1. BCS Membership Board
Council Meeting 3 July 2014

2. Background Membership Board set up in 2010 Terms of Reference
Delegated authority from Trustee Board “
Membership Board was set up in It comprised a Chair, three committee chairs, ten ordinary members and two members of staff. The members were appointed from those who had been nominated (by themselves or others) for membership of the board.
Its remit is:
Strategic oversight of all aspects of membership
To encourage & guide members and member groups, and represent member concerns to Trustee Board when normal channels have not succeeded
To develop policies, procedures and services to grow and sustain membership
To champion membership and Member Groups
To ensure the Board activities support the BCS Royal Charter
To support the five strategic pillars
Membership Board works with the staff Membership Director and his team to achieve its objectives
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3. The story so far Committees and working groups
Member Group Conventions
Simplification of Rules for Member Groups
Growth in Membership Numbers
Professional development
In practice the Board delegated its operational responsibilities for Member Groups to three committees – Policy, Best Practice and Finance.
The Policy committee, through a process of consultation, has simplified the rules so that all groups work to similar rules.
The Best Practice Committee has successfully organised the Member Group Conventions, and set up working groups, including for example, the recording and broadcasting WG, which reported in 2012 on how to record and publicise recorded group meetings.
The Finance Committee, working closely with the staff finance team, have taken responsibility for allocating Member Group funds, and have set up the Carry Forward mechanism so that MGs that make a surplus from successful events, can carry the proceeds into the following financial year.
The Membership staff team have been very successful in marketing organisational membership, so that where in 2010 we had a total of 70,000 members, we now have over 75,000. What that figure does not show is the number of people who cease membership each year, through death or retiral (12,000) so that we have to recruit that number just to stand still.
In 2012 the CPD portal was launched, and more recently the BCS CPD App. This is a real membership benefit.
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4. Current strategic plan objectives
Membership Growth: Increase membership significantly. (Prepare a resourced plan for membership growth based on ‘outcomes analysis’ and agree an overall 3-year target for membership growth and break down into targets for different grades, types and possible acquisitions).
Member Communication: Improve BCS communications with members so that:
All communications are consistent, coherent and high-quality
We know what members want
Members value their communications with BCS
Online IT Facilities: The online IT facilities provide an excellent platform for facilitating and enabling communications and engagement with members across the Institute. Online capabilities to exemplify the best and most efficient membership practices. (Membership Board will develop a business case for improvement to web facilities).
In September 2013 MB had an awayday to look at our strategic approach, and to agree on our objectives for the year. Aided by Mike Allen, we refined our objectives.
Our number one objective has to be to increase the membership. We only have a small percentage of the IT workforce in the UK as members, and we need to increase our footprint.
The staff team continue to make organisational agreements with large companies.
Along with Council, we are trying to improve communications. eBCS now has several different versions, the one you get reflects the areas you have expressed interest in, in other words it is targetted and more relevant to the member who receives it.
We haven’t done very well on our IT objective. BCS simply doesn’t have the resources to do all that we would like to do.
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5. Next draft strategic plan objectives
Membership Growth: To achieve sustainable growth in membership over the period (The precise target needs to be determined and agreed during business planning stage - 100,000 has been suggested as a possible 5-year target). Registered Technicians: In addition, to achieve at least 10,000 level-3 registered technicians within 5 years Member Engagement: Increase member engagement by 100% (i.e. double) over 5 years. (This needs to be measureable, and developed into a SMART target, with a known start point). Technology Objective: Online capabilities to exemplify the best and most efficient membership practices. (Underpinning the objective for member engagement is the need to improve online IT facilities and mechanisms for remote communication and remote access to events).
Membership Board won’t finalise its objectives till the September meeting, but these are the likely directions.
We need to break down our Membership Growth objective, because although the total numbers have gone up, the number of professional members has hardly changed over the last four years, it is still around 46,000. I would like to target growth in this number. Professional members have a much better retention rate than others.
We need to quantify Member Engagement. Does watching an SG presentation on U tube count as engagement?
The CPD team are going to produce some new tools for Mentoring, helping us provide significant benefits for members.
There are plans to replace the current membership system. This will transform our web services to members.
My vision – that our membership card should contain a chip that gives us free access to BCS events and records our attendance for CPD purposes.
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6. Questions
What do you understand by Member engagement? How should we measure it? How would you recognise an effective Branch, or Specialist Group? What would you do to make them more effective?
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