Chairman’s Message: Signing Day Membership Drive

It’s hard to believe that my term as Chairman is half over. As you may remember, my goals for this year revolve around membership growth through both retention and recruiting. We usually have a good idea where we will end up on retention by now and all signs are that we will have another great year. On the other hand, new member recruiting is a year-round process, and it must be kept a priority if we are to maintain and hopefully grow NUCA.

We saw success earlier this year with the first annual Signing Day membership drive. With 74 new members signed up in one day we got off to a great start at seeing growth this year. There has been a steady stream of membership applications coming in throughout the year and we are nearly at last year’s membership count already. That’s great news, but the goal wasn’t to match last year’s count.

In an effort to push us beyond last year’s membership count and onto growth we are excited to be hosting another membership drive this fall. The Fall Regional “Most Wanted” Campaign will be a little different than our Signing Day in that we are going to work regionally and offer up some structure to identify the top targets for the drive and hopefully increase the chances of getting some of our high priority prospects to join.

The structure is simple: Each chapter forms a “Most Wanted” list with its Top 5 Most Wanted Contractors and Specialty Contractors to recruit during the drive. Each region is given a week to hold their drive and members are given the list so that everyone knows who to go after. NUCA, the chapter, and its members will make every effort to make sure the prospects know that we have noticed that they aren’t a member yet and that we want them to be. It’s a simple recipe of equal parts flattery and friendly peer pressure to help reinforce that NUCA membership would be a good business decision for them.

I have to come clean though, this isn’t a new concept for NUCA. NUCA’s 2020-2021 Chairman Fred Chesney shared at our Convention last year that this type of membership drive was what brought him to join his chapter, NUCA of South Florida, in the 1980s. We figured we’d blow the dust off that method and try it again. Hopefully we can have as much success with it as they did back then.

We all know that associations are about using the power of numbers to accomplish what none of us can alone. If NUCA is going to grow, that power we must grow those numbers. This fall drive will be a great opportunity to do that. We want you to be a part of it.

Sincerely yours,
Ryan Kinning, NUCA Chairman of the Board / Penro Construction Company Tags: Chairman's Message, September/October 2022 Print Issue