Membership sales after reopening

Angela Brown

I hope