It is sometimes assumed by organisations that their most loyal audiences are members and to some extent this is true, but there is a group of frequent bookers who exhibit similar behaviour but choose not to sign up to membership. In this article, by Dr Alix Slater, research conducted by The Audience Agency demonstrates insights about the complexity of member and non-member behaviour to assist the sector in decision making. It draws on the following three data sets:

• A quarter of a million unique customer records across four organisations in the Ticketing Network East Midlands as part of the Spirit Nottingham Cluster (SNC). We refer to this as the ‘SNC Box Office analysis’.
• A bespoke ‘Donor Survey’ of circa 500 donors and members from six organisations in the Spirt Nottingham Cluster.
• A ‘National Panel Survey’ of circa 2,500 individuals who have attended the arts, culture and heritage in the last 3 years.

Who joins membership schemes?

The demographic profile of members is influenced by the catchment, collection, art form and programme but they are often older. In the SNC Donor Survey 64% of respondents were female, 53% aged 55 to 84 years [1];

62% have lived in their current property for 11 or more years and 85% for 5 or more years. These members are very familiar with the organisation they belong to and have a track record of engagement. 70% have been attending for more than 5 years, 85% have visited during the last year, of which a third have been 6 or more times in the last 12 months and 38% have held membership for at least 4 years.

In contrast, responses from the National Panel Survey demonstrate only a minority of respondents reported themselves as very frequent attenders or very knowledgeable about the arts and the majority were not actively seeking out events, new experiences or venues. Nor were they initiating the booking or willing to travel very far, perhaps because 60% also agree that there is a good range of arts related things to do in their area. They appear to stick with their tried and trusted venues - not a new finding amongst general arts audiences. One in five report to be or have been a member of an arts organisation and 37% a member of a museum, heritage, outdoors or nature related organisation [2]. Amongst this sample urban residents [3] and Londoners specifically are much more likely to have been a member of an arts related scheme, whilst rural dwellers are more likely to have been a member of a heritage scheme.

Many however interrupt their membership subscription. 62% have lapsed their arts and 58% their heritage membership(s) and currently hold no memberships, so it is perhaps not unexpected that from the SNC Box Office analysis just 1.5% of bookers were members accounting for 7% of bookings in one venue and 2% in a second.

Members are always likely to be a minority group within arts organisations, museum, galleries and heritage sites. Yet Membership Managers often aspire to build large schemes on a scale equivalent to The National Trust, Tate and V&A. We forget that free entrance and priority access are popular benefits at museums and heritage sites boosting membership numbers, but as a proportion of overall visitors their members are also a relatively small group. Churn is also inevitable in membership with members lapsing due to changes in financial and personal circumstances, lack of engagement with the programme and a desire to have different experiences, particularly amongst families.

Why do individuals join membership schemes?

“The benefits are generous for the small donation”

The above quote was from a respondent in SNC Donor survey but is similar to one reported in The Guardian in 2012 “I joined the National Trust in the 1970s and after a year took out Life Membership which had just been increased from £50 to £75. My card admits two, and over the years it has more than paid its way. It is the best financial investment I’ve ever made”.

Whilst we hope members perceive their membership as a way of supporting the organisation and becoming more engaged, some treat it in a similar way to their bus pass - reflected by the high lapsing rate noted in this research. The majority (91%) of respondents in the National Panel Survey agreed benefits were important in their decision to join an arts related scheme but at the same time 82% also agreed or strongly agreed with the general feeling that supporting the organisation is very or quite important in their decision making process. For cultural organisations this is a dichotomy, how can someone want to support an arts organisation but be motivated by benefits? Many members do not realise how much it costs to service them or the amount of income lost from discounts. Others accept the donation, then give the booking fee back through a transactional donation at point of sale, or buy more tickets as a way of support (as reported in the SNC Donor Survey). Benefits are slightly less important in a heritage context (86% strongly agree or agree they are important) and more (88%) feel they are supporting, perhaps because this category encompasses non-ticketed sites and conservation orientated organisations.

