Gen X... or bust.

Well, you can definitely tell it's the week after Labor Day. I can't answer emails fast enough - I had to set my Outlook to download them only every 20 minutes so I would have five minutes of peace in between!

Today is also the day of our first Board meeting of the year. We moved into a new double office suite in our building over the summer (which Mike let me "feng-shui" to my heart's content - more on that later, if I get any results), so we have a sparkling new conference room which will fit all 21 of our Board members plus me, and we're just about all set for tonight. So I'm sitting here taking a breather and pondering a few things.

For the Board, I did some quick member demographics from our database. We have 300 members (with a few subcategories) and Friends.

Here's all members by age:



32% are over 70; 30% are between 60 and 70; 24% are between 50 and 60; 11% are 40-50, 3% are 30-40 years old. I believe this is fairly par-for-the-course for healthcare associations.

Here's the rub. At age 70, our members become Life members and no longer pay dues. (Of course, they still participate and provide non-dues income in other ways like attending events). Dues for Active membership are $1000, or ten patient hours if you bill $100 an hour, which is pretty average (or so we like to think).

Here's the breakdown for Active (full dues paying) members only:



So here, 49% of my active members will become Life members and stop paying dues in ten years or less. Aaaack.

Finally, here are our Friends:

This is a brand new category, and in 8 months we have had 33 new Friends, which is pretty good going, I think. We have about 5 applications per month and this held steady all last year. They pay $75 a year, essentially to get on our mailing list, plus they get the member rate for all events and programs. Here, you can see the age spread is a lot wider and so we're (so far) appealing to everyone pretty much equally in terms of attracting people who are interested in the field, are happy to attend the BBQ tasting party but not ready to invest in the whole hog (so to speak - just made that up and it sounded good in my head!)

Clearly, I have a problem. I obviously need to work out how to attract more younger people; then get them to become fully invested, active members. I could also figure out how to add so many Friends at the lower dues level that they make up the dues shortfall with sheer numbers. All my social media experiments are really to do with the second goal, more than the first - I feel like if I can get people hooked into the conversation, e.g. through a Facebook group and a variety of other ideas, then the rest will come.

But getting Gen-Xers to become fully invested - that's a whole 'nother issue. It IS Gen-Xers I'm talking about specifically - Millenials are interesting to me too as potential members but really secondary to us, because our members are healthcare professionals usually in private practice, namely people who have all finished their schooling. I am really fascinated by Gen-X - not just because I am one, either. There's something about my generation that makes us complex and interesting to me, some reason why we like to self-identify as such (see my bio on the right, and I'm not the only one! Maybe people from other generations do this too, I just haven't noticed, and I'm sure that if they do, it's not with as much fervor as us. Anyway! I'm going off on a tangent.

So how do I attract Gen-Xers like me? Well, as far as I can tell, we're all either currently a) making babies (ooh), b) having babies (oof), or c) figuring out how to pay for the babies we made (ugh). And those of us who are not doing a, b, or c, are working hard and playing harder. The common thread to all these grunt-inducing activities? None of us have any spare time. Ever. We're all about the crazy multi-tasking. So how do I attract others like me, with no spare time for anything?

I make it easy for them. And fast.

I make it easy for them to find us (website, SEO); easy to apply (online), easy to register (online), easy to participate (online, email, listserves, forums, e-learning?). Easy to make money (referrals, career center?)! Just like the Staples Easy button (I do like those ads). Once I get them started, I have to trust that our "product" (training, community, networking, scientific offerings), will be valuable enough for them to stay.

...Board meeting in 2 hours - wish me luck.