It’s been over a month since many museums, zoos, and aquariums first closed down their physical sites due to coronavirus. This “new normal” has presented certain challenges, and many organizations are working to adapt their workflows to the current reality. In particular, many membership professionals are struggling with managing membership fulfillment, renewals, and reduced budgets from their home offices.
Over 1,000 guests joined Dan Sullivan (Head of Partnerships @ Cuseum), Alice Stryker (Director, Individual Giving @ Intrepid Sea, Air & Space Museum), & Kimberly Kirkhart (Director of Membership @ Santa Barbara Zoo) as they discussed how they are adapting workflows and reallocating resources to stay on top of essential membership operations during this time.
View the video recording here.
Read the full transcript below.
Dan Sullivan:
Hello, everybody. My name is Dan Sullivan. I am the Head of Partnerships at Cuseum, I want to say thank you to everybody for being here. Hopefully you are all finding yourselves safe and healthy today. All of our first time watchers, welcome. To any of our repeat visitors, thank you again for, for being here.
I'm super excited to hear from our panelists today. One of the biggest resources that you've got here is the group of about 1,000 of you who are going to be watching live today. Feel free to take a moment, introduce yourself in the chat. We are also going to be fielding some of your questions. Feel free to use the Q&A functionality through the webinar and you can submit them there for our panelists to address. We probably won't be able to get to some of them, but we'll get to as many as we possibly can. Again, super glad that you're here, wishing you all another safe and healthy week.
This webinar is part of our Membership Monday series. It's a weekly webinar. It's held every Monday at 3:00 PM Eastern Time. It spotlights new ideas and perspectives from membership professionals, who are really stepping up to the challenge that coronavirus is continuing to throw at us. Membership Mondays tackles a variety of membership related challenges, and for those who missed it, last week we discussed expanding the member experience. We had two awesome guests. We had Jennifer Stone from the Denver Museum of Nature and Science. We also had Chelsea Graham-Jackson from the Cleveland Museum of Art. That recording can be found on the Cuseum website.
A couple of quick housekeeping items. Cuseum's got two other awesome webinars coming up this week. First of all, Collaborating On Virtual Educational Programs During Coronavirus. That's Wednesday at 2:00 Eastern Time. Then we have a second one that's Muse, Zoos, and Clues. It's a weekly hour of happiness, happenings, and cultural trivia to end your week. The third one will be this Friday at 4:00 Eastern Time. Mark your calendar. we had a blast last week.
Many of us are heading into week five of quarantine right now. Cultural organizations are continuing to face prolonged physical closures, perhaps for many more weeks, maybe even months. We truly don't know how long this is going to continue. For many organizations and membership professionals in particular, processes like fulfillment and renewals seem difficult, if not impossible to do remotely. These workflows have been significantly disrupted by coronavirus closures, who are all trying hard to adjust.Additionally, many museums and organizations are struggling to sort out their budgets, determine the best ways to allocate resources during this time in a way that will deliver impact, whether it's focused on phone calls, handwritten notes, email campaigns, original content, whatever it may be.
I'm super excited to welcome our awesome panelists today. We're going to get a lot more into the nuts and bolts of things. We have Alice Stryker, who is the Director of Individual Giving at Intrepid Air, Sea, and Space Museum, and Kim Kirkhart who is the Director of Membership at the Santa Barbara Zoo. To start us off, can you just start by telling us a little bit about yourselves and your organization? Kim, why don't you kick us off?
Kim Kirkhart:
Sure. I'm Kim Kirkhart, Director of Membership at the Santa Barbara Zoo. We have about 14,500 member households. We're located on the coast in Santa Barbara, California, about an hour and a half north of Los Angeles. Our mission, we take care of animals. We work on conserving, preserving natural worlds, including treasures and also with education and recreation at the forefront.
Dan Sullivan:
Great. Alice?
Alice Stryker:
Hi, guys. My name is Alice. I'm Director of Individual Giving at the Intrepid Sea, Air, and Space Museum on Manhattan's far west side. The Intrepid is a relatively young museum. We were opened in 1983 with the signature artifact being the, 1943 World War II Era aircraft carrier Intrepid. We also have a space shuttle, a submarine, a Concord, and all sorts of wonderful stuff. We have a really wonderful museum. If you haven't visited, when New York reopens, do come.We have about 3,200 member households, much smaller than what Kim's got. The operating budget of the museum is about 33 and a half million, and 90% of that revenue is earned. Our philanthropic program is relatively new. It started at the museum when we got the shuttle in 2012. A lot of what I'm going to be telling you is from a startup perspective. That's very much how we treat our donor and member initiatives, is as a startup.
Dan Sullivan:
Awesome. Thank you for sharing. As a starting point, and Alice, you can kick us off with this one, what does membership and fulfillment processes usually look like, at your organization?
Alice Stryker:
I can say there's a lot more mailing. Right now, that's something we're curtailed, pretty much in totality. But typically, we send three waves of renewal letters accompanied by much more email activity. We've got two acquisition periods. One around our big spring festival, Fleet Week, which is when the Navy comes to New York. That is not happening this year, and another in the fall around an exhibition or an amazing program we've got going on. Typically that's our cadence for the year, along with monthly communications to current and prospective members. It's a very outward facing, part-acquisition, part-stewardship shop.
Dan Sullivan:
Awesome. Kim?
Kim Kirkhart:
For us, we typically have four renewal mailings that we do. We also combine those with email notices that go out. We're on a 42 day cycle, to make sure we can keep up with everything coming in and getting them out to members. We do two drops for an upgrade mailing, once in the spring, once in the fall. And usually a couple last member recaptures during those time frames as well, as well as an end of the year holiday gift purchase.
