Membership Survey Provides Insight for Planning

Earlier this year, with help from an outside research firm, we surveyed member contacts about satisfaction with NFPA membership and programs, agreement with NFPA’s strategic direction, and impressions of the major challenges now and expected in future years.

While we struggled to get our desired response rate for the survey, we got enough from which to draw some conclusions.

First, we have a high level of agreement with NFPA’s strategic goals, to strengthen the fluid power industry by:

• increasing the use of fluid power intelligence (90% rate this as an important or very important goal);
• promoting innovative uses of fluid power (89% important or very important);
• growing the fluid power workforce (82%); and
• connecting the fluid power industry (80%).

We continue to see a high level of satisfaction among members overall, with strong numbers for likelihood to renew.  At the same time, these numbers are down a tick or two from two and four years ago, telling us we can’t be complacent.  The charts below indicate the percent of respondents indicating they are satisfied or very satisfied overall, and the percent indicating they are likely or very likely to renew membership.

Note that likelihood to renew percentages tend to rise and fall in correspondence with economic and market conditions, and the current difficult position for some key markets appears to be having some effect.

Looking further, satisfaction at the program level remained stable at high levels, particularly for programs of high importance such as NFPA market information and conferences.  For market information, conferences, and networking opportunities…programs identified by members as most highly important…the average satisfaction score remained above 4 on a 5 point scale.

Asked what we could do to make membership more beneficial, 70% were happy with current value and/or did not have suggestions.  The remaining comments were widely scattered, with the largest group (4%) making suggestions related to stats programs.  Good thing we’ve just rolled out the new Stats Toolkit Pro to help members get more value from those programs.

Key programs look strong, and we’re making some improvements.  We’re going to watch closely over the next year for opportunities to enhance value and satisfaction for members. Feedback and suggestions from members are always welcome.

Header Image via Flickr.