Understanding your members’ needs, interests, and challenges is essential for building a strong, engaged community. A well-designed membership survey does more than gather data—it provides actionable insights that can drive program development, improve member benefits, and guide your association’s strategic priorities.
By asking the right questions, you can uncover key motivators, discover areas for improvement, and even anticipate future needs, helping you tailor your offerings to better serve your members.
To help you get started, we’ve compiled a list of essential survey questions that cover everything from member demographics to engagement preferences. In this blog, we’ll cover the questions you should include in your next member needs assessment, based on eight different categories:
- Occupational
- Benefit Offerings
- Education and Training Interest
- Committee and Volunteer Interest
- Communication Preferences
- Availability
- Satisfaction
- Advocacy
Category by category, you’ll learn why each of these sections are crucial to your membership survey and how the information you glean from them can improve your members’ experiences.
Occupational Survey Questions
Occupational questions often include typical survey questions about demographics, like age, race, gender, region, and education level. These data points can help you evaluate how you’re meeting the needs of your members across many identities and lived experiences.
In what industry do you work?
This question is valuable because it helps your association understand the diverse professional backgrounds of its members. By identifying the industries members are involved in, your association can tailor its programs, resources, and networking opportunities to better align with the specific needs and challenges of different sectors.
What is your role in your organization?
This question is valuable because it helps your association understand the range of job functions and responsibilities among your members. By knowing their roles, you can create more relevant content, professional development opportunities, and resources that cater to their specific job needs and career aspirations.
What are your professional goals?
Understanding your members’ professional goals allows your association to align its offerings, such as training, resources, and networking opportunities, with what members need to advance in their careers.
What are the goals of your company?
Knowing the goals of members’ companies helps your association provide services and content that not only support individual members but also resonate with the broader business objectives of their organizations, increasing the value of membership.
What do you need to grow professionally and make an impact?
This question helps your association identify specific resources, tools, or support that members need to achieve personal growth and effectiveness in their roles, allowing you to directly address and fill these gaps.
Survey Questions about Member Benefit Offerings
Questions about the benefits you currently offer, and those your members would like to see you offer are critical for your member needs assessment.
Which benefits are the most useful to your members? Which ones drew them to your organization? Knowing the answers to these questions can help you determine which benefits to continue offering and learn which aren’t as useful to your audience. This is an opportunity to dig deep on which benefits are the most likely to prompt membership renewals.
What benefits are you using the most? Why?
This question helps your association identify which benefits are most valuable and why they resonate with your members, allowing you to prioritize and enhance the offerings that are truly making an impact.
How often do you use X? (with X being a specific benefit, you want to learn more about)
By asking this, you can gauge the frequency of usage for specific benefits, which helps in understanding member engagement and the relevance of those benefits in their daily or professional lives.
What would motivate you to use X more?
This question provides insights into potential barriers or improvements needed for specific benefits, helping your association make adjustments that increase member engagement and satisfaction with the offerings.
What benefits should we add?
Asking this allows your association to uncover unmet needs or emerging trends among your members, helping you stay relevant and continuously improve the value you provide by introducing new, desired benefits.
What benefits do you not find valuable and why?
This question helps your association identify benefits that are underutilized or no longer relevant, allowing you to streamline offerings and reallocate resources to benefits that provide more value to your members.
Education and Training Interest Survey Questions
Your members likely connected with your organization so they could network with and learn from other professionals within their field. By offering both formally organized and organic peer-to-peer learning, you can help your members stay current on new developments within their industry and maintain a competitive edge.
This section of your survey can be used to gauge interest in online learning opportunities as well as any in-person seminars or classes you may already offer. Online and on demand programs make it easier for your busy members to fit learning into their schedule—that means they’re more likely to engage and find value in your programs.
On a scale of 1-10, how interested are you in our current education offerings?
This question helps your association measure the overall interest level in your current education programs, providing a quick gauge of their appeal and potential areas for improvement.
What topics do you want to see covered?
Asking this helps your association identify gaps in your current educational content and tailor future programs to better meet the specific interests and needs of your members.
How can we help you be better at your job?
This question uncovers practical needs and challenges your members face in their roles, allowing your association to develop targeted training and resources that directly enhance their job performance.
