How to Simplify Your Association’s Membership Reporting

Whether you're a one-staff wonder shop or a large multi-department organization, reporting is key to making smart decisions. Access to accurate and timely reports increases your productivity, ensures your organization is financially healthy, and enables better insight into your strategic planning. In some cases, you're required to have accurate reports for compliance to regulatory requirements.

5 Steps to Simplify Your Association's Membership Reporting

Take a hard look at your current reporting process

The first step is to assess your current reporting process with honesty. Identifying pain points, shortcomings, and obstacles is a great way to start. Seek out feedback from the main users of your association membership management software such as:

• Staff
• Board Members
• Volunteers

Here are some questions to ask:

• Are you able to easily find real-time data? If not, share the process you use to pull data.
• How difficult is it to create dashboards or visual reports?
• What parts of our association's membership reporting feel most tedious to you?
• What obstacles do you face when creating membership reports?
• What reports do you wish we had and why?
• Are there any reports that aren't relevant to our association's goals?
• Is there any data we're not currently using, but could benefit from if used effectively?

Evaluate your current tools and systems

The next step is to evaluate your current software and tools currently you use for reporting. Take a candid look at how these tools and systems are working together (or not working) for your organization. Evaluate your full tech stack, including your:

• Association membership management system
• Marketing software
• Website tracking
• Survey services
• Payment processing
• Learning Management System (LMS)

Example: Your email marketing software and membership management software don't talk to each other. This means you're missing out on valuable member engagement data!

Example: Your Learning Management System (LMS) and your membership management software don't integrate. You may end up promoting a course to someone who already completed it.

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Streamline data collection

Streamline as much data collection as you can and automate where possible. Much of the data needed for reports can (hopefully) come from your membership management system.

Tip: Centralize your data so you can have a Single Source of Truth (SSoT). This is the key to trusting your member data.

Go from data silos to a Single Source of Truth (SSoT)

Your membership management system should be able to integrate with other systems such as:

• Email marketing
• Data management
• Website content management
• And more

Integrating your systems will help standardize the data formats for easier analysis and exports. Note that this may incur additional costs if the automation or import tools are not part of your membership system.

If your association software has limited integrations, you may have to manually input information. Keying in data from external sources can be tedious and error-prone. If this is necessary, adhere to a consistent data entry guideline. Having a template for reference would be the ideal solution.

I highly recommend verifying data accuracy by having an immediate self-audit process. Even a bit of spot-checking will help identify discrepancies that would cause reports to be inaccurate. Check to see if these can be created in the same place as your reports. Then schedule to do this shortly after new data is added or imported.

Implement efficient reporting tools

Choosing the right software is key to the success of your reporting. Ideally, your reporting is software your association managment software. But if not, ensure a tight integration between the two.

If you've already chosen or committed to a specific software, take the time to learn how to implement reporting. Ensure you have reporting features tailored to your organization’s specific needs. Your staff will ablso benefit from a user-friendly interface and extendable functionality.

What is also important to consider is the ecosystem that your chosen software is in and what type of support you can get.

• Is training and support readily available for your software? If so, make the most of it to ensure you are successful in using the software to its full capabilities.
• Does the software developer offer special classes or certifications? Consider taking these to engage with the software on a deeper level of understanding.
• Are there options for third-party support and consulting? The wide breadth of resources and support you can get can help ensure you have a successful implementation.

Tip: Consider adding visualizations to your data such as number tiles, charts, and progress bars. This will help you quickly spot trends (both good and bad).

Tip: If you can display data on a dashboard, the initial investment resources will be returned year after year. Extra credit if you can automate sending the report to your staff and board members.

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Regularly review and update your processes

Once you have your reporting system in place, don’t forget to regularly review to make helpful adjustments. Implement a continuous feedback cycle to incorporate feedback from your users. The idea is to turn the the continuous feedback into continuous improvement.

Here are some changes you may make:

• Switching from spreadsheet reporting to dynamic dashboards. Your staff will thank you.
• Adding new metrics to your reporting that will help you identify and fulfill member needs.
• Removing reports that aren't helpful to your overall goals. If you don't need to review a regional breakdown of your members, discontinue this report. You don't want information overload!
• Finding ways to speed up reporting. That could involve automation. Check out our article, Streamline and Automate Your Membership Management, to see the six steps to implementing automation.
• Integrating your membership management system and LMS so you can see what your most popular course is. Then you can make other similar courses, since you know this type of content resonates with members!
• Automating the sending of reports to stakeholders.

It is also important to keep up with changes in your chosen reporting tools. If your software has regular updates, make sure to check if there are any adjustments you need to make to your reports. In some cases, a new feature can play an instrumental role in how you collect or display data.