CFMA Chapter “Best Practices” Model

Communicating with Your Members

Small Chapters (Up to 40 Members)

How Often Do You Communicate with Your Members?

  • At least once a month
  • When announcing our bi-monthly general meetings, outings, or educational events
  • Monthly
  • Monthly announcements for upcoming meetings. Periodically for information regarding state legislative issues.
  • Three times to members and past guests/members before each monthly membership meeting
  • Meeting invitations sent once a month
  • Once a month and also via chapter newsletter

What Types of Communication Are Used?

  • E-Mail (7)
  • Evite and Web links
  • Occasionally use hard copy mail

Are Different Communication Types Used for Different Communications?

  • No (6)
  • Yes. Evite for meeting announcements; e-mail and Web links for other communication

Does Your Chapter use Teleconferencing or Video Conferencing?

  • No (7)

Do You Survey Your Members? If So, How Often and Why?

  • We survey our members at each monthly meeting to find out what their current challenges are and try to focus our future meetings on these topics. This way we stay current and give back to our members what they need.
  • Occasionally solicit responses for upcoming topics
  • Once a year to determine topics for future roundtable discussions. More like a “straw poll.”
  • Periodically for future meeting topics of interest
  • Surveyed our members last Fall and the BOD found the results very informative
  • Did our first member survey about six months ago

Other Information

  • Moving toward using CFMA Chapter Web site more.

CFMA Chapter “Best Practices” Model

Communicating with Your Members

Medium Chapters (41-55 Members)

How Often Do You Communicate with Your Members?

  • At least twice monthly to remind them of current month’s activity, and then as needed for any announcement
  • We communicate via newsletter four times per year. We send out meeting notices four our quarterly meetings. We send notices via mail or e-mail regarding training opportunities (Heartland Conference, local seminars, etc.) as needed.

What Types of Communication Are Used?

  • E-Mail (2)
  • Occasionally use hard copy mail
  • E-mail with link to chapter Web site. Also use Face Book, which isn’t catching on.

Are Different Communication Types Used for Different Communications?

  • No. All e-mails come from the chapter secretary so members know it is CFMA business.
  • Yes. We send newsletters via e-mail and post on CFMA web site. Meeting notices are sent via e-mail and included in newsletters.

Does Your Chapter use Teleconferencing or Video Conferencing?

  • No. We are geographically centralized.
  • Yes. We use teleconferencing for short Board meetings and team meetings where it is impractical for individuals to get together in person.

Do You Survey Your Members? If So, How Often and Why?

  • No.
  • We periodically ask for input on ideas or issues at our chapter meetings, but we have never done a “formal” survey.

CFMA Chapter “Best Practices” Model

Communicating with Your Members

Medium/Large Chapters (56-90 Members)

How Often Do You Communicate with Your Members?

  • Monthly (2)
  • Monthly with Board members; Bi-monthly with chapter members
  • Generally, we send e-mails once a month. We send out two e-mails announcing an upcoming meeting. One goes out 20 days ahead of time and the other about a week ahead of time. Otherwise, we send e-mails as needed like for announcing social events or other chapter news.
  • We communicate with members at least monthly and usually twice a month. The exception would be June-August as we go quiet during these months and we have found little gets accomplished with kids, vacations, etc.
  • Mainly, twice a month—Newsletter and General Meeting. We will also send out information through e-mail blasts.

What Types of Communication Are Used?

  • The vast majority of communications are done via e-mail for our monthly meetings. We have also utilized Web links in the past for larger seminars.
  • Electronic
  • Direct through meetings and Webcasting at events; electronic on meeting notifications
  • E-mails with a link to our Web site and generic e-mailbox
  • For all events, we mail hard copies of flyers at least 30 days prior to the event and then will send out e-mail blasts in each of the two weeks leading up to the event.. If turnout is light, we will have board members call membership and encourage they bring a guest for free.
  • Electronic, hard copy, Web links, phone calls, personal interaction, and press releases to local media outlets

Are Different Communication Types Used for Different Communications?

