As a leader at a member-based organization, you know that plotting a trajectory for your organization can feel daunting. However, the best growth strategies are informed by a variety of perspectives—and your members should be among them.

That’s why collecting feedback is so crucial for reducing turnover rates, offering great membership benefits, and increasing member satisfaction. In this guide, we’ll review the steps you can take to improve your feedback strategy so you can put important perspectives into practice for your mission.

Create Feedback Channels and Mechanisms

Your organization can only collect feedback from your members if you develop clear methods and channels to do so. This ensures your members have the resources they need to give feedback in a way that is convenient for them. Here are some critical questions to answer during your planning process:

• How will members give feedback? An easy method to collect responses is by sending members an anonymous survey, either via email or your member management software. To gather more in-depth feedback, you could also offer the option to participate in an interview with a team member.
• What will the feedback form look like? How you structure questions can be the difference between members finishing and abandoning your form. You might use short-answer boxes, numbered scales, or fill-in-the-blank options to make the form user-friendly and data-rich.
• How often will we collect and analyze feedback? Establish a cadence with your team for reviewing feedback that works with your schedules without overwhelming the members. You might want to analyze feedback every month or quarter depending on your organization’s performance.
• What type of data are we looking for? Based on how you set up your feedback form, you can collect both quantitative and qualitative data to satisfy your key performance indicators. Ensure you ask the right types of questions to properly collect this data—open-ended questions invite members to share qualitative information, while multiple choice is better suited to gathering quantitative data.
• Where will we store data? You might store responses in your database under specific member records (if the form isn’t anonymous). If it’s anonymous, you can still store responses in your member management system for easy reference during reporting.
• How will we spread the word about our feedback resources? You might mention your survey in an upcoming staff meeting or on team-specific company email threads. Remember that you’ll also need to assess the effectiveness of your methods for collecting feedback. Set a regular schedule for reflecting on feedback mechanisms until you perfect the process.

Develop a Strategic Action Plan

Once your members have provided their feedback, you need to analyze what they have to say. To help your team pick out the most actionable ideas, make a comprehensive action plan for implementing feedback items. NXUnite, a community of brands and mission-driven organizations, suggests creating a straightforward, effective action plan by:

• Establishing clear goals beforehand. Start by creating one or two overarching goals, then determine the more specific objectives that will serve as the stepping stones to achieve them. Member feedback will help you shape what these objectives look like so you can accomplish more with the support of your members.
• Working with your membership committee. Many member-based organizations have a membership committee so dedicated members can be a part of the decision-making process. Work directly with them to appeal for, analyze, and respond to member feedback—their unique perspectives can greatly impact your approach.
• Building a timeline. Establishing a timeline for when you expect to initially review, deliberate on, and provide responses to feedback can help you set expectations with members and stay on track. For instance, you might decide to assess feedback on a quarterly basis over a period of two weeks.

As you develop your strategic plan, record all important information and share it with your team so everyone’s on the same page.

Communicate Actions, Timelines, and Updates

Simply assessing all points of feedback internally isn’t enough—your members deserve transparent communication throughout the process so they know their voices have been heard. Here are some ways you can facilitate communication between you and your members:

• Include feedback-related changes in your monthly newsletter. For instance, if you analyze feedback on a quarterly basis, you might dedicate a section of the newsletter once every third month to promoting your feedback survey and providing the deadline for tips to be considered for this cycle.
• Explain your decisions on feedback gently. No matter how feasible your members’ feedback is, remember that they took the time to speak their mind about improving your organization and they deserve respect. If you decide not to implement a suggestion, explain why in straightforward, professional language.
• Provide next actions and a timeline. For the ideas you do choose to implement, you should be as clear as possible with your action plan. Let’s say you’re a national sorority organization and you’re changing your  to be more user-friendly. Provide basic information about the new software, what members are expected to do, and when all actions should be completed.

Depending on how many ideas you receive, you might have hundreds of members to respond to per feedback cycle. However, you can streamline the process by putting your decisions in a spreadsheet with the contributing member’s name (if known), a brief summary of their idea, and leadership’s thoughts on the idea.

Whether you manage a trade association, a union, or fraternal organization, you can create a culture of communication and collaboration, helping your members feel heard and truly valued. Make sure you emphasize to your members that all ideas are welcome and thank them for contributing their time.