Your club and its members are valuable to you, and you want to ensure they receive the best possible experience. At Member Jungle, we have been assisting clubs in becoming their best selves for years. Our experience has taught us what distinguishes remarkable clubs from average ones. Here are our top nine recommendations for enhancing your club and adding value to your members.

Adding value to your club members can increase their satisfaction and loyalty and member retention. Additionally, this can attract new members to join your club. So, let's dive into the following top tips.

How to add value to your club

1. Offer Discounts for Members
2. Build Relationships Between Members
3. Offer Member-Only Content
4. Keep Your Members Up To Date 
5. Offer Discounted or Early Access to Event Tickets
6. Member Only Webinars or Training
7. Loan or Hire Equipment
8. Branded Club Merchandise
9. Provide Lobbying Power or Escalate Complaints Higher 

Offer Member Discounts at Suppliers or Local Retailers

One of the things that we often hear about is how you can attract and retain members by negotiating with local or industry suppliers for them to offer your members discounts. Members can show the retailer their club membership card to receive a discount. If you don't have a printed member card, digital membership cards may be visible on an Apple Wallet or shown on a mobile app. You can show your suppliers/sponsors in a restricted member-only part of your website with details on their members-only discounts.  

Facilitate Conversations and Connect Your Members

Another way to engage your members is to open up the conversation between members. This can be done through chat rooms, open community discussions and online forums. Members are constantly looking to be able to engage and interact and also ask questions from other members. This works particularly well if you have experts or industry groups with particular interest groups. Depending on your organisation, opening up the conversations for your members can add massive value to your membership.

Offer Member-Only Content

A great way to offer added member value is by providing access to member-only resources in a restricted area; this content might be available on the website as well as on a digital mobile app. This will work to entice new members to join and also keep your members engaged by getting them to sign up to access content that they would not otherwise be able to see.

This is relevant in many membership settings, which provide up-to-date industry information or legal and legislative advice. However, some other examples include access to old resources and archived content or old historical news articles and photos.

Keep your Members Up to Date

Keeping your members constantly updated with the latest information can be a key value add to your membership and sometimes the main role of your organisation. This may be as simple as sharing the latest information on social media, emailing the latest updates or deciphering and communicating legislative change.

During COVID, in particular, many membership organisations became the main way members stayed up to date with changing rules and regulations related to them. In the past few years, the rules have been changing so fast that having someone to stay on top of changes, decipher them and then translate in simple terms was valuable to members. It also puts you as leaders in your industry and ensures that membership with your organisation is crucial to their members. 

Offer Discounted or Early Access to Event Tickets

Another great incentive to help offer your members value is offering a discount to your regular and annual events. The financial incentive appeals to event attendees to join your club, so they can also receive the discounts, plus offsets some of the membership costs for your member base. If your events typically book out, offering exclusive access to your members to book or register for your event earlier than the public may be a better option.

Depending on your organisation, we have found that sometimes "Kids Eat Free" for members is a great way to increase value for family-orientated clubs and make parents more likely to come along to events.

Member Only Webinars or Training

Running a member-only information webinar or training session could be a great way to add value to your membership. You may be able to invite guest speakers who can provide added knowledge and benefit or provide helpful industry information. These sessions can be restricted to member-only, or you could consider letting members invite one guest. This could work to entice new members to join your organisation who can see value in the sessions.

Loan or Hire Equipment

For lots of membership organisations, they have access to different types of equipment that would be useful to their members. Some examples of membership organisations that hire out their equipment to "members only" or at discounted prices for members include;

• Astronomical Societies - stargazing equipment and telescopes
• Musical Societies - musical instruments 
• Electric Car Clubs - electric charger adaptors
• Surfing & Board or Kayak Clubs - boards, kayaks and life jackets and safety equipment

If your club relies on your members to have access to specific equipment or equipment is needed to trial your club, there may be lots of added value you can provide by having this equipment available to loan or hire. It is a way to either add value to your current members or allow new people to experience what the club has to offer (with loan equipment) to encourage them to join,

Branded Club Merchandise

Often just having branded merchandise that members can wear and show their involvement in your membership organisation adds value. This can be as simple as a drink cooler, hat, shirt or jacket. Other options include a patch or keep cup. Including some of these items free in your first year's membership fee and making them member-exclusive might also be something to consider.

Provide Lobbying Power or Escalate Complaints Higher 

Power can often be in numbers when it comes to lobbying or escalating complaints. Another way your organisation may provide value to your members is to lobby the relevant bodies on behalf of your membership base.

Also, if you are an industry body or have a collective of members with an issue, you can all work together to escalate complaints on behalf of your members. 

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With these top tips, you can add even more value to your club. 

Remember that you need to do what works for you and your organisation; if you have any other great stories of what has worked for you, we would love to hear from you. If you want to know more about improving your club, have a read of 4 Ways You Can Improve Your Chamber of Commerce or How To Run Your Classic Car Club Better.