MSRT. Membership Growth Proposal

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1 MSRT Membership Growth Proposal MSRT Fall Conference 2016

2 Synopsis In an effort to help grow our membership base, we will be voting on some new proposed budget expenses at this year s fall conference. Outlined in this proposal you will find details on specific items comprising a comprehensive plan to grow MSRT membership. Please review this document and bring any questions or comments you have to the conference for discussion. Introduction While important advocacy issues face our profession every day, the MSRT does not currently have enough members to make us a very influential voice on these advocacy issues. Currently, we only have about 400 members in the MSRT that are Registered Technologists. According to the ARRT, Minnesota has over 5100 Registered Technologists working in the state. With a less than 8% membership rate, we simply do not have the numbers to give anyone good reason to take notice of our advocacy interests. To help with advocacy issues, the MSRT recently re-formed its Legislative Committee and would like to start becoming more active in advocacy efforts coming from our profession. Knowing we will need to have a much larger body of Technologists in our organization to have any weight behind our advocacy voice, we are therefore proposing here a comprehensive plan to help substantially grow our membership. Not only will this help give us a much stronger advocacy voice, but it will also help position our society for success far into the future. The key components of our comprehensive membership campaign are offering new tangible benefits, adding more ways to engage members of the society, and launching an advertising campaign. Benefits Digital Continuing Education (CE) is one of the key areas of opportunity for the MSRT to move into that will give us low-cost methods to deliver convenient access to CE content to a very large audience. This will potentially generate substantial new revenue and also attract many new members. As a key area of our Membership Growth Proposal, this document will look at these resources first. Webinars The first digital CE method being proposed is through offering a few free webinars each year to MSRT members. This could be very beneficial for the society for a few reasons. First, the prospect of receiving free, convenient CE, would likely generate many new members. Second, we could generate some added revenue by selling access to non-members for a small fee, for example, $10. Finally, the ARRT is rumored to be soon starting to require modality specific CE credits (as is already required of Mammo Techs). When this happens, there will likely be a shortage of modality specific CE offerings for technologists. Webinars could provide the MSRT a practical method to capitalize on the new demand for modality specific CE. This would likely attract more members to the MSRT then from other medical imaging modalities (this will also tie in nicely with proposed MSRT Modality Chapters - see p.3). The webinar platform being considered in this proposal is GoToWebinar. This is a very popular platform that will allow us to broadcast unlimited webinars for a single annual fee. The webinar itself would be presented just like a live lecture at our annual conferences; a presenter would be talking with their PowerPoint running in the background. The platform offers many robust features including polling for tracking audience attention, analytics to track attendance, chat boxes for asking questions, and more. We!1

3 are also able to record these lectures and store them on the GoToWebinar website so that we may leverage the same lecture for further revenue by selling access to the recording at a later date (this is called ondemand access). Starting at $828 a year, just 20 new members are necessary to offset this cost. The hope would be that free CE would attract more than just 20 new members, especially when this benefit is considered in the context of the other new potential benefits being discussed here. We may be able to further help offset the cost of running the webinars by getting vendors to sponsor the lectures, or even have them as lecturers themselves. For vendors, this would be an hour long chance to advertise their brand to our membership, while our members are gaining valuable continuing education experience - all at no cost to members. The ASRT has approved the use of digital CE and offers the following guidance (the same will apply to hybrid conference, next section): 1. Live Webcast - If the content is viewed live, whether over the internet or in person, it is all considered a live lecture. We only need to be able to track attendance to award CE credit. 2. Recorded Content - If a lecture is accessed after the initial broadcast (on-demand) then we will need to be able to administer a posttest. This would fall into the self-learning category of CE which is the same category as journal articles. Hybrid Conferences The second Digital CE method being proposed here is to offer an online attendance option to our conferences (the industry term for this is hybrid conference ). The convenience factor of this new attendance option will likely help dramatically increase attendance at these conferences. A hybrid conference platform is similar to the webinar platform in that it will track attendance, allow for questions from the online audience to be posed to the presenters, and offer the ability to chat with fellow online attendees. Also, like the webinar platform, there is the opportunity to record these lectures to be able to sell access to members as on-demand content at a later date. One common fear of offering online access to your conferences is that it will cause people to stop wanting to attend in person. This concept is called cannibalization. Industry studies have shown that the opposite in fact tends to be the case, though. One reason often given is that you tend to get people to try out the online option who would not have ever tried the in-person conference before. Once they experience the benefits of the conference online, they often will convert to in-person attendees in the following years to take full advantage of the in-person benefits, such as networking with other members. This portion of the proposal will not require any financial risk on our part. Conference Cloud, the platform being considered in this proposal, simply takes a 20% commission on any online revenue generated from participants. The price point at which we sell tickets for online access would need some discussion, as the online attendees do not have some of the facility costs associated with their attendance. We would want to pick something then that keeps the value of our CE equivalent between both online and in-person options. Whatever the price we decide, at our current conference fee of $200-$250 for two days, it is easy to see how this could become a dramatic revenue generator for the MSRT and help us to extend the current resources offered at our current conferences.!2

