Membership Survey – Importance and Value of NFPA Programs

Our first post about the 2014 membership survey focused on overall satisfaction with membership and likelihood to renew for the current membership year, as well as some responses on why members belong to NFPA generally. In this post, we start to drill down a little further, with some program level detail.

The survey listed 25 NFPA programs/activity areas and asked members to rate them on two five-point scales. One scale was for importance of the program to their company, and the other scale was satisfaction with the program. We’re going to focus on the top ten in terms of importance, shown in the table below.

Well, so what? There are probably no real surprises in the table. The items are generally long-standing and high profile NFPA services, or tools used to access information and services. The table shows high levels of satisfaction in services that have high levels of importance to NFPA members.

Let’s look at two items we might flag for attention: Standards Development and the Technology Roadmap. In both cases, the importance rating is above average, but the satisfaction rating is a little below average compared to all other services. Here’s what is already in the works for these two:

• Standards Development: we’re spending the coming months developing a new online collaboration space for our committees…one that we feel will help address inefficiencies in our current standards development process and keep volunteers more fully engaged. Standards development is now in the capable hands of Denise Rockhill, and anyone interested in participating can contact her at drockhill@nfpa.com or (414) 778-3354.
• Technology Roadmap: we are forming a committee to guide ongoing roadmapping activities, which are intended to guide pre-competitive research initiatives for the industry, not to serve as a product roadmap for individual companies. Anyone with questions or interest is encouraged to contact Eric Lanke at elanke@nfpa.com or (414) 778-3351.

We’re aware all this begs the question…what about the services that fell below average in importance or satisfaction?

In general, those other areas require more consideration than can be conveyed in a chart, for example;

• Some get discontinued (Fluid Power Career Fairs) so we can focus resources where we can be more effective and/or provide value for more members;
• Others are focused on a specific subset of members resulting in lesser importance for the broader group surveyed, yet other indicators show high satisfaction for those involved and strong alignment in support of strategic goals (Future Leaders Network, Committee Participation in general, Fluid Power Challenge, Regional Meetings, Fluid Power Pavilions at U.S. Trade Shows);
• Programs that are newer can fall down the list, likely for some lack of awareness or because the program hasn’t had time to mature and meet expectations (Fluid Power Laboratory Grants);
• And few are programs that once were maybe more prominent and have received more attention in past years, remain important to some and can be serviced without major resource dedication (Member Directory, Product Locator, Product & Price Information Format).

Any thoughts or questions…send to Pete Alles at palles@nfpa.com or call (414) 778-3350.

Next Post – Technology Shifts and Other Big Issues