To grow and thrive for years to come, your union must actively and continually engage with members and the communities you serve.
Here are some effective ways to connect and engage with your union members and your community.
As a labor union leader, you know that the environment for unions has its ups and downs. Sometimes the political climate favors labor unions, with pro-union administrations in power. Other times, politics makes union organization and bargaining more difficult. Growing your union and keeping it going strong, requires actively and continually engaging with members and the communities you serve.
Continually securing and retaining members is critically important to growing your union and keeping it vital, no matter what the future might bring. By using the right union management software, you can employ multiple approaches to attract and engage members.
Here are some ways to connect and engage with union members:
- Provide a modern online experience – Today’s members and prospective members expect to be able to easily interact with their union. That means allowing them to engage with your organization from their mobile devices. It also means providing them with a member-facing portal so that your members can do things like manage preferences, orders, and payments; participate in online discussions; and respond to polls and surveys.
- Connect with members – Use customer relationship management (CRM) functionality to collect, track, and manage your member data. Put that data to work by creating and managing targeted communications and campaigns that help you reach out to members with important updates and motivate them to advocate for the union.
- Measure and score member engagement – Score member engagement automatically based on key metrics that you define, and then use those insights to identify opportunities for greater engagement and to adapt to changing member needs.
Community engagement for unions
Growing and strengthening your union also requires elevating your union in the communities you serve. It’s important to show them how your organization improves the working and economic conditions for their citizens. In turn, the communities you serve can help strengthen your union by helping to elect pro-union politicians to office and support your union members as they negotiate contracts and/or participate in strikes.
Some ways to promote your union activities include:
- Highlighting your union’s work through your social media platforms
- Writing blog articles about your activities on your organization’s website
- Asking members to build more awareness for your union by volunteering for community service events
- Recruiting members to talk to their co-workers about the union’s activities and accomplishments
Tools for member and community engagement for unions
Having the right union management software in place makes it easier to engage and retain members. For example, Aptify by Community Brands offers powerful union management software built to help you connect with members and others who support your union. In addition to supporting many of the approaches in this article, it includes:
- CRM functionality to help you view, track, report and manage your member information in one location
- Membership management capabilities to help you manage annual recruitment efforts, support for campaigns, and fundraising
- Accounting functionalities to accommodate complex dues structures
- Messaging capabilities to help you send one-off and bulk email communications to your contacts
- Functionality to help you track the activities of local unions
- Membership engagement scoring capabilities to give you insights and uncover opportunities to grow and strengthen your members
Learn more
Discover how Aptify can help your union connect and engage with members and your community as well as organize, support, and unite your union’s members: Explore Aptify for labor unions.