4 Newsletter The MSRT will be re-instituting an MSRT Newsletter to help communicate news and industry information to the membership. This will be a great way to help keep our members informed of the ongoings of our profession and a good way to archive a history of the society. Regional Mini-Conferences This is a way to help to strengthen the sense of community within the MSRT by facilitating the formation of professional relationships within the local communities throughout the state. These conferences are likely to be much more cost effective than our typical annual conference. The cost to rent a small conference room and cater in a single meal will be much smaller than the costs associated with a big venue, multi-day conference. Also, people may be more likely to participate with regional dealings, as the time and travel commitment is far less great to do so. Membership Engagement There are several ways that the MSRT will be trying to increase membership participation. One way is by creating modality chapters, to help pull in members from other modalities. This will work great in conjunction with our webinar CE s, as we can have the chapters be involved in organizing their modality specific webinars. We also will be creating new Volunteer Opportunities to help with the creation of these new resources. For example, this will include opportunities to help with the new MSRT Newsletter, continuing education offerings, and conference planning. Advertising We can only start to see the rewards of offering new benefits to our members if they know about them. There are likely imaging professionals out there who would be willing to join the MSRT, but they just don t know about us and what we do. An advertising campaign can help us reach these Technologists. In order to increase our conversion rate, we would want to try and use multiple formats to send out information on our new member campaign. One method would be through the traditional mail. We can create a flyer that we could send out in bulk mail to every tech in the state. Physical mailers will probably have a good chance of actually being reviewed, and are thus an important method of trying to acquire new members. would also be a good means of communication, as it should have basically no cost associated with it. The downside with , though, is it is very easy for people just to hit the delete button without actually reading the message, and some of the s will likely find their way into junk folders and never be viewed. Word of mouth may well be the most effective way to reach new members with this information. People are probably far likelier to listen to this information coming from a fellow Technologist than reading a mailer or . If membership approves this proposal, then we will definitely need participation from our membership in helping to spread the word.!3

5 Expenses Webinar - Free Member CE 100 attendees 500 attendees GoToWebinar annual subscription Basic Service $828 $1800 Cost of CE with ASRT single use, per lecture $45 $45 Cost of CE with ASRT per year, per lecture $135 $135 Total Expenses $873-$963 $1845-$1935 Hybrid Conference Conference Cloud - rates per event Conference Cloud Service 20% commission (web sales only) Total Upfront Expenses (2 days, one room) $0 Regional Mini Conference Conference room rental - Bemidji Hotel Conference Room $250 Food $10 per person/50 people (optional) $500 Total Expenses $750 Advertising Campaign Postage for mailers x $700-$1250 Printing mailers 5000 postcards via Vistaprint $288 Website Word of mouth Total Expenses $988-$1538 Free Free Free Digital CE Total Expenses (excluding regional mini-conferences) Overall Digital CE Campaign Expenses Webinar 100 attendees + 4 CE fees to ASRT $1008 Hybrid Conference 20% commission web sales only Advertising $1538 Total 1 st Year Expenses $2546!4

6 Financial Forecasts Webinar - Free Member CE 100 attendees Annual Membership $40 Number of new full tech members to pay for service (GoToWebinar subscription + 4 ARRT CE Fees) 26 Potential for webinar sponsorship??? Potential New Revenue 50 new active members $ new active members $ new active members $20,000 Hybrid Conference Annual Membership $40 2 days Conference Online Attendee Fee (TBD) $100-$200 Potential New Revenue (Ranges reflect TBD online ticket price) 100 online attendees: 50% increase in attendance (based on 200 people average past conference attendance - minus hybrid service 20% commission) 200 online attendees: 100% increase in attendance (based on 200 people average past conference attendance - minus hybrid service 20% commission) 300 online attendees: 150% increase in attendance (based on 200 people average past conference attendance - minus hybrid service 20% commission) Newsletter $8,000-$16,000 $16,000-$32,000 $24,000-$48,000 Advertising??? Total Revenue??? Regional Mini-Conference* 50 attendees at $20 per person $ attendees at $30 per person $ attendees at $50 per person $2500 Expenses -$750 Total Profit $250-$1750 *This is meant to be a very general estimate of what a regional mini-conference could look like, as the numbers could vary greatly depending on specific considerations of each region.!5

7 Digital CE Bottom Line This is a snapshot of potential earnings from just adding digital CE offerings to our membership. These are broken down by online ticket price as a percentage of the in-person ticket price of $200 minus the 20% commission to Conference Cloud. 100% Online Ticket Price of In-Person Annual Conference Price Low Return on Investment Estimate Digital CE 50 new members, 100 online attendees $18,000 Total Return on Investment $15,454 Medium Return on Investment Estimate Digital CE 100 new members, 200 online attendees $36,000 Total Return on Investment $33,454 75% Online Ticket Price of In-Person Annual Conference Price Low Return on Investment Estimate Digital CE 50 new members, 100 online attendees $14,000 Total Return on Investment $11,454 Medium Return on Investment Estimate Digital CE 100 new members, 200 online attendees $26,000 Total Return on Investment $23,454 50% Online Ticket Price of In-Person Annual Conference Price Low Return on Investment Estimate Digital CE 50 new members, 100 online attendees $10,000 Total Return on Investment $7,454 Medium Return on Investment Estimate Digital CE 100 new members, 200 online attendees $18,000 Total Return on Investment $15,454!6

8 Conclusion What you will be voting on at the fall conference Adding expense for annual subscription to GoToWebinar to budget: $1008 Adding expense for advertising campaign to budget: $1538 How you can help Lend your voice to our campaign: Spread the word about our new benefits and help get people to join. The most effective advertising is always word of mouth. Consider volunteering: We will need help with organizing many of these new benefits, so please consider volunteering with one of the many opportunities we have available. Help us advocate: If you are passionate about advocating for our profession, please consider actively supporting any of our advocacy efforts or volunteering on our Legislative Committee. With your support and approval, the MSRT would like to begin this Membership Growth Campaign. Please bring your questions, comments, and ideas to this year s fall conference. Though we are requesting that we take on some new expenses, the rewards we stand to gain - more members, more resources, and a stronger advocacy voice - far outweigh the new expenses. Please help us continue to improve the status of our profession by supporting this proposal. Resources for further research GoToWebinar GoToWebinar daily demo/training sessions ?tz=America/Chicago Conference Cloud Wisconsin Society of Radiologic Technologist Newsletter