NEW YORK - With membership growth “so flat that we almost have shrinking numbers of members,” the CUNA Membership Growth Task Force offered up its initial findings and recommendations to help spur on growth.
“Even though our potential membership is growing, we only have 15% of potential members,” said Dick Ensweiler, chairman of the growth task force that was formed in 2007 and CEO of the Texas CU League.
In presenting the task force’s findings to the CUNA Board at America’s CU Conference here last week, Ensweiler offered five primary recommendations:
1) Develop a national awareness/image campaign. The task force abandoned a national branding campaign, because as CUs compete with one another, they want their own individual brands, not a single, unified brand, Ensweiler explained. “An awareness campaign is still problematic because it’s expensive to do, but we must get the word out,” he said, noting CUNA staff will be exploring what that message should be.
2) CUs must reach out to markets that are ripe for growth. Ensweiler said the task force has done part of the work for credit unions on this one, having identified three primary growth markets: youth, Hispanics and the underserved.
3) The industry must establish best practices. “We need to dedicate the time and resources to creating a clearinghouse for best practices,” Ensweiler suggested. “There are some good best practices out there already, but we have to get that information out to other credit unions.”
4) Collaborate to cut expenses and free up resources that can then be dedicated to membership growth. “We know credit unions are squeezed more than ever, and one of the first things that happens is the marketing budget gets cut,” Ensweiler observed. “But that won’t help us build membership.” The task force identified a number of areas that would be collaboration-friendly, including data processing, payroll/ accounting and compliance. The key, he said, is soothing the fears surrounding collaboration, in particular the potential for poaching of members. The task force determined one way to help allay those concerns would be for the leagues to get involved in collaborative efforts to serve as a neutral third party who would be seen as having a vested interest in all of the credit unions’ success.
5) Measure, measure, measure. The CUs that are thriving all have one thing in common: they use a variety of metrics to track their growth and set goals. “We are going to help establish some standard metrics that credit unions can adapt and tailor to their own needs,” Ensweiler said.
An in-depth look at the Membership Growth Task Force’s findings and insight from Ensweiler and CUNA’s lead staffer on the project, Mike Schenk will be in the July 14 edition of Credit Union Journal.(c) 2008 The Credit Union Journal and SourceMedia, Inc. All Rights Reserved.http://www.cujournal.com http://www.sourcemedia.com
