Why offering CPD will draw more recruits for your membership organisation

“How can I add value to my membership organisation?” This is a question that membership organisations ask us a lot, and also one of the fundamental concepts of running a successful membership association.

As a membership organisation, no doubt you are always looking to offer something that will set you apart from other associations in your industry who are all working towards very similar goals as yourself.

This is where the question of value can get a bit tricky, you are probably already investing lots of time and money into keeping your membership website up to date, all of your content and publications are well designed, and the events that you host all offer valuable information to your membership. So what more can you do?

To answer this question, you need to think of why an individual chooses to join a membership organisation, and the 3 main reasons are;

• To progress professionally in their industry
• To be part of a membership community
• To grow and develop skills

Continuing Professional Development (CPD) has all of these things covered, and therefore offers both an appealing initiative for potential members, and a way to add more value to your membership organisation.

Progress Professionally

By offering CPD, you can help your members progress within their careers by offering them opportunities to progress to. To progress, it is important to know that there is somewhere to progress to, and this is what draws people towards signing up to membership organisations like yours. Not only does offering CPD allow your members to highlight what they need to do to progress and how they can do it, but it also enables individual reflection. It is important to set smart goals so that your members can progress quickly and easily, and good CPD software will allow you to do this, as well as allowing members to track their progress easily and efficiently.

Offering membership tiers through which your own members can progress to reach certain levels of qualifications gives them goals to aim for, especially if your membership rewards increase the further an individual progresses. The result is that members get to progress and you get to increase the standard practice of your industry sector with highly qualified professionals.

Be part of a membership community

For members who want to develop professionally, networking is incredibly important, and this is why most membership organisations have annual conferences and events where members can meet each other and exchange ideas. These events are a great way to offer your members variety and will help them to progress to different areas of qualifications in a more interesting way.

If you hold events that could count as part of your membership’s learning program, it is important that they get logged into their user account in your membership CPD system. A sophisticated CPD diary function should automatically do this, and you can even get software that will integrate with your membership website or database to log the event down in a member’s CPD diary as soon as they have been marked as “attended”. By offering CPD courses, you can control your membership content and ensure that speakers and resources are accredited before the event to ensure that they are of the best quality, while also adding a revenue stream.

To grow and develop skills

Most of the time, members will join your organisation because they believe that they will learn something valuable and unique from you, and gain skills that they wouldn’t anywhere else. There is really no way better way than to demonstrate this than a CPD tool. Showcasing that you offer CPD tells your audience that you really care about their development and that you are looking for the best in your industry. It also means that you are recruiting busy professionals who want to learn to develop in the convenience of their own time.

Offering CPD tells your members that you are a membership organisation who cares about its members professional and personal growth, and their time constraints. Again, by offering CPD software that can communicate with your other membership software, such as your CRM or membership website, means that if your members buy a publication or watch a video, even the smallest skill that they gain from this can be logged, so that you know how they are doing and can offer assistance.

We hope you’ve found this information insightful. As you can see, CPD software is a huge draw for members who want to advance in their field and it will set your membership organisation aside from your competitors. Therefore it is essential that your CPD software offers the right tools to ensure that the process of professional development is easy to manage.

For more information about our CPD software and other membership website services, please take a look at our membership services webpage.

For more useful membership content, please take a look at our blog, and read our articles, such as: How will GDPR affect your membership organisation?

To discuss your membership website or CPD project, please get in touch and we will take it from there.