Millennials Forcing Change in the Chapter Ecosystem

Updated: Aug. 5, 2022  |  Categories: Decreasing Membership  

You might not realize it, but your association chapter is full of change makers. Yup, it’s true.

There’s a good chance your chapter has more than its share of millennials – born between (approximately) 1981 and 1996. Their numbers continue to rise, and there’s a strong likelihood that they will surpass other generations, in the workforce and in association chapters.

In the last few years, they’ve started forcing change with things you’ve been doing for your members, year after year after year. After year.

A lot the things you’ve been relying on for years to engage association chapter members, including your networking and continuing education events, your website, and more maybe a thing of the past.

Traditional Networking – like cocktail hours and golf events? Ew…

Spend an afternoon slowly walking an 18-hole golf course? Not Millennials. They value speed and efficiency and spending an entire afternoon on a golf course swinging a golf club over and over is last thing they want to do. They’d rather spend time with a few close friends riding bikes or playing fast paced video games.

Knowing that, what other types of association chapter networking events might be more interesting for them? Maybe an intimate dinner party, a bike outing, or a hike?

If golf needs to remain in your repertoire, how can you make it more fun for everyone? Here are a few ideas:

• Hold a 9-hole tournament instead of 18 or consider miniature golf for some laughs
• Make each round a game — birdie wins a T-shirt, par wins a beer, etc.
• Find a course that doesn’t require a dress code
• Have a mini food truck follow players on the course with drinks and snacks
• Change up your marketing to show how golf is the fun Millennials want

Boring continuing education speaker series events or lunch and learns? Forget it.

Forget that weekly lunch at Applebee’s or Friday’s and stop the lectures. Seriously.

• More than 40 percent of Millennials skip lunch! So, if you think lunchtime is the best time for a meeting, you might want to ask first to see who will show up. Maybe breakfast or dinner makes more sense. If you choose to hold an association chapter event during the day, consider providing food, rather than asking attendees to bring their own.
• Add experiences to your plain ole education sessions. Millennials like change, and with their shorter attention spans, they expect everything in sound bites and need things that hold their interest in that brief time. Consider shorter sessions, as well as virtual and hands on group-based projects that include things that could happen in the real world, like a cabinet making demonstration for your interior decorators and a trip to a biotech company for your scientists.
• Millennials spend a lot of time socializing, if only on social media. They enjoy communicating, sharing ideas and knowledge, as well as learning and discussing things with each other via technology. Switch some of your in-person sessions to virtual and be sure to use the platform’s chat and breakout rooms.
• Eliminate some sessions altogether and replace them with a learning library, to allow your millennials to learn when they want. Make sure these sessions are mobile friendly since they do most of their reading and learning on the go.

That website that looks like it’s from the 90s? It’s time for a change.

Millennials spend a ton of time online. And in that time, they prefer visuals to the written word. And they scan instead of reading every word. How can you balance their needs with the needs of your other members?

When was the last time you updated your website? If it’s been more than a few years, it’s time to add a blog and a members-only forum and revamp how you present content. As you go through this exercise, here are a few association chapter website update ideas to keep in mind.

• Be sure your website is mobile friendly
• Repurpose content to have it in both text and graphical formats
• Add videos
• Keep your content clear and short
• Turn some of your paragraphs and full sentences into bullets

Engaging Millennial association chapter members appropriately means understanding who they are, what they stand for and what’s important to them. We may sound silly, but our underlying message is serious. It’s time to take off the earmuffs, listen to what they’re telling you by not showing up at your events and not using your website, and give them what they need. Do that, and you’ll find that all your members stick around longer.

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