The extant literature which explores utilitarian drivers that trigger membership suggests there is a broad set of pragmatic drivers, discounts are one but also the ease of planning visits, purchasing tickets and accessing galleries without booking, queuing and paying for each visit. Underlying these are latent motives such as aesthetics, cultural enrichment and attachment, without which the pragmatic drivers would not be acted upon (Slater & Armstrong, 2014). In a heritage context, hedonistic motives have also been noted, people join for fun and entertainment, altruistic motives, to give and volunteer, achievement, to learn, social reasons, self-identification, status and ideological commitment. Paswan & Troy (2004 in Slater & Armstrong, 2014) also look at gender and life-stage, motives and behaviour and find females have stronger hedonic motives and family members with material motives consume more benefits. Qualitative comments from the SNC Donor Survey support these findings; “a chance to meet like-minded people and share opinions of performances and the arts”, “to support the theatre”, “I was new to Nottingham” and the “Council cuts alerted us to the need”.

Patterns of membership

Members’ behaviour generally mirrors that of the rest of the audience, a relatively small group of customers are omnivores and most are loyal to one venue. In the National Panel Survey 75% of individuals who belong to or have belonged to an arts organisation and 83% who have belonged to a heritage organisation have only ever been a member of one or two organisations, and we are not sure if they held them concurrently. What we do know is that 43% of this group who have been a member are currently a member of just one organisation, 13% of two and only 6% belong to three or more schemes; this is partly clarified by 81% strongly agreeing or agreeing they ‘would limit the number of schemes they belong to at any one time’.

We sought to find out if this might be related to supply and demand by looking at the number of arts memberships currently held by rural and urban dwellers, which included Londoners and then extrapolating Londoners as a separate group. This reveals that Londoners are more likely to have been a member in the past and still be a member of an arts organisation. 16% of Londoners in the National Panel Survey reported that they have belonged to 4 or more schemes, 13% of urban dwellers and 9% of rural dwellers. Urban dwellers then are most likely to have one or more memberships but Londoners are much more likely to have 3 or more - however as 43% of the London sample is comprised of Metroculturals, the most engaged group, maybe this isn’t entirely surprising.

Whilst urban dwellers are more likely to be a member of an arts organisation than rural dwellers, and Londoners specifically, there is not an urban/rural divide for heritage type memberships and when the capital is extrapolated Londoners are least likely to currently subscribe to a heritage membership.

The only benchmark for this study is research undertaken by Holmes & Slater (2012) where 9% of their sample had 1 heritage membership and the mean number of memberships was 4.7, much higher than in this research, but they were looking at a very engaged group as they were seeking to understand volunteering patterns.

Is there a ‘ladder of loyalty’ at play?

Relationship marketing theory assumes that arts, museum and heritage audiences can be nurtured from first time and repeat bookers, to members and patrons through a ‘ladder of loyalty’, but anyone involved in membership will know this is trickier than it seems, which this research demonstrates. A longitudinal study of subscribers of a San Francisco theatre in the 1970s tracked joining and lapsing behaviour and identified four different groups of subscribers: Continual, Gradual, Sudden and Miscellaneous of which only one group, ‘Gradual subscribers’ moved along a trajectory, from single ticket buyer to subscriber (Ryans & Weinberg, 1978 in Slater, 2013). Continual (long-term) subscribers in the study were found to be older and to have lived in the area for longer, ‘Sudden subscribers’ joined for no apparent reason, participated in fewer cultural activities but were as likely to donate as ‘Gradual subscribers’ and ‘Miscellaneous’, as the label suggests, exhibited mixed behaviours (ibid).

This pattern is supported by the SNC Donor Survey findings where 62% of respondents (and donors or members) have lived in their properties for more than 10 years. We sought to validate this in the National Panel Survey to see if the longer someone had lived in their current property the more likely they were to have a membership(s). For arts memberships this was true, the National Panel Survey supports the SNC Donor Survey findings - 67% of respondents who had lived in their property for more than 10 years had a membership compared to 58% who had lived there for less than a year. But the group with the most memberships had been resident for 6 to 10 years but only 4% of those residing for more than 10 years had 3 or more memberships compared to 11% amongst the 6 to 10 year residences. The findings are not as conclusive for heritage memberships with the proportion having a membership(s) varying very little across the groups and no pattern with regard to the number of memberships; 5% of residents who had been in their property for 1 to 5 years had 3 or more memberships, 7% who had lived there for 10 years, 3% who have lived in their current properties for up to a year and 2% for 6 to 10 years.

