Building and Cultivating Member Relationship

The social web is changing the way we live and work. Social networks are making dramatic changes to not only how people communicate and engage with each other, but also with companies, foundations, and other organizations. Facebook and Google are slowly replacing the corporate website. Twitter, SMS, and blogs are supplanting email as the go-to marketing channels.

Social networks, just like synagogues, are all about relationships. Your synagogue is engaging with members every day at services, Sunday school, or during young family programs. These members attend your events, support you financially, and are being the army of your cause. They have a great trust in you and in what you are doing… they are moved by you, but do you really know them? And if you do, are you taking advantage of this important information to cultivate the relationship with them?

  1. Know Your Constituents – Many synagogues often forget the importance of complete constituent information. We tend to think about our everyday tasks and less about the 360-degree view. You need to ensure your staff understands the importance of centralizing all your data.  Your constituents are more than members, event attendees or volunteers– they are all of the above and more. Your members see themselves in the totality of their relationship, why doesn’t your synagogue?
  2. Build a Relationship – Tracking relationships should be the primary reason for your synagogue management system. As mentioned above, your members don’t think about different departments and information silos. Your organization is expected to track every encounter you have ever had with the member. This could include their membership information, event attendance, newsletter open rates, and volunteer hours in one place. Additionally, your synagogue should have a deeper understanding of the relationships between your members and prospective members. Our work is becoming more social, how can your synagogue tap into this social revolution.

Step 1: Create a Member Profile
Your member profile should include much more than the basic contact information, his/her last class, or last donation. The social profile should also leverage information publically available on social media including their picture and information about their likes and dislikes, interests, hobbies, and connections.

 

 

 

Picture: Cloud for Synagogues demo

Step 2: Build a Member Social Graph
Understanding the relationships between your members is critical for your mission. Your member management system should allow you to build relationships between individuals, organizations or both using graphical tools that simplify tracking and foster better relationship management.  Wouldn’t it be helpful to know that if you want to solicit Sarah you should ask Jerry to do it because he knows her through Jimmy?

 
 

 

 

 

 

Picture: Cloud for Synagogues demo

3.    Bonus Tip: Manage the Information – While a good synagogue relationship management application should allow you to track and manage all your interactions, it cannot manage the relationships themselves. Personal touch and continued interaction with your members is the best way to build and cultivate relationships. With that being said, you need the data to manage the relationships.

 

 

Tal Frankfurt is the Founder and CEO of Cloud for Good, the developers of Cloud for Synagogues, a Synagogue Relationship Management application built on the Salesforce.com platform.

 

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