Dan Sullivan:
Awesome. Kim, how have you adjusted your fulfillment processes to the current closures? Have you had to move away from anything, like Alice was saying, mailings or have you postponed fulfillment? Are there any creative ways that you've been adapting your workflows?
Kim Kirkhart:
Yeah, for the upgrade mailing, I actually was going to be signing off on that, just as we were closing and not thinking that was the best time to put that one out there. That one's on hold right now and we're going to determine when we will do that for that spring drop. However, renewals we've kept more less on target. There was a little bit of a delay adjusting, but the email went out first. Although, we've been doing more of a stewardship mailing to our members, thanking them for their support, reminding them that their support does help keep the animals fed and helps the zoo keep running, and then implemented the renewals that's timed in with that reminder and not just coming out of the blue.Then the mail will be dropping probably this week.
Dan Sullivan:
Awesome. Alice?
Alice Stryker:
Yeah, as I said, we shifted completely digital. Here in New York, we are completely shut down. We have been for about six weeks now, but we were first asked to work from home in mid-March and there's no sign of us going back until at least mid-May, per the Governor's orders. For us, we're not allowed on-site. We're not able to coordinate with our mailroom or even our mail houses. For us, we have embraced a digital platform, which was something we were hoping to do anyway later this year or perhaps early next, dip our toes into digital. But now we're doing it now.
Like Kim, we've been doing a lot more stewardship. We have been doing renewals. They've been going out digitally. We've added a fourth month, and now we're a little bit, which is again something we were hoping to do, was to shift more to a four month acquisition renewal cycle. And now we're there, thanks to the digital push. But instead of having our first message, for example, be an ask, it's a thank you. And then the second, instead of a membership, it's a donation to the museum. And then the third is actually a membership extension notice, which is something we're doing, because it's likely we are going to be closed for quite some time. We're extending all memberships to the museum through our closure. Again, keeping that stewardship thinking vibe going and then we'll be re-asking for renewals again properly once we reopen.
Dan Sullivan:
As far as channels go, Alice and Kim, either one of you feel free to jump in here, what channels are you using when you talk about digital? Is that mostly email based? What channels have you found are most effective right now as far as renewals go?
Kim Kirkhart:
For us, we've been using for actual renewals, email. Because of working with the mail house that still has options to mail, our mail notices are going out as well. Our marketing messages at the zoo in general are centered around donations and buying a membership to help with that. We have a lot of social media going on that's more just messages, fun messages to keep people upbeat and excited. And then our emails that go out once a week are typically a heads up for what might be coming down the road and another chance to thank members. So, email on that sense, but general messaging, a lot of social media.
Dan Sullivan:
Can you speak a little bit more towards the general vibe, the language, the tone that you're using in those renewals, and generally speaking in your communication with members? Alice, do you want to start with this one?
Alice Stryker:
Sure. Ours have been very middle of the road. I don't want to say too, too positive or too, too negative. Again, New York is, as we all know, the epicenter of what's happening right now.It's been really important that we strike a respectful tone. The membership to the museum is almost all local, and almost all of our members have been impacted by the COVID-19 crisis in some capacity.
For us, we really wanted to have the messaging that's positive be more about resources and programs that folks can participate in digitally. And then our referential tone, we have centered that more around our ask for general donations and support. We've also struck that tone when it comes to extending memberships, because we understand that the financial circumstances of our members may have and likely have shifted since they first bought their memberships.
One thing that we're really talking a lot about is the tone of upgrades for this year. How do we ask for an upgrade if we want to be respectful? Is this something that maybe for 2020, as opposed to sending mass upgrades, we do more targeted, selected, approach it like an individual giving type of solicitation. We're experimenting with that, but for now we're just trying to strike a tone between happy and respectful.
Dan Sullivan:
Absolutely. Kim, how about on your side?
Kim Kirkhart:
For us, it's very similar in terms of really trying to strike the balance of letting people know we are concerned about them. We're hoping that they and their families are safe and healthy. We're also noting that the zoo right now needs their help more than ever, but also not trying to get doom and gloom on that, because we do want there to be hope, because we have hope as well. Reminding them, thanking them, and then also letting them know that while we're closed, we are still bringing the zoo to them. That's the way to keep them engaged throughout it and also inspire that hope to come back in.
Dan Sullivan:
Absolutely. Again, we'll sporadically jump into some of these Q&A questions, but a good one from Dara Nolan, "Hello from the Penn Museum in Philadelphia. We're curious how membership offices have addressed mail interruptions and processing payments if there is restricted access to your site or mail room." How are either of you handling that?
Alice Stryker:
I'm happy to jump in. Again, because the museum is closed and there are so many restrictions here in New York, we do have a very small skeleton crew of basically security guards and select members of our finance team coming in on a set schedule. We happen to be right in the middle of our annual audit, which I'm sure many of you watching feel the pain there too. Our finance team has been in, wrapping up those activities on a very limited basis. They have been opening all membership mail, scanning checks to us through a secure image sender. We're then identifying the checks and processing them from our VPN in Tessitura, which is our CRM.
In terms of membership facing mail interruptions, instead of doing batch acknowledge letters, we've been creating digital acknowledge letters that I've been sending personally to every member that joins at this point, basically letting them know that once we reopen, if they're a new member, we'll send their assets and fulfillment needs then, like their membership card and passes. For now, they have my personal contact info, and if they need anything they can reach out to me directly.
