Organizational Evolution and Capacity Building: Membership Recruitment, Retention, and Diversification in a Professional Membership Nonprofit Organization
van den Bosch, Raven
Vickers, Marla A.
:
2024-05
Abstract
The Outdoor Writers Association of America (OWAA) is the oldest professional membership nonprofit outdoor communicators organization in the United States. While OWAA is respected in the outdoor writer’s industry, it has an aging, homogenous membership base and suffers stagnation in membership growth and membership diversity. This study explores strategies to attract new members, understand membership sustainability and growth, and learn what membership diversity looks like in a professional membership nonprofit organization. A mixed methods approach to data collection through participant-observer analysis, a member survey, and document and resources study yields findings about member satisfaction, member benefits, disconnection between older and younger generations of membership, and lack of a cohesive approach to diversity, equity, accessibility, and inclusion (DEAI). Recommendations include formalizing recruitment and retention strategies, approaching diversity as a value, employ next generation thinking, deploy an annual and multi-year fundraising plan, solidify OWAA as a national organization, and rebrand OWAA ahead of their 100th anniversary in 2027.
Files in this item
This item appears in the following collection(s):
Related items
Showing items related by title, author, creator and subject.
-
Laske, Mary Therese (2012-01-25)Department: SociologyIt has long been known that structural conditions impact crime and delinquency, including gang involvement. Youth living in neighborhoods characterized by concentrated disadvantage, including deep impoverishment, ...
-
Kozik, Marcin Andrzej (2004-09-30)Department: MathematicsThis work contains constructions of finite algebras which are "complex" according to three different complexity measures. These constructions are modifications of the construction of Ralph McKenzie's A(T). They produce ...
-
Davis, Tara Colleen (2011-04-02)Department: MathematicsThe main result of this dissertation sheds light on subgroup distortion in metabelian and free nilpotent groups. A subgroup of a finitely generated free nilpotent group F is undistorted if and only if it is a retract of a ...