Ensuring that your not-for-profit (NFP) organisation’s members are satisfied and continue to renew their membership into the future requires effective engagement strategies. However, the member engagement landscape is changing, with NFP organisations feeling pressure on the following fronts:

• Economic – members are looking for demonstrated value from their membership
• Demographic – younger members expect a website that is personalised to their needs, includes sophisticated self- service options and offers a social experience
• Technological – anything that your members can do online, they want to be able to do via their mobile devices. If your organisation doesn’t provide these services, its members could turn to another organisation that better responds to their needs.

Many NFP organisations have trouble engaging with members and providing them with a positive online user experience because they are using multiple, disparate software systems. Even if an organisation does manage to integrate its customer relationship management (CRM) system, content management system (CMS) and other systems, the process is often not streamlined and it becomes a constant battle to access the necessary information to make vital business decisions, and to keep all of the systems up-to-date.

Benefits of a single solution for website and data

An engagement management systemTM (EMS) allows NFP organisations to manage member data and relevant web content in one seamless system.

An EMS solution provides members with a highly personalised web experience and makes it easy for NFP organisations to connect, communicate and collaborate with members and staff online and via smart phones and tablets. It includes member/donor management, member self-service, online fundraising, social engagement, private communities, mobile access and website management in one seamless system. In addition, replacing multiple software systems with a single EMS solution will mean fewer software vendors to manage and lower overall costs for the organisation.

Making the transition

If replacing your NFP’s CRM and CMS software at the same time is too daunting, the EMS solution can be implemented to allow member self-service and social networking to function as a subset of your main website.