What will help you the most in your overall career?
This question provides insights into the broader career aspirations of your members, helping your association offer education and support that aligns with long-term professional development goals.
What modalities do you prefer for education and training (e.g., in-person, virtual, hybrid)?
Understanding preferred learning modalities helps your association deliver education and training in formats that are most accessible and engaging for your members, increasing participation and satisfaction.
Committee and Volunteer Interest Survey Questions
When members take on leadership positions, it demonstrates increased engagement among your members and an opportunity for peer-to-peer recruitment of new members. Plus, it takes the pressure off your membership organization’s staff.
Use your member needs assessment to see if members are interested in joining a committee or taking on other volunteer roles within your organization. At the end of your survey, you can include contact information members can use to learn more about opportunities to get involved, in case the questions inspire them to follow-up.
You’ll also want to learn how and why members choose to volunteer, so you can shape your volunteer and committee offerings into the future.
What opportunities are you already taking advantage of? If none, why?
This question helps your association understand current engagement levels and barriers to participation, allowing you to identify and address obstacles that prevent members from getting involved.
What would make this kind of commitment easier for you?
By asking this, your association can uncover specific challenges members face in committing to volunteer roles or committees, enabling you to make adjustments that lower barriers and encourage greater involvement.
What do you enjoy the most and least about these commitments?
This question provides insights into the positive aspects of member involvement as well as areas for improvement, helping your association enhance the volunteer experience and retain engaged members.
Why do you volunteer/participate on a committee?
Understanding members’ motivations for volunteering or committee participation allows your association to better communicate the value of these opportunities and align them with members’ personal or professional goals.
Which local philanthropic organizations would you like to see our organization partner with?
This question helps your association identify potential partnership opportunities that resonate with your members’ values and interests, strengthening your community presence and offering meaningful engagement options.
Communication Preferences Questions
As you know, different members prefer different communication styles. Some might love email, while others might head towards “unsubscribe” if they get overwhelmed by messages. You might have members who prefer updates on social media, but others may not use it.
Asking your members what type of communication they like can help you:
- Show your members that you care about their preferences and can cater to their needs, building a relationship that encourages membership loyalty.
- Get the right information to your members at the right time, leading to higher engagement with your content and meetings.
- Give your members a chance to share communication concerns with you before they become a problem or cause them to stop their membership.
How do you prefer to stay updated about meeting times and dates?
This question helps your association identify the most effective communication channels for delivering meeting information, ensuring members receive updates in a way that fits their preferences and maximizes attendance.
How do you prefer to stay updated about changes in meeting times and dates?
By asking this, your association can understand the best methods for quickly and reliably communicating changes, reducing the risk of missed meetings or confusion among members.
On which platforms do you follow our organization? (based on which digital communication platforms you’re using—these could include Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, YouTube, email, etc.)
Knowing which platforms your members use to follow your association allows you to optimize your communication strategy by focusing efforts on the most popular channels, enhancing member engagement and reach.
Availability Survey Questions
Every member has a different schedule, and no one likes herding cats. Ask your members about the days and times they’re more likely to be available so you can schedule your communications and events at the times that work for them.
Your member needs assessment can also gauge whether current meeting times and locations are working for your members. Evaluate whether a call-in option would help those unable to make it in-person or whether your organization should offer services like childcare during your meetings and events.
Some questions to include in this category are:
How often do you think meetings should occur?
This question helps your association gauge the preferred meeting frequency, allowing you to align your scheduling with member preferences to maintain engagement without overburdening them.
What day of the week is best to meet?
Understanding the preferred days for meetings helps your association schedule sessions at times when members are most likely to attend, increasing participation rates.
What is the best time to meet?
Identifying the best meeting times allows your association to plan sessions that fit into members’ schedules, enhancing convenience and attendance.
Do you feel that meetings are too long? Too short?
This question provides feedback on meeting length, helping your association adjust the duration to better suit member preferences and keep meetings productive and engaging.
What prevents you from attending?
By asking this, your association can uncover barriers to attendance, such as scheduling conflicts or accessibility issues, and take steps to address these challenges.
Would you come more often if childcare were available? If food was served?
This question helps identify additional supports that could increase attendance, allowing your association to provide resources like childcare or refreshments to make participation more feasible.
