A couple of reasons for thinking that having full-time staff had this delayed effect are that we were trying out a variety of strategies, and that our ‘ask’ is quite large, and hence it can take a while from people first hearing about us to actually wanting to join.
For the first few months of having staff, we were working on a redo of the website, particularly branding and introducing a blog. When we launched that, web-traffic doubled. We then focused on a media push, which led to us being on NPR, BBC and mass media in January. That led to quite a bump in web-traffic, but not an increase in membership. At that point we pivoted to being more focused on the pathway to membership – to try to increase the number of people getting from initially hearing about us and reading the website to actually joining. This involved a number of things – for example improving the pathway through the website and trying out different ways of reaching out to people. It seems likely that the increasing rate in 2013 was (at least to some degree) a confluence of our focus on increased first contacts in late 2012, and on conversions in early 2013.
As someone who was heavily involved in GWWC over that period, I think the explanation that we got much better at converting staff hours into new members is a large part of the explanation for membership growth suddenly rising much faster from mid-2013.
The package of things we were working on before that wasn’t so effective at getting people all the way to joining.
The other contributing factor is probably a growing general interest in effective altruism (for which GWWC can claim some but certainly not all of the credit).
Hey jayd, basically we try to have people working on broad outreach (events, social media, media coverage, chapters) and then someone else working on taking the emails and names we get, and contacting people individually to ask them to become members. This often involves lengthy email exchanges to discuss their reservations. We have found persistence works well, and doesn’t bother almost anyone, as people are more often procrastinating than refusing.
Basically, before mid-2013 we were not systematically doing this personal follow-up, so it is no surprise we weren’t getting many people to sign on the dotted line.
A couple of reasons for thinking that having full-time staff had this delayed effect are that we were trying out a variety of strategies, and that our ‘ask’ is quite large, and hence it can take a while from people first hearing about us to actually wanting to join. For the first few months of having staff, we were working on a redo of the website, particularly branding and introducing a blog. When we launched that, web-traffic doubled. We then focused on a media push, which led to us being on NPR, BBC and mass media in January. That led to quite a bump in web-traffic, but not an increase in membership. At that point we pivoted to being more focused on the pathway to membership – to try to increase the number of people getting from initially hearing about us and reading the website to actually joining. This involved a number of things – for example improving the pathway through the website and trying out different ways of reaching out to people. It seems likely that the increasing rate in 2013 was (at least to some degree) a confluence of our focus on increased first contacts in late 2012, and on conversions in early 2013.
As someone who was heavily involved in GWWC over that period, I think the explanation that we got much better at converting staff hours into new members is a large part of the explanation for membership growth suddenly rising much faster from mid-2013.
The package of things we were working on before that wasn’t so effective at getting people all the way to joining.
The other contributing factor is probably a growing general interest in effective altruism (for which GWWC can claim some but certainly not all of the credit).
Thanks that’s interesting. What’s the current package of ways of getting people to join and how long does it normally take?
Hey jayd, basically we try to have people working on broad outreach (events, social media, media coverage, chapters) and then someone else working on taking the emails and names we get, and contacting people individually to ask them to become members. This often involves lengthy email exchanges to discuss their reservations. We have found persistence works well, and doesn’t bother almost anyone, as people are more often procrastinating than refusing.
Basically, before mid-2013 we were not systematically doing this personal follow-up, so it is no surprise we weren’t getting many people to sign on the dotted line.