Financial yield and donations

The SNC Box Office analysis finds members have the highest yield amongst bookers due to their frequency of booking, but the lowest yield/ticket. It is possible they are receiving membership discounts on tickets for already discounted tickets (e.g. senior citizen rates); so membership for them represents good value with 89% agreeing they are likely to renew in the future. The group that remain more of a mystery are those bookers who visit multiple times but choose not to become members and take advantage of discounts - are they more altruistic for the organisation as their yield/ticket is higher? Other research suggests they uphold structural and attitudinal barriers to purchasing membership, for example they see it as elitist, poor value for money, perceive the programme as limited, have limited time, are unaware of the scheme, hold memberships elsewhere or are unemotionally connected to the venue (Armstrong & Slater, 2011; Petr, 2007 in Slater & Armstrong, 2014). These are all evident from the SNC Donor Survey where comments suggest the benefits package does not suit their booking behaviours. But could these non-members have the same propensity to give as members given their booking behaviour and familiarity with the organisation?

The National Panel Survey reveals that current and past members of the arts are more than twice as likely to have given to the arts - 66% of members compared to 29% of non-members. Current and past members of heritage organisations are twice as likely to have donated - 70% compared to 36% of non-members. 51% agree they would consider donating to the organisation as well as being a member compared to 19% who disagreed or strongly disagreed. A similar finding is revealed in the SNC Donor Survey with 50% agreeing they would donate beyond their membership fee and 81% agreed it is very or somewhat important to support the arts. Behaviour is of course a better predictor of intention and interestingly the SNC Box Office analysis reveals a smaller proportion actually donating.

Members also donate to organisations they do not belong to, mostly making transactional and ad-hoc donations but they are also over-represented as a group as donors in seat campaigns, making 48% of all donations. It is not clear if this is because they are targeted as members or there are underlying status motives (such as those that have previously been associated with members in American organisations).

Based on findings from the SNC Donor Survey members also donate in different ways, for example 35% of SNC donors say they have given a one-off donation once, 21% twice and 30% three or more times compared to 57% who have given to a capital appeal once but only 6% three or more times and 88% who have given to a seat campaign once and 13% twice. Members also give via donation boxes, fundraising events and cite purchase of tickets and use of the café as donations although arts organisations would not perceive these latter two as donations.

So rhetoric about the importance of the arts does not appear to be matched by behaviour. In the SNC Donor Survey respondents explain that limited means will stop them giving, some do not see value in supporting the arts, (believing the arts should either be able to pay its way or be publicly subsidised). Another group feel they give already through membership fees, ticket sales and by using the shop and café, so members might not be as altruistic as we would hope. However the SNC Box Office analysis still suggests members donate more than non-members with the best prospects being the group that visit a venue frequently and who are already members of both of the membership schemes available. 21% of this group made donations in 2013 compared to 4% of the members of organisation A and 11% of organisation B. This is supported by findings from the SNC Donor Survey where 28% said they were a member of or donated to another arts organisation and 32% to a heritage organisation, locally or nationally with English Heritage, the National Trust, Art Fund, Tate and British Museum cited most frequently.

What can we learn from these findings?

1. Retention amongst arts organisations’ members appears to be critical as the relationship between the member and organisation strengthens over time and location and frequency of interactions are important.
2. Churn is an inevitable part of membership but it is important to find out why.
3. To increase yield/ticket it is worth reviewing benefits and ticket discounts as organisations may inadvertently be giving member discounts on already discounted tickets.
4. Mining data to identify members who never visit could be a worthwhile exercise as some may not understand that they can support the organisation by giving in different ways.
5. The best prospects for donations are members, in particular for seat campaigns but non-members, especially those who visit regularly should be on a prospect list.
6. Some members are venue loyal but this is not true for everyone as this research suggests members that move across venues are more likely to donate, possibly because they are more engaged with the arts generally. Likewise, other organisations may be asking your members to donate also within a region, so it is important to consider other venue’s fundraising campaigns that could be competing for your member donations. This may be exacerbated in a London context where members are more likely to hold multiple memberships.

[1] Holmes & Slater (2012) found 83% of the respondents in their survey to be 55 years+

[2] Referred to as heritage visitors in this article

[3] Those living in or on the outskirts of a city