  • Yes (2)
  • No (3)
  • Mostly e-mail, but there is a very large construction association in Cincinnati called Allied Construction Industries and they are very supportive in posting our flyers on their Web site.
  • Yes. The Web site and newsletter to keep membership informed of chapter activities. Board members will call members that we identified as not consistentlyparticipating and let them know what is happening and encourage participation.

Does Your Chapter use Teleconferencing or Video Conferencing?

  • No (3)
  • We use teleconferencing for committee and Board meetings. We Webcast our chapter meetings to satellite locations.
  • Not yet, but as a Board we can see that coming.
  • Currently, we have not. Last year we discussed it quite a bit. We are still in the exploration phase. We are also looking at how to include construction companies outside of the Albuquerque area.

Do You Survey Your Members? If So, How Often and Why?

  • No.
  • Yes, twice a year (Salary Survey, meeting topics, and interest in serving on the Board or committees)
  • Yes. Annual Zoomerang survey regarding meeting topics.
  • We did several years ago asking about meeting time/location/frequency, but did not get meaningful answers. However, with the increased use of e-mails and our Web site, we are considering handing out or e-mailing a meeting “evaluation” form after each regular meeting. We don’t want to barrage our recipients with too many e-mails, so these would go out just six times a year. .
  • We have not surveyed our members in a long time but that is a good idea.
  • Yes, in multiple ways. Board members personally asking what members would like to gain from their membership. We have a “suggestion box” that is brought up in every newsletter. At our general meetings, we remind the membership to please give suggestions, concerns, and compliments. We have an annual salary survey. The good news is our core membership is not shy.

Other Information You Would Like to Include

  • We consistently remind everyone the value and benefits of their membership. “You get out of it what you put into it.”

CFMA Chapter “Best Practices” Model

Communicating with Your Members

Large Chapters (91-120 Members)

How Often Do You Communicate with Your Members?

  • Constantly. We have a Web site plus have issued newsletters, but the Web site is the most frequent.
  • Monthly meeting announcements are sent about every two weeks, so on an average we communicate with our members 2-3 times per month.

What Types of Communication Are Used?

  • Electronic
  • E-mail that has Web links embedded and flyers attached

Are Different Communication Types Used for Different Communications?

  • No (2)

Does Your Chapter use Teleconferencing or Video Conferencing?

  • No
  • No, but we are discussing if we should begin this practice.

Do You Survey Your Members? If So, How Often and Why?

  • We survey our members about once a year regarding meeting topics and social events.
  • Approximately 2-3 times per year to see what topics would be of interest, if location is adequate, or if there are any other needs.

CFMA Chapter “Best Practices” Model

Communicating with Your Members

Extra Large Chapters (121+ Members)

How Often Do You Communicate with Your Members?

  • Usually once a week, not standardized as to when. Usually sending meeting/event announcements. Sometimes members will write White Papers and we’ll email those out.
  • Weekly
  • Every month, we w-mail and snail-mail program/educational flyers to our members
  • Monthly at meetings face-to-face and often throughout the month via “LinkedIn.”
  • Several times per month. The most frequent communication is for sending our meeting reminders. We send the first reminder two weeks before the meeting date, and again one week before the date, and then a third time a couple of days before the meeting. That email includes information about the current month’s meeting as well as a short list of future meeting dates so that people can go ahead and put them on their calendars.

We also send out a quarterly newsletter in PDF format via email to all of our members and prospective members.

In addition, we pass along any relevant information about meetings, seminars, classes offered by other organizations with which we have a relationship (ABC, AGC, ASA, etc).

The most important communication we have is the face to face time that our Board members spend with our membership at the monthly meetings. The President and other officers and Board members make it point to try and welcome each person to the meeting. We believe that a simple handshake and a “glad to see you” goes a long way to make our members (especially new people and prospective members) feel welcomed and inspire them to come back.

  • Weekly
  • At monthly meetings, we send out e-mails regarding meetings and if they are on a committee or have questions—throughout each month.

What Types of Communication Are Used?

