Open Forum

We've kicked that one around too, and decided that we should refer to the number as "membership households". It's a smaller number, but since it's impossible to know how many people are in a family, or what makes up a family unit then all we really know is that a person living at X address paid for Y level of membership. And it's easier to track over time since there are no further calculations that could change over time or with change in staff. You can do the math to demonstrate community reach, for example, with the descriptor that we have X member households, that represent about XXXX people.

Hope that helps! 

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Wendy Lull
President
Seacoast Science Center
Rye NH

Number of Memberships.

Martin

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Martin S. Fisher
Executive Director
Science Central
Fort Wayne, IN

Hi Tom,

Generally, you report the number of memberships sold, not the number of people each membership allows.

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Shannon Stout
Membership Manager
Museum of the American Revolution
Philadelphia PA

We report memberships and do not extrapolate X# of actual members per membership.  Our membership levels (e.g. individual = 1, family = 4 people) may self-define a number but in fact, other than individual, who the heck knows how many members of a family, for instance, use a membership.  Given the fluid nature of families today, we do not define that level with any familial precision.

Steve

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Steven Miller
Executive Director
Boscobel House and Gardens
Garrison NY

We used to use a similar formula mentioned in the OP, but switched to number of memberships.  Also, we have instituted monthly renewals with one reminder before moving to "Inactive List."  As you can imagine, our numbers can change radically from month to month.

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David Beard
Director
Museum of the Gulf Coast
Port Arthur TX

Original Message:
Sent: 08-24-2016 09:23 AM
From: Steven Miller
Subject: Membership/Member counts

We report memberships and do not extrapolate X# of actual members per membership.  Our membership levels (e.g. individual = 1, family = 4 people) may self-define a number but in fact, other than individual, who the heck knows how many members of a family, for instance, use a membership.  Given the fluid nature of families today, we do not define that level with any familial precision.

Steve

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Steven Miller
Executive Director
Boscobel House and Gardens
Garrison NY

The Museum and the other non-profits I have worked for over the years count Member Households or Memberships sold, not bodies.

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Sarah Rogers
Executive Deputy Director
Columbus Museum of Art
Columbus OH

We report based on number of households. If we need to report number of people, we multiply our number of households by four as an estimate.

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Kimberly Roberson
Director of Membership
Santa Barbara Zoo
Santa Barbara CA

Thank you all. We have been reporting memberships but wanted to check just to make sure.

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Thomas Gull
Director of Development
Frank Lloyd Wright Trust
Chicago IL

We also report membership households, but additionally, we've decided to report, at least internally, the number of paying memberships versus all (as we give away complimentary ones for our wedding couples, auction donation requests, and some other instances). When we do our next annual report, we may report out all memberships, but I've found it easier for my internal benchmarking to focus on paying folks. Hope that helps and doesn't open a new can of worms.

Best,

Lauren

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Lauren Silberman
Deputy Director
Historic London Town and Gardens
Edgewater MD

Original Message:
Sent: 08-25-2016 10:11 AM
From: Thomas Gull
Subject: Membership/Member counts

Thank you all. We have been reporting memberships but wanted to check just to make sure.

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Thomas Gull
Director of Development
Frank Lloyd Wright Trust
Chicago IL