Are you interested in offsite meetings (for example, at a coffee shop, restaurant, park, etc.)?
Exploring interest in offsite meetings helps your association assess whether alternative venues could increase engagement and offer a more enjoyable or convenient meeting experience.
Would you prefer if we rotated meeting days to include some weekends?
Rotating meeting days, including weekends, can provide more flexible options for members with varying schedules, potentially boosting overall participation and accessibility.
Member Needs and Satisfaction Survey Questions
Make sure to cut to the chase: are your members actually happy? Ask some straightforward questions about their overall satisfaction.
After all, high satisfaction is what increases the likelihood of membership renewals. With these questions, you can identify which members are currently dissatisfied, learn why, and make changes you think could improve both their experiences as well as the greater membership’s satisfaction as a whole.
Leave these questions open-ended so members can speak openly about whatever they want to say. It’s important they feel like they can be honest and direct with their feedback. This helps everyone in the end by identifying what’s working and what is not.
What makes you happy to be a member?
This question helps your association identify the key elements that contribute to member satisfaction, allowing you to continue to build on these strengths and promote them to retain and attract members.
What would you change?
By asking this, your association can gather constructive feedback on areas for improvement, enabling you to make changes that better align with member needs and enhance the overall membership experience.
How would you rate your overall satisfaction with your membership on a scale of 1-10?
This question provides a quantifiable measure of member satisfaction, allowing you to track changes over time and identify trends in member sentiment.
What was your primary reason for joining, and has that expectation been met?
Understanding the initial motivation for joining and whether expectations are met helps your association assess the effectiveness of your value proposition and make necessary adjustments.
What do you value most about your membership?
This question identifies the most appreciated aspects of membership, helping your association highlight and strengthen these areas to maintain member loyalty.
How likely are you to recommend membership to a colleague or peer?
This question acts as a measure of member advocacy and satisfaction, providing insights into how well your association meets the needs of its members.
Have you encountered any challenges as a member that we could help resolve?
Asking this helps your association identify pain points that members may face, providing an opportunity to address these issues and improve the member experience.
What additional resources or support would enhance your membership experience?
This question allows members to suggest new services or enhancements that could add value, helping your association stay responsive and relevant to member needs.
Make sure your questions are specific enough to identify what could be causing lower satisfaction levels. For example, the previous question asked specifically about satisfaction levels with the membership benefits rather than simply: Are you satisfied?
You can also include text boxes alongside quantitative measures to encourage respondents to explain their reasonings for these scores.
Advocacy Survey Questions
Advocacy efforts can be a key piece of an association’s value to its members. Marketing General Incorporated’s 2018 Membership Marketing Benchmarking Report showed that 21% of survey respondents chose “supporting advocacy” as one of the top three reasons they join an organization’s membership.
If your association or chamber participates in advocacy or lobbying activities, there are a few additional questions you should ask to see how you can support your members in this area.
Some questions to include within this category are:
Do you participate in our advocacy efforts?
This question helps your association understand the level of member engagement in advocacy initiatives, allowing you to assess the effectiveness of your outreach and identify areas for increased involvement.
What is your preferred method of participation?
Understanding preferred methods of participation helps your association tailor advocacy opportunities to match member preferences, making it easier and more appealing for members to get involved.
What issues are most important to you?
This question identifies the key issues that resonate with your members, enabling your association to focus its advocacy efforts on topics that matter most to your community.
Which issues do you think will impact the industry the most within the next five years?
By asking this, your association can gain insights into members’ perspectives on future challenges and opportunities, helping you to proactively shape your advocacy agenda.
How do you think these issues will impact the industry?
This question helps your association understand members’ views on the potential effects of key issues, providing valuable context for shaping your advocacy strategies and communications.
Ensure Member Satisfaction Through a Member Needs Assessment
Want a faster, easier way to send and gather data for your member needs assessment surveys? Check out the MemberClicks demo, which can streamline the process.
Happy members are more likely to renew their memberships, and membership retention makes for a sustainable membership organization. We hope you’re able to create a member needs assessment survey to learn all you can about your supporters to keep them happy, encourage membership renewals, and continue to thrive as an organization!