  • We pretty much use e-mail blasts from our chapter Web site except with a few events where we send actual postcards (golf outing) or invitations (awards event). Within the e-mails we often have the links to register for an event or a link for a document.
  • Electronic (2)
  • Electronic and hard copy. Also, for our holiday social, we used E-vite and e-mail.
  • E-mail, Web links, and telephone calls.
  • Primarily e-mail. We also have printed copies of our latest newsletter available at monthly meetings as well as literature about the national conference, joining CFMA, etc.
  • Electronic, Web links, telephone

Are Different Communication Types Used for Different Communications?

  • Pretty much using e-mail for everything when it comes to the general membership. There is more of a variety of communications used when it comes to individual committees and officers.
  • Rarely, using only electronic
  • Yes.
  • Yes. We announced meetings via e-mail and we make telephone calls each month prior to our monthly meeting to drum up participation and we post on our LinkedIn group various interesting things such as our Hawaii contest results, special services provided to CFMA members only (insurance and ENR Magazine, etc.)
  • In the case of our annual Board of Directors election, we use email to reach the majority of our membership, but we also follow up with fax and/or US mail if they cannot be reached via email. We want to give everyone in the Chapter the opportunity to vote.

As mentioned above, printed copies of newsletters and CFMA literature at monthly meetings also works well.

We also try to follow up with new members and prospective members with a phone call from the President or Membership Committee chair welcoming them to the Chapter and/or making sure their experience was a good one and inviting them back.

  • No
  • Not really, except our committees may have a teleconference or two

Does Your Chapter use Teleconferencing or Video Conferencing?

  • We conference call a lot for committees and committee chairs, but never video conference. We’d rather have the Board meet in person.
  • Use teleconferencing for committee calls and issues that need to be resolved before the next Board meeting.
  • Occasionally, committees will meet via conference all.
  • Our chapter has developed a “Web cast” of our metro meetings to be viewed by members at remote locations, such as the mountains.
  • The individual committees use teleconferencing if they don’t meet face to face.
  • Teleconferencing if the Board cannot meet at our usual time
  • Committees use teleconferencing and some of our Board calls into these meetings

Do You Survey Your Members? If So, How Often and Why?

  • We survey them periodically. Most recently for the officer/Board ballot and from the Education Committee on topics of interest. We sometimes survey when the Program Committee is getting ready to plan the year to find topics of interest from the membership. We have in the past surveyed at the close of each meeting as an evaluation, though we haven’t been doing that more recently. Nothing consistent, though, when it comes to surveying.
  • We survey members after each event and a few times during the year on different topics.
  • We survey members as the need arises, such as participation in the annual golf tournament and educational and program topics.
  • Annually
  • Yes. Occasionally we ask about possible meeting topics that they would like to see. We also ask for an informal show of hands on attendance at the national conference (Who is going? Who went and how was it?). Sometimes we also have an informal show of hands at our monthly meetings where we identify who in the crowd are general contractors, subcontractors, CPAs, attorneys, etc so that networking might be easier for new members and guests.
  • Yes, for meeting topics and educational seminars.
  • We survey as part of our monthly meetings and occasionally we’ll send out an e-mail requesting ideas, information, thoughts on certain things

Other Information You Wish To Include

  • We would like to streamline more of our communications to include a newsletter of some type-giving variety of info about chapter happenings in one e-mail. I think also setting more of a protocol as to when, how, and from whom e-mail communications are sent is something on our agenda.
  • We communicate via newsletter quarterly, in addition to e-mailing of event flyers.
  • After the renewal period, we call non-renewing members to learn why they didn’t renew and try to get them to renew.
  • Good communication with the membership is vital for the success of any chapter. People like to be kept informed about the goings-on in the organization and by showcasing the various events and “talking-up” CFMA you provide them with a constant reminder that their membership dollar has been well spent. The value of their membership is worth so much more than the cost of annual dues, and good communication is a great way to remind them of that.
  • We also do a follow up of a meeting if additional material is available or presentation can be sent electronically. We send our scholarship information via e-mail.
  • Our members do NOT want to be inundated with communication from us. We try to be selective in the e-mails/communication we send. We try to have enough Board members at each meeting to talk to members before and after each meeting.