Dan Sullivan:
Kim, do you want to jump in there too?
Kim Kirkhart:
Sure. For us, we're down to skeleton in terms of we do need our animal care team there and facilities there to take care of the animals and keep the grounds taken care of. We have our representative from finance and we are able to have a representative from membership there, primarily taking care of the mail and then also if there are cards that can be mailed out, processing that, thanking them. She's also answering all the phones for the zoo, but that also gives us a chance to pass along messages if needed, as well as monitoring the gates. With that, we haven't had too much of an interruption with mail so far, but we are prepped to be able to move along the lines of what Alice has been saying, if that were to pop up.
Dan Sullivan:
Great. Another question, have you incorporated any digital aspects into your workflows? On a broader level, how have your workflows changed as this working from home has continued to extend? Kim, do you want to start with that?
Kim Kirkhart:
Sure. The biggest thing is that I no longer have a commute in the morning. Typically a 45 minute commute each way, and now I am here at my home. A lot of Zoom meetings, a lot of phone calls checking in with my membership person that is on-ground and other people. Using our Slack a little bit more than we had been to stay connected with other teams, and a lot of Google Drive with our operations team, membership team, and then in general some of that work is getting used to many devices and a lot of digital platforms.
Dan Sullivan:
Alice, do you want to jump in there?
Alice Stryker:
In addition to everything that Kim's described, Google Drive, Slack, they're my new best friends, in addition to Zoom. We have, I'm sure like many of you, had to furlough a portion of our staff. That has actually been the biggest adjustment for me, is that having a team of amazing managers and associates that are familiar with our E-blast marketing platform, who are familiar with entering gifts, all of that infrastructure has gone away. It's myself and our vice president of institutional advancement and our director of grants that are still, actively working with the museum.
For me, this has been a really humbling lesson and the digital tools that our team has been using already. Again, a lot of them are set up to be used remotely. Other than having fabulous, amazing, talented individuals, working on E-blast for us, I'm getting my hands dirty, which has been a really amazing thing to do.
Dan Sullivan:
That's great. Let's shift slightly and talk a little bit about membership extension. This is a very hot topic. A lot of people are wondering about this. If you can both talk about how you've handled membership extensions and the subject of them, but also Matthew Rainings has a good question. How did your team arrive at the decision to extend all memberships for the duration of the closure? And what data points were considered? How will this impact your future renewal income?
Alice Stryker:
Sure. This was a decision that we made immediately based on no data. We thought it was the right thing to do. That's pure and simple gut check there. Our museum's in a really lucky situation in that membership revenue, because we're a very startup environment. Again, we haven't had a philanthropic arm for that long. We can make these kinds of calls because we only have 3,200 households, so it's pretty small.
Again, with the thinking being that New York is being hit particularly hard right now, and financially the economy here went away overnight, it was really a matter of customer service and making sure that our members had the best experience possible, even if this is the only time they're members with us, we want to make sure we're leaving a good taste in their mouth.
This was communicated in three ways. The first was a direct email from the museum's president to all active member households, and those in their lap cycles. And this was basically saying, "You mean the most to us. We're extending your membership. We love you. Here's some digital resources. We hope to see you soon." When it became clear that the New York is “On Pause,” as it's being called, was going to be extended, we sent another communication to our members. This was from me this time, saying, "We're going to do this through the duration of the closure. If that means we're closed two months, your membership is extended by two months.
We're not quite sure how this is going to affect our revenue for renewals. That's a big question mark for us. What we've done for re-forecasting purposes, is we've looked at the rate of renewals that typically come in and then have to that, because we are still getting digital and mailed renewals. People are doing them, even though we're not asking expressly until, at all, actually.
And once the museum reopens and we communicate the details of the extension, that's when our typical renewal cycle will restart up. Say your membership renewed May 1st and it's been extended by two months, you will now be in the July renewals. We're just going to basically pretend like these last three months didn't happen. We'll see if that's successful. Who knows?
Dan Sullivan:
We'll play it by ear, right?
Alice Stryker:
Yeah.
Dan Sullivan:
Also, I want to throw out there, Alice is dropping, and Kim, they're both dropping so much good information. Don't feel like you have to furiously scribble everything down. We are going to post the recording of this on the Cuseum website afterwards. Don't feel that you have to rush and write it all down. Kim, do you want to jump into this on that topic?
Kim Kirkhart:
Sure. As this started unfolding and hearing what other institutions are doing, taking a pulse, that right before or as we were going to be closing and talking with other members on our team, talking with our CEO, we decided to go ahead and extend everyone's membership two months. And the thinking behind that is, as Alice said, it's the right thing to do. It also gives people something they don't have to think about, since there's so many other things that are coming into play that they have to worry about everyday. Then they don't necessarily have to worry about their membership.
In terms of how that was first communicated, we had one of our general E-blasts that went out to not just members, but other supporters or people who have signed up for it, just letting everyone know the zoo was closed, and we made sure that that information was in there when that first happened. It's also on our website. Then when we started up our regular member and foster feeder only emails, the very first one put that in there and we addressed those specifically to members, letting them know what their new date was and that our plan was not to send cards, but if someone wanted one we would send it. And then that way they'd know what it was, and if they didn't get the other one it was just also a little more personal, because it was directly to them about their membership.
It's been pretty well received as the closures extend. At this time, we haven't decided exactly how we would do, but it could be case by case. It could be when we do open, add another month at that point. But the two months has worked out for the time being. And as everyone knows, this is unfolding differently every day. Just staying on top of it and seeing what's out there and making the decisions accordingly.
