Changes in USH Membership

There is a lot of discussion around membership changes. Why? When? What is going on? But let’s look a little bit closer at trends

Increases in Membership The next slide looks at two factors that increase our formal USH Membership numbers. 1. How many new people joined USH 2. How many people increased their pledge to more than $250.00(our threshold for formal membership)

Decreases In Membership But then of course there are decreases in membership. There are four factors that can decrease our formal USH membership. 1. Death of a member 2. Moving away 3. Other reason 4. Changing pledge to below $250.00

Let’s Look at a Year by Year Comparison!

Hmmmm…total loss=49 members in 4 years? Using the previous assumptions the above is true. BUT…. Members economic situations can change year by year. One year some folks can give more than $250.00, the next they may not be able to, but perhaps in the third year they might be back in the black again! Official membership then also changes right along with their financial situation. They are still sitting in the pews, they just can’t give the $ some years to be formal members! What if we look at membership numbers without taking into consideration the fluctuation in folks personal bank accounts? What would that look like?

Okay….now we have only lost 11 members in 4 years! That sounds better! But…what if we look only at members who voluntarily leave by moving or for other reasons. Let’s take death out of the equation. Population numbers change because of births and deaths and we can’t count births as increases, so let’s take out deaths and see what numbers we come up with!

Wow! Now we are up 2 over 4 years! So it all depends on what factors you consider when thinking about membership changes! If you want to include people’s financial ability to maintain membership by giving USH more than $ annually, then we have lost 49 people ! If you want to think about everyone we serve (not just those who are able to contribute $250.00), then we have only lost 11 people due to death, moving and other reasons. If you want to think about only members who voluntarily join or leave by moving or other reasons….well then we are UP by 2 members!