approximately 71 members who have paid their subscriptions. This represents a loss of 14.4% on last year but we are sure that there will be several late payers.
The reasons for not returning have been (1) moving away from the area. (2) Some members have passed over (3) Others lost interest during Covid others not known.
We have a new promotion tri-fold brochure and a number have been left at high footfall meaningful locations. We hope these will be successful with recruiting members, fingers crossed.
We are pleased to say that we have three new volunteers to lead new groups; (1) woodworking (2) Reading Books (3) Basic Spanish. The Woodworking Group is already up and running, the Spanish class is to begin in the New Year under the care of a very enthusiastic and experienced teacher and the Book Club is only awaiting a suitable date to be agreed with the local library, who are very keen to help.
We are also bringing our membership together on January 15th with a New Year celebration party lunch.. We had volunteers to lead on the arrangements and most are in place now. So, volunteers are coming forward to get involved at long last and a good job they are doing too. Hopefully, getting involved is going to continue hereon.
Paul Bissett
Business Secretary Tadcaster & Villages u3aLikeLike
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Its really great to see all these efforts to recruit and keep up membership numbers. I think the outreach ideas – getting into shopping centres, markets and other public places are a great way to raise awareness if you have a town or city centre where you can have a presence. This time of year is also a good time to try to get into Christmas Fairs if you have any good ones near you. Some fairs will offer free or discounted stands for charities.
Another common theme seems to be losing relatively new members. Its very much the same in the wide world. Your most recent customers are your least loyal. If they don’t feel they have a relationship with their u3a they are more likely to leave. New members meetings are great ways to show people how easy it is to get into groups, generally I think making people feel part of something helps but it can be difficult I know!Margaret (Fiddes)
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Wetherby & District
I agree that we need to engage our new members early. We hold 2 New Members meetings a year and have one coming up next week. However, out of a potential 64 new members fewer than a quarter have signed up. Phone calls, emails outlining why we feel it is important to come along, the offer of cake! have had little impact. Any suggestions?
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You probably already offer the opportunity to try out a couple of sessions for free. Sometimes that needs to be reinforced . Another idea used elsewhere is to offer a buddy who will come along to something with your new member, especially if its a group rather than a general meeting. Often general meetings have meeters and greeters who will look after newbies and seat them with someone – make the introductions and they can take it from there. However, we also became aware, that our garden group in particular had such a lot of members, that when we had a talk new members could often feel at sea. We therefore had our own meeters and greeters for that group to look out for people and make them feel welcome. There is no doubt that groups can become cliquey…..often without realising it, and so encouraging group leaders to look out for anyone who might be feeling left out could be a help.
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Ryedale u3a
Ryedale u3a has 35 non-renewals out of 325 members, so 11% and a similar number of non-renewals at this time last year.
For the members who have let me know their reasons for not renewing, the majority are from older members whose mobility is restricted. Others are just too busy doing other things!
David Holmes
TreasurerLikeLike
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Thanks for giving us your update. I think this is very typical – older members are often no longer able to continue. Definitely a good plan for us to be thinking about how to recruit younger members to keep membership up and also to help us run the show!
Have you had new members joining at all?LikeLike
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I took over as Membership Secretary in July 2020 after the previous post holder died so I have no information from before that time.
At that point we had around 200 members. Due to covid, activities ceased in 2020 and it was agreed not to charge a membership fee for 2020/21 and everyone was renewed automatically. Our renewals are due at 1 April.By summer 2021 covid restrictions were easing and activities beginning to return to normal. A membership fee was charged in 2021/22 and Beacon was adopted from renewal time. Numbers before and after renewals are as follows.
2021 before 197, after 184 -7.6%
2022 before 191, after 173 -9.4%
2023 before 180, after 156 -13.3%
Current membership in Nov 2023 is 160For some time after covid some people were reluctant to go out and some gave this reason for not renewing.
In the period since April 2021:
• 16 members have died while in membership.
• 54 have contacted me at renewal time and said that they had decided not to renew. Quite a lot saying that they were no longer able to take part in activities due to age/infirmity. Or had a partner needing their full time care. Some of these have subsequently died.
• Some said that they were no longer interested in what u3a had to offer and had gone elsewhere.
• A few moved house out of the area
• 14 didn’t reply to the renewal invitation and so their membership lapsedCaves u3a probably has a more elderly membership than some and we are trying to recruit new, younger and more active members. So far advertising hasn’t been very effective and most new members come through word-of-mouth. We have had 8 new members since April this year.
Chris Edwards
Membership Secretary, Caves u3aLikeLike
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Hello Chris….your declining membership is certainly a cause for concern. I don’t know the area well, but I think if the region can help we will. Could you email me on margaret.fiddes@u3a.org.uk Perhaps we could arrange a meeting to discuss promotion and what we could do to support you.
MargaretLikeLike
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YAHR 
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