Dan Sullivan:
Absolutely. I think as this continues to extend. We don't know when this is going to end. The longer it does drag on, the more important it is for organizations, I really believe, to be transparent and open and honest in their communication with their members. We're an organization that's pretty heavily reliant on ticket gate and memberships and whatnot, to help us keep the lights on. And our lights have been off for a month, two months, three months, however long that is.
I think that open, honest communication with members really goes a long way. Obviously they realize you've been closed and this is something that's going to continue to be increasingly more important as time goes on. And that line of communication, and again, I believe open and honest talk, if you will.
Let's talk for a second about the structure of your membership departments. And by the way, as I continue to ask this question, in the Q&A section, folks, as you continue to ask questions in there, you can thumbs up a question that you're also wondering about. That will help Alice, Kim, and I prioritize the questions that are most important. As you scroll through those, feel free to click that thumbs up and that will push those questions higher towards the top.
How do you typically structure your membership departments? What sorts of things are you allocating resources towards? That includes staff time, phone calls. A lot of people are wondering if you're making phone calls, emails, personalized notes, mailings, or other activities. As a subset of that question, how has that changed over the last month? Normally, but where we are now as well. Alice, do you want to kick us off there?
Alice Stryker:
Sure. Normally I'm a big fan of the handwritten note. I love sending a good love note to a member or a donor. Nothing gives me more joy, frankly.
Dan Sullivan:
Well, they also love getting them too, don't they?
Alice Stryker:
Exactly. It's such a mutually beneficial moment of good energy. We do invest a lot of time in reviewing lists and indicating who does merit, a love note from me or our vice president of institutional advancement or our museum president. One of the unique things about Intrepid is 50,000 men served aboard the aircraft carrier, the submarine, and the space shuttle that we have in our collection. So, their families are very much a part of our membership community and our donor constituency.
We've got this amazing World War II guy, he only gives $5 a year, but you bet he's getting a personal note from the president every year. That is a huge part of what we do, and that has presented a big challenge for the closure, because so much of our audience is not, in the digital world, especially those veterans. We have relied a lot on the phone. I spend a lot of my day making phone calls to folks who I suspect would prefer a phone call over an email. And again, that's just gut]. We don't have everybody's birthday, but if I know they're a veteran, I'm going to call them. And if they're a family, I might email them.
That has been a big shift in terms of how I'm engaging with our members. And same, we used to spend a lot of time scrubbing mailing lists, making sure that addresses were formatted correctly, that, renewal letters and other mail merge functionality were working beautifully, but now, that we're using a digital platform, all of that information is pulled directly from our database, there's much less room for error, or much greater room for error. Either way, it's easier. I'm spending less time worrying about those details and more time really zeroing in on stewardship and thinking.
Dan Sullivan:
That's great. Kim, do you want to jump in, too?
Kim Kirkhart:
Sure. Normally we definitely get a lot of phone calls, a lot of mail, emails coming in, people asking if people either don't have a card and they want to come in or they're going to another zoo or something like that. Phone calls, although there are some that are coming in to the zoo in general, we aren't getting nearly as many as we typically would. We are getting notes in with renewals. Like, our online renewals, there will be comments in those or people will be writing notes when they send things in.
In general, we always make sure to acknowledge those anyway, but we're definitely making sure and adding that extra piece making sure they're okay as well, and thanking them for continuing to support us. Mail, normally we do have a mail house, or with membership consultants we use to take care of our general membership renewals. Our upper level renewals, we always do those in-house. And typically, those are printed on letterhead and signed by our CEO. And this time, because we don't have everyone onsite, what we've done is we've sent an email, still from him, but also indicated that normally we would love to send a handwritten note with this, but we still very much appreciate their support of us and letting them know that we felt this was the best way to get this out to them at this time, marking that balance. But definitely a lot more digital than normal.
Dan Sullivan:
Absolutely. We've got another question from the audience here. I'm curious what you've been hearing from your members about their needs, interests, concerns, etc, and how you're soliciting that information, if you are. Members are a great resource for gaining insight into our communities. Alice, do you want to start us off with that one?
Alice Stryker:
Sure. Again, through these phone calls that I've been making and the emails that we've been getting, I've been monitoring all of our channels through social media too, in partnership with our marketing team to hear what our members are saying. We're also planning to send out, I think either this week or next, a question to our membership with exactly this. An open-ended opportunity for them to write to us directly with ideas, suggestions, concerns, anything that they may want to share. And because we've been seeing it organically pop up through our various channels and we just really want to make sure that our membership knows we are here for them and we're going to be doing a little bit more of proactive forward-facing communication this week.
Dan Sullivan:
That's great. Kim, how about on your side?
Kim Kirkhart:
In terms of what people are needing, the few that are calling in and just letting us know, I think the biggest thing is people seem to be wanting to get back out and being able to have time. We do have some that have come through when we have sent out communications, concerned about the economic situation around people and it's given us an opportunity to speak to that and how that plays into things, striking that balance between what the zoo's needing and what others are needing as well, and that we're being sensitive to that as well. But for the most part, people have been calling just for connection and checking in, having someone listen to them. We definitely take the time to do that when we can.
Dan Sullivan:
A lot of other folks that we've had on this webinar have mentioned that same thing where, "For some reason, everybody just wants to talk to me right now." They pick up the phone and historically they'd say, "I'm, I'm in the middle of dinner, I have got to go," and now we're having a five or 10 or 15 minute chat, just about whatever. I think people really are striving for that human connection in a lot of ways.
