To ensure your association’s long-term success, it is vital to generate non-dues revenue. This strategy can help mitigate financial challenges and provide a steady source of income. Rather than raising membership dues when membership growth stagnates or declines, prioritizing non-dues revenue can help maintain budget stability and ensure ongoing value for members.
In order to maintain success, it is crucial for any organization, including your association, to have multiple revenue streams. Although membership dues have historically been the predominant source of income, their proportion has decreased in recent years and for good reason.
Non-dues revenue can be divided into two main types: income earned from companies interested in reaching your members, and income made from charging members for additional services. In this blog, we will explore some creative ways for associations to generate non-dues revenue and discuss how Salesforce for associations can help manage this type of revenue.
Sponsorships
Sponsorship is a form of partnership between an association and a company, in which the sponsor provides a fee for visibility and marketing opportunities. Many associations provide sponsor packages, which detail the benefits and opportunities offered to sponsors at different financial levels. These may consist of logo placement, speaking engagements, and exclusive access to attendees or association members, among other perks. For associations, sponsorships can be a significant source of non-dues revenue. Sponsors can offer funding for events, conferences, or specific programs. The benefits of sponsorships are not limited to financial gain, as they also provide opportunities to build relationships with like-minded companies and to enhance the association’s reputation by association with reputable sponsors.
Advertising
Advertising can be a smart strategy to generate additional non-dues revenue for your association and there are various opportunities for associations to offer advertising. An association can offer advertising on their website, placement ads in a magazine, publication, newsletter, digital banners on emails and even signage at events. If you are considering advertising as another source of non-dues revenue try create advertising packages. These packages can include a combination of different advertising options and can include sponsorship options in a bundle for a larger financial commitment.
Career Center
Creating an online career center is a great way to establish your association as a trusted source for professional development and to increase your revenue stream. With a career center, you can offer businesses the opportunity to list their jobs on your website, giving them access to highly qualified and motivated candidates. A career center can also use it as a membership benefit by providing members with job opportunities, career advice, and other resources related to career growth. This can help to increase member engagement and retention, as well as attract new members who are looking for support in advancing their careers.
Donations
Another strategy to generate non-dues revenue for an association is to offer members the option to donate during new membership sign-up or renewal. This approach allows members to support the association’s mission and initiatives beyond their regular membership dues, and can be especially effective if the association has a strong and passionate membership base. Associations can make the donation process easy and convenient by integrating it into the membership sign-up or renewal process, and by clearly communicating the impact that these donations can have on the association’s programs and services. You can also offer additional membership benefits for different donor levels, and provide recognition to your largest donors via a newsletter or your website. If your organizations uses badges in their online community, offer a special badge for donors.
Certifications
Certifications are gaining popularity among professional and trade-based organizations, serving as an effective method to generate non-dues revenue. These programs benefit both members and the association, elevating the organization’s credibility, enhancing service quality, and enabling members to showcase their expertise in their respective fields. If an association is going to develop a certification program, they should set out eligibility requirements, create an exam or assessment process, and provide continuous education credits.
Online Merchandise
Online merchandise sales has become a popular strategy for associations to generate non-dues revenue. Associations can offer a wide range of products such as books, publications, training material, events, swag, and promotional items to increase their non-dues revenue. Creating a user experience is important, with clear product descriptions, high-quality images, and a seamless checkout process. If an association has a strong social media presence, it can also be an effective tool for promoting products and engaging with potential customers. Overall, online merchandise sales offer associations an opportunity to increase revenue, while also creating value for their members.
Exhibit Space
Selling exhibit space at a conference can be another effective strategy for associations to generate non-dues revenue. An effective marketing campaign can attract a diverse range of companies to exhibit, creating networking and collaboration opportunities for attendees. To maximize revenue, it is important to strategically price exhibit space based on the value of the location and rentals. Associations can also create exhibit pakcages or bundles to include sponsorship, advertising, and free admission to certain sessions.
Online Marketplace
To drive sales and improve the overall customer experience, it is essential to provide a seamless and user-friendly look-and-feel. By offering a great online shopping experience, you can make it easy for customers to purchase products and complete transactions quickly and efficiently. A well-designed online store can also help to build trust and credibility with members and nonmembers, encouraging them to return for future purchases.
One of the key elements of a great e-commerce experience is familiarity. Customers have become accustomed to user-friendly shopping experiences across various platforms, and they expect the same from your organization. By providing a similar experience, you can make the shopping process easier for constituents, which can result in increased sales and customer loyalty. A modern and easy to use e-commerce solution offers flexibility for your staff to manage and sell merchandise, ensuring that your organization can adapt to changing market conditions and customer preferences.
Salesforce for Non Dues Revenue
Salesforce provides the flexibility and scalability needed for managing products and selling them, helping associations to improve their sales performance and grow their non-dues revenue. The Salesforce platform will allow users to create custom data fields and objects to store product data, such as descriptions, images, and inventory levels. You can create roll-up summary fields so users can easily see the number of products available for purchase. Organizations can use the price book functionality to list their products and pricing, and create promotion codes and special pricing rules for bundled packages.
Salesforce provides users the ability to track the status of each product, including quotes, orders, shipments, and returns if applicable. If you are using Salesforce’s Sales Cloud you can create opportunities for purchases like sponsorships, advertising and exhibit space and create pipeline reports and forecasts through Salesforce dashboards. Salesforce also provides the ability to send out automated emails for quotes, orders, shipments, and reminders. And with Experience Cloud, Salesforce’s Digital Experience Platform, associations can create beautiful store fronts and allow their members to collaborate online.
Salesforce’s Predictive Analytics
Salesforce’s predictive analytics is a valuable tool for associations to identify potential constituents who are likely to make a purchase based on their purchasing behavior. This information can be surfaced in the back-end system, aiding employees during a call and displayed in the online marketplace as recommended products when constituents are browsing. Predictive analytics can also help organizations create individualized marketing campaigns for a group of people or companies by analyzing their purchase history and preferences. This strategy can improve conversion rates and foster customer loyalty by delivering personalized and relevant marketing messages.
About Systems Rewired
Systems Rewired is a Salesforce consulting company dedicated to helping associations and nonprofits. If your association is considering Salesforce and interested in learning more about using it to help generate non-dues revenue for your organization, contact us today for a free consultation.