Member recruitment and retention are vital to the success of a philanthropy-serving organization (PSO). Here, you will find sample documents, tips, and tools designed to help your PSO acquire, engage, and renew grantmaker members.
If you have resources to share, please share them online or by emailing Courtney Moore.
Membership Peer Community
The Membership Peer Community is for those who support membership recruitment and retention efforts at their PSO, manage member benefits, onboard new member organizations and staff/trustees, and manage their organization’s membership database.
- Membership Listserv (membership@lists.unitedphilforum.org)- You must be a member of the Forum & this Peer Community to post to this list.
- Four round-robin calls per year
- Forum’s Annual Conference session
Interested in joining this Peer Community? Submit your email address on the form at the bottom of the Our Networks page.
Forum Staff Lead: Courtney Moore, (202-888-7428)
Co-Chairs
Craig Weinrich, Council of New Jersey Grantmakers
Craig Weinrich serves as the Director of Member Services at CNJG, where he helps to recruit, retain, and engage members. Additionally, he serves as the Salesforce database administrator, organizes most communications, wrote and designed the recent Salary and Benefits Report, and along with our webmaster, maintains the website.
Craig discovered the nonprofit sector through an intense desire to avoid working in the dining hall during his sophomore year at Dickinson College. Interning with the Eaken Piano Trio, artists-in-residence at Dickinson, introduced him to the many meaningful positions in the music industry that are not performance-oriented. From there, he served as Development Directors for the Delaware Symphony (promoted from Development Assistant) and Springfield (MA) Symphony Orchestras, where he could even be found clad in the costume of their newly-created penguin mascot! Craig then moved to the Nonprofit Coordinating Committee of New York, a membership association of nonprofits in the New York City area, serving as their Membership, Outreach and IT Director for nine years. While at NPCC, he earned a nonprofit management certificate from Baruch College through the United Way Nonprofit Leadership Institute. Prior to joining CNJG, Craig served as the Membership Director for the Maryland Association of Nonprofit Organizations. At each organization, Craig has served as the “accidental techie.”
Claudia Williams, Grantmakers for Effective Organizations
Claudia is Director of Membership and Development at Grantmakers for Effective Organizations, in this role she oversees membership recruitment and fundraising efforts to achieve GEO’s mission of transforming philanthropy in service of nonprofits and communities.
In her previous role as a fundraising consultant, Claudia supported nonprofit organizations from the environmental, faith, education, human services, and healthcare sectors to reach their fundraising goals for transformational impact.
Before her time in fundraising, Claudia led grantmaking portfolios at a Women’s Fund to resource organizations supporting survivors of violence and youth of color. In this role, she nurtured opportunities to support positive systemic change and collaborated with other funders in the region to increase aligned giving to women and girls of color. She also conducted research related to women’s economic security to reveal insights that drove policy action at the Institute for Women’s Policy Research.
Currently residing in DC, Claudia is an immigrant from Mexico and serves on the board of Aspire! Afterschool Learning so more immigrant children can overcome the opportunity gap and succeed in school. She was a 2019 Hispanics in Philanthropy Líderes Fellow and a 2021 Equity in Philanthropy Fellow.
Membership Peer Community Benchmarking Tool
A benchmarking tool around membership for PSOs. As a google sheet, we encourage all PSOs to add your organization to the spreadsheet or update your information as needed. Topics captured in the tool include:
- Dues Rates/Levels
- Membership Categories
- Dues Renewal Processes