Here's another question. In what ways have you adjusted your budgets and resource allocations in light of the crisis. Kim, do you want to start there?
Kim Kirkhart:
Sure. As I mentioned earlier, we've postponed our upgrade mailing, and we're looking at our lapsed mailings.They are mailings, we may be doing more of a digital push on that, definitely pushing more things to the end of the year. Our member event that we would have had in May, we're looking at. At the moment we're not having it, but we're looking at other ways, low-cost, that we can still, appreciate our members and still bring in that sense of community, knowing that our funding and budget concerns are a little different now and we'll have to readjust when we reopen to make up what we can. But still, not sacrificing our stewardship or service to our guests.
Dan Sullivan:
Definitely. Alice?
Alice Stryker:
Yeah, same for us. Fleet Week was the biggest moment for our membership here at Intrepid in New York. Fleet Week has been canceled, or I believe postponed. We're not sure what's happening with Fleet Week. But either way, it's not happening in May. From an expense standpoint, we've been able to give back a tremendous amount of money that was set aside for events around Fleet Week. Some of that funding though, we are reserving for something in the fall, saying it's a TBD on when we'll be able to have events, but having that sense of community and getting our members together and doing something special for them to show our appreciation is a big priority for us. The question will be, what shape does it take in the Fall?
Now on the income side, I had mentioned this a little bit earlier, but we've been doing several re-forecasting exercises, just because we don't know when we're going to reopen. And we as an institution really want to be as prepared as possible for any eventuality that may come to pass. We've been doing re-forecasting for a variety of months and I've just been looking at what our renewal rate typically is, and then having that. Because that mailed piece is such a big component. I'm sure it is for all of you, for our renewal efforts. And without it, again having mail houses closed, we just need to be realistic for the sake of ourselves and the institution's budget.
Dan Sullivan:
Along the same conversation of budgets, I think another question that folks might be wondering is, is there anywhere that you have decided to allocate additional resources to? Anywhere that you're doubling down? Do you want to start us off, Alice?
Alice Stryker:
Sure. For us, it's, digital e-cards,, and all sorts of digital, "How you doings?" basically, because they're really affordable and really cheap. We also reserved some money that we would have been spending on our Spring acquisition to look at digital ads around possibly a reopen or a member event in the Fall, because right now we're just unsure what the museum's activities might look like, but we know that we can get a digital communication out there pretty easily. We've reserved money for that, for whatever event we might do this year. But then, e-cards are free. And easy to design using your digital mail processor you use.
Dan Sullivan:
Kim, how about on your side?
Kim Kirkhart:
Yeah, for us I'd say not so much doubling down on anything in particular, but we are definitely sending more emails at this point than we normally do, because we're making sure they're going out definitely every week, and then there've been a couple other donor requests as well. Maybe not necessarily to our whole list. They're definitely more strategic and targeted, but that's where I saw our biggest focus right now would be. That and then also just making sure we're getting social media messages out to people, keeping them engaged.
Dan Sullivan:
Absolutely. And here's a great question from Anne McNaulty. How do you handle people that are asking for a refund of their membership, even after their membership has been extended through the closure? Kim, can you start us there?
Kim Kirkhart:
We've been fortunate that we haven't had too many of those. What we've tried to do is in speaking with people and explaining what their money is covering and, especially for those that have been members for awhile and how that compares to a regular admission, how it is helping keep the zoo running, it's helping with our conservation programs in the wild, and that they wouldn't necessarily be missing any time because of that extension.
If someone was really adamant because they just got it, then typically what we'd do is, it would be the refund, minus what they would have paid that day to get in, because they would have been paying regular admission rather than a membership. Most of the time, when people recognize that, then they're okay with that. And again, right now everything's still closed all around. Hopefully we won't have too much with that, but if it really came down to it, there's also even seeing if they wanted to transfer that to some other program that they felt they would get more benefit out of.
Dan Sullivan:
Absolutely. Alice, what are your thoughts on that?
Alice Stryker:
Yeah, same. Agree completely. We are very lucky. We have not had a single person ask for a refund at this point. What we've seen a lot of is people who had purchased tickets for the time that we are now closed, turning those into donations, which has been helpful and I agree with Kim. You can have so many creative ways to form a genuine connection with someone. A lot of times they're just calling you to vent about their own situation. Being honest and vulnerable with them, speaking to the impact that that couple hundred dollar donation is having, I think is going to really help someone think a little bit outside of themselves. And that's after all why they made the membership purchase to begin with.
Dan Sullivan:
Yeah, that's a great point. Another question that folks are wondering, what have you found to be the most high impact activity that you're doing right now to keep your members engaged? What sorts of resources are you putting behind that? Alice, you've spoken about being on the phone, sending emails. Where are you finding that, "this is the best thing that I can possibly be using my time for”?
Alice Stryker:
I think it really depends on the constituent, but it is that person to person connection. Again, we're very fortunate, because our membership base is relatively small, but even still 3,200 households does exceed Microsoft's limit of 300 emails per hour. I've really found that doing batch emails from my email Outlook to as many constituents as I can that have the same- most in common, gives that illusion of personal outreach without me having to literally send 300 emails. it's just tips and tricks like that. If someone were to respond, it would come to me directly. I would be able to answer it individually, but I don't have the time, because it's just me right now, to send 300 individual emails. Figuring out Outlook hacks. What capabilities does our database or our email client have that can make me seem as available as I really am to these members, without me sitting there for eight hours straight, just hitting send? It's important for me to be able to respond.
