Clans and Families and Membership

We have had various discussions about how to develop the membership of your clan or family society and here we will highlight the various suggestions we've received.

Hang onto your members.

The first step is to ensure you hang onto the members you already have as there is little point in adding new members if at the same time you lose ones you already have.

Here are some of the suggestions for keeping your members...

1. Consider creating a membership certificate and each year send out a sticker with that years date on it. The member can then add that sticker to their certificate thus showing all the years they have been a member, This certificate might go up in the home or the office.

2. Consider having an annual gathering, perhaps a weeks holiday, in which you will take people to some part of the world where you can also have a clan theme to the event.

3. Ensure you send out at least a quarterly newsletter. This can be in pdf format. You need to keep people in touch with your society and what you are doing. I would also point out that you should make a version of your newsletter available on the web. The reason... many of the pictures put up in newsletters are really too small to really see the people in them. And so with the web version while you can still show small picture it can be a thumbnail to a much larger picture.

4. You should also have a web site where you will post many pictures. I personally like the idea of doing a web page for each member to include a picture of the member and their family and what they do for a living.

5. When it comes to a members page where the member consents to information going up about what they do for a living they might be asked if they'd be willing to help out fellow members with any questions to do with their area of expertise. In the old days in Scotland that's what fellow clan members would do, help out fellow members.

6. You should also look at providing clan merchandise to enourage that sense of belonging.

7. Ensure that all members have something they can wear or carry to identify themslves as Clan members.

All of the above are great ways to keep your members involved but they are also great reason for someone to sign up as a new member.

Getting New Members

We recommend that you have a new member pack. This would be a one off joining fee where you provide a book about your clan or family, a T-Shirt and a clan crest pin, the current newsletter, the membership certificate and a welcome letter in which you give out your web site address. All of this sets the scene for the new member.

We hope that this has been helpful and feel free to contribute your own ideas or discuss any of this within the Scotland Group under "Clans and Families".

Alastair