Dan Sullivan:
Yeah. That sounds to me like just being adaptable.
Alice Stryker:
Yeah.
Dan Sullivan:
Being able to read the room, understand where your time is best being allocated. That might even be changing day to day. Or our job, it always is changing day to day, but especially more now. This agile approach is really going a long way.
Alice Stryker:
Yeah, and to that end, I had planned to spend my morning doing exactly this, corresponding with members, but we had a program come onto our radar that just finally got approved. It's going to be a really big virtual offering on Friday night. And my boss and I really wanted to get an early communication out to our members, that meant I pivoted. Creating that evite was much more important than sending personal emails at that moment. I'll do that after this.
Dan Sullivan:
For sure, for sure.Kim, how about on your side?
Kim Kirkhart:
I agree. Anything that you can do to provide a personal connection or sense of personal connection definitely goes a long way. Responding to the notes that people send in, even if it's a question about something that is from a month ago or, something that's not necessarily related to the right here and now. We've found whether it's an email response or even if someone is on the phone and speaking with them, enables a conversation that also shows people that someone's there, because sometimes if they are writing in, even if they're complaining about something, when you respond they're sometimes shocked that someone is responding. But also, it helps invite the chance to really fully understand what's going on, because sometimes it's just a misunderstanding. It allows us to really build relationships with our members. That's what keeps them coming back and wanting to stay with us throughout this time.
Dan Sullivan:
We have a good question here. It's, "What kinds of incentives have you provided, if any, to boost renewals? Discounts, extra time, etc.?" Alice, can you kick us off with that?
Alice Stryker:
Sure. To start, extra time has been the biggest one. And right now we're focusing instead of renewals on donations, straight donations to the museum. Our department is uniquely structured in that membership is part of individual giving. It doesn't matter if it's a membership or a $5 donation, it all hits the same budget area. Ultimately all of this money supports all of our institutional efforts.Right now, we're about to launch, I'm sure a lot of you are, Giving Tuesday Now Campaign. Right now we're really focused on thinking of incentives for small grassroots donations. One easy one is we have a lot of stickers that have the ship's name on it. Our call sign was CV-11, so if you give $11, you can get a CV-11 bumper sticker. Thinking about, "What do we have in the office available, that we can send out easily when we get back?" Because again, we're stuck at home.
Dan Sullivan:
So true. Kim, what about on your side?
Kim Kirkhart:
Right now we've just stuck with our typical renewals incentives. First two notices generally have a discount. The second two generally it's two extra months. Because of us adjusting timeframes, we also stuck to our original renewal schedule, even though the dates are now slightly different. Created a bit of a puzzle for ourselves. But instead of our third notice getting those two extra months, we went ahead and kept them with the discount, keeping them in the cycle. That way we're not putting things out too far ahead of where we're at. But other than that, that's really all we've done. We haven't done anything extra. We've really just stuck with the thank you messages and philanthropic message that this is really helping us even more than ever now. That's what we've been doing for now.
Dan Sullivan:
Definitely. And this is a question from Shannon Lyons. Do you find that you're getting the same level of retention with membership letters versus digital content? I think that big question is physical mail versus digital. Are you getting that same response rate, same type of response from your membership base?
Kim Kirkhart:
Our renewals, we can separate and say what people are getting one more than the other, but really they work together. And every time we send an email, we'll get mailed notices, that people had been sitting on, and vice versa. We'll get a spike in online renewals when we do send an online notice out, but also, when the mail hits we'll get another surge of digital renewals. They both work together at reminding people, because some people like to read it in their hands, but still respond online. Some people see the note, it reminds them, but they prefer to send in a check. It's been very important to keep them both.
Alice Stryker:
Yeah, I would agree. That's been really the big challenge for us, is that we cannot send any mail. This has been a really amazing experiment for us, to come face to face with the demon that we've got to figure out a better digital strategy for membership renewals.
Dan Sullivan:
One question, I really want to hear your answers to this one. This one's in the chat from Elizabeth Feather and she asks, "are you worried about adding discounts devaluing the value of your memberships?" I'd love to hear your thoughts on that.
Alice Stryker:
This is something we debate a lot, even in a non-crisis. It's a known technique to get renewals early. Kim, you mentioned the discounts you guys give. We do the same at two months, one month out. We have discounts that we extend to our members. We even have discounts that we have in the box office in case a member wants to take advantage of a discount, but they're at the museum all the time.This is something that I really struggle with as a professional. I feel it does. I feel having constant discounts does undervalue your membership, but our stats say otherwise. People love a discount, and that gives a sense of urgency. It spurs action. They want to take advantage of that discount. It's a really tricky thing. And my whole professional career, I've never quite landed on what I believe.
Dan Sullivan:
No, it makes total sense. Kim, what do you think about that?
Kim Kirkhart:
Yeah, honestly, I agree with Alice. And I do. It is very hard for me to go ahead and say that we will give a discount. The discount that we have in our renewals, it's a $5 discount. That's not a huge amount that's there. It's more of a perceived thing in helping people. And we really rarely do anything less than that, and it is because, part of it is devaluing, but also training people to do discounts, depending on your institution or depending on the situation. Sometimes they are things that you would need to do, but for us, usually we try whether it's with the month or two, which pushes things down the road a little bit, or we might give a train ride or a giraffe feeding.
Although right now, because of not really knowing what capacity limits are going to be when we do open again, a little hesitant to add on those in-house things that get people to buy other things yet until we really know where we're going with that. That's why for now we stuck with what our normal was, and then as we're working on recovery planning and planning things out further in the future, then we'll start looking at other things that we might use for incentives.
Alice Stryker:
Yeah, guest passes for us, such a great point, Kim, that is a big driver of new acquisition, memberships for us, especially during big festivals. We have an annual kids week that takes place during winter break here in New York, and having a guest pass is great. But right now, we're just so curious about what capacity our institution is going to be. How many guests can we allow in? We do not want to go promising members that they can bring additional folks when they may not be able to.
Dan Sullivan:
Makes total sense. All right, here's another question from Danielle Gress. "Hello from Washington County Historic Park. What extended benefits are you offering?" We've talked a little bit about that. How do you determine what benefits are quantifiably acceptable?
Dan Sullivan:
This is a really important part of this, is how do you actually say, "Yeah, we can justify this?"
Kim Kirkhart:
In terms of benefits in general that we're giving and how we decide whether or not that's something that we can do? Am I understanding that correct, Dan?
Dan Sullivan:
Yeah. I think it mostly just revolves around, how can we justify this? I can't give you three years free. I can give you this discount and this is how I'm justifying it.
Kim Kirkhart:
Yeah, a lot of times it also depends on speaking with and listening to members, because sometimes what we might think is something that we can give is not something that the member wants at all. We might think a month would be good. They just want to be able to come to the store or get zoo credit. Typically what we do is we have a few things that we have that are standard, and depending on how the conversation goes, how upset the person may be, instead of what we would normally give, we have something else that is more amenable to what their needs are. That's usually how we decide, if that answers the question.
Dan Sullivan:
Yeah, I think so. Alice, you want to throw anything in there?
Alice Stryker:
Yeah. One thing that I would say is this is a great time for a member survey. People are sitting at home, thinking about life. Why not give them an avenue to tell you what they think? One thing that we do is a member survey periodically. I think the last one we did was three or four years ago. We were planning on doing one maybe next year, ahead of rejiggering our membership levels and reassessment of our membership program. In light of what's happening in New York City, there's a lot of culturals here, just like a lot of you have.
Folks are moving towards cultural maven moments, where maybe they're a member at one place for one year and then they cycle to another place. We had it slated for 2021, but the more I think about it, the more I think, "This might be a good moment to see what our members want. What are the perks that they want? What are the discounts or, programs that they'd like to see?" And then that becomes the rationale behind any decision making with discounts or added programs or added benefits.
Dan Sullivan:
I think that ducktails nicely into this other question by Elizabeth Feather. You've got great questions. How are you encouraging renewals or new membership purchases now, rather than having your members wait to renew when the organization reopens? I think that's a really important question that hits on that root of the value of my membership incentive, versus mission based support. I'd love to hear how both of you are encouraging that in your members.
Alice Stryker:
Right now for us, we do not have a membership message out there, as prominently. You can go to our website and see there's a way to join. But for us, the big push right now is philanthropic gifts. Having an absolutely just pure donation to the museum, that's going to do so much for us to help us keep delivering programs and safeguard our future. We've really, and again, for my department it's the same thing. It's one or the other. These two lines aren't competing against each other. It was an easy call for us to make, rather than try to have membership being philanthropic, let's just put a philanthropic message out there. That was a choice we made. That's not to say as we get closer to reopening, I think then that's when our membership messaging will spike a little bit more, because that's a great reason to join. You can be among the first to come back in, we hope.
Dan Sullivan:
Makes sense. Kim, what are your thoughts there?
Kim Kirkhart:
Yeah, right now we aren't necessarily focusing on new members. Where any of that might come into play is in the other marketing messages that are out, in terms of a great way to help support the zoo right now is either to make a donation or buy a membership or sponsor an animal. With our renewals, we are still keeping that out there and just feel that it's important for us to keep that going. We've just adjusted the messaging, the tone of it. Now at the beginning we're checking in and letting them know we really hope that their families are safe and healthy. We thank them for their support of the zoo, because it helps everything right now.
It's one of the only things that's coming in helping, and we really hope that they're still able to renew. And even though we are closed, we're getting messages out to them so that they can still have a piece of the zoo coming to them and reiterating the other things that their membership takes care of. And part of our membership money also goes to our local conservations, reminding them of those reasons of being a member as well and really trying not to focus on the visiting aspect. I think moving forward we're really going to try and do that a bit more. We do it all the time, but I think right now has been a big lesson in why we really want to make sure to stick with that.
Dan Sullivan:
Yeah, for sure. And again, as this drags on even longer, that mission is going to have to be very much front and center, because you can't really entice people with the, "Well, you come and you get three visits, four visits, and it pays for itself," because it's just not going to mean anything if people can't come through the door. That's really where that, "By supporting us, you're supporting this mission," and I think that's going to be really important.
All right, we have seven minutes left. We have so many good questions. We're not going to get to them all, but we're going to try to get to as many as we can. Let's go with a few here. This is from Marion Maddox. Have you been providing member exclusive programming through digital platforms or any type of platforms? If so, what activities or perks are you offering?
Alice Stryker:
Yes, we have been. I'm really excited to say that we're in the works of planning some member and donor only programs right now. The challenge that we've had is I think speed, right? We've only been closed for six weeks. My colleagues and I are always like, "Oh, We got to do something now," but the reality is, we're doing as much as we can. Right now, we're focused on what programs we do have. We want to give our members early access to sign up or to at least know about what's happening. We are going to be doing some exciting stuff for our members with museum executives, our president. We have a really amazing community of former crew members who I've already mentioned here, many of whom volunteer at the museum.
We're hoping to do a digital “Ask Me Anything” with a former crew member for our members and donors, where if they want to ask a question, no matter what it is, they can feel they can. And that type of stuff, the “Meet The Pilot”, the “Meet The Astronaut”, those are programs we do anyway for our members. We're thinking about how we can translate those experiences to the virtual world using tools like Zoom or Facebook Live, Twitch, YouTube Live, all these amazing platforms that are also free and low-cost are our best friends.
Dan Sullivan:
That's amazing. Kim, what about you?
Kim Kirkhart:
Right now we haven't, other than our email that's going out. It's a little heads up before it hits the general social media channels, but as we are planning on recovery, we are going to be looking at other things that we may be able to offer on a digital platform, and even considering perhaps it's time for us to look into having a digital membership that we can do. And then maybe someone who may not necessarily be coming to visit, but there may be other things that they're interested in that we can use.
Dan Sullivan:
Definitely. Here's another question. If you're planning a membership restructure or pricing change, would you recommend holding off? If not, what would be a good recommendation going forward?
Kim Kirkhart:
That's a good question. As we put together our plans for this year's. Part of my plan as we started to budget was to restructure our membership pricing and levels, and I was pretty much set on what I thought we were going to do. And then now that we're in the middle of this, I'm not totally rethinking it, but I feel this has given us a good opportunity to really see. There might be some other avenues that we could do or make sure that we're not leaving anybody out. I don't think it's bad to go ahead and stick with it, but you may take this time to reassess it. And you may find some other inspiration.
Dan Sullivan:
Makes sense. Alice?
Alice Stryker:
Yeah. We have thought about doing something in 2021. We're fortunate in that this was going to be our planning year. As the financial landscape changes here in New York and nationwide, I think we're going to be eager to see how, peers in the industry and especially here in New York adjust pricing or benefits or guest counts, any of these things. We're feeling very lucky that we hadn't planned it this year. Or rather, we planned to be planning. We're moving forward with the planning.
Dan Sullivan:
That's great. I've got one more question from my side here. When things do get back to normal and we start setting foot back in the museum or in our zoos or our cultural organizations, how are membership workflows going to look different?
Kim Kirkhart:
For us, one of the biggest things is, especially because we don't know what capacity is going to look like, but we do feel that there's still going to be recommendations for social distancing. We're right now investigating how to implement a member reservation system so that members can sign up at certain times in conjunction with timed ticketing perhaps, or at least monitoring that. We also are looking into digital applications so that we're not dealing with paper and pen onsite. Those are two things that we're looking at, as well as maybe closer to moving to digital cards.
Dan Sullivan:
How about you, Alice?
Alice Stryker:
I think a big question for us is going to be around staff, too. In addition to everything Kim's outlaid, we're in the same exact boat, no pun intended. For us, we just don't know how many guests will be allowed onto the ship or in the museum complex at any one time. So, we too are looking at member reservation tick- time ticketed, things like that. Also, in terms of the nuts and bolts of membership, how we're getting renewals out, how we're getting acquisitions out, that is staff dependent. And right now, because we have furloughed a large chunk of our staff, hopefully we'll be able to bring them back as soon as we can. And then that will allow membership procedures to just be able to pick up or get restarted. But all of this is still unknown. We're trying to be flexible and open to whatever may be coming.
Dan Sullivan:
For sure. Now I've got one more big question. What is one big takeaway that you'd want each person watching to be able to consider and bring back to their respective organizations? Alice, do you want to start?
Alice Stryker:
Sure. I think I've talked about this a lot. It's the power of personal connection. No matter the member level, no matter how long they've been a member of your organization, if you can, try to reach out to as many members as you possibly can personally, or have somebody of your in your staff do it, too. We want to say thank you and we want to form real connections with these folks, because we're so grateful for what they do. Find a way. You can do it and I believe in you.
Kim Kirkhart:
I agree with what Alice is saying as well. Because connection is really what it's all about. I also feel it's important to stay connected to your colleagues during this time, as well. Like, you hosting bees, whether you're doing it with your local colleagues or people across the country, because all of us are going through this at the same time. And even though we have slightly different organizations, I think we can learn a lot from each other, as well as keep everyone cheered up and moving.Working together, and bounce ideas off each other. I think connection is definitely key.
Dan Sullivan:
Absolutely. Well, thank you, Alice. Thank you, Kim. Something for the folks that are watching, this is actually part one of Membership Mondays. A little more of a nuts and bolts approach. Next week on Monday we're talking about events, communication, and messaging, in your membership departments during coronavirus.
A couple quick things before you go. A recording of this webinar will be available on the Cuseum website later today and you'll be able to take a look at that. Again, thank you, Kim. Thank you, Alice. You've been amazing. So many great insights. We'll have the transcript posted as well, so you will be able to go back through and reference.
We have two more awesome webinars that are coming up this week. Wednesday, Collaborating On Virtual Educational Programs During Coronavirus. That's Wednesday at 2:00 Eastern Time. And then to provide a little more light, a little more fun, we have Muse, Zoos, and Clues. That's Friday afternoon, 4:00 PM Eastern Time. You can bring a digital drink of water, soda, ginger ale, beer, whatever you want, wine. Kick your shoes off, come hang out with us, have a little fun and round out your week, with a bit of levity. Everybody, stay safe. Have another great, healthy week, and we'll see you on Monday. Or Friday, or Wednesday. Whenever you decide to tune in. All right. Thanks, everybody. Thanks, Alice. Thanks, Kim.
Looking for more information? Check out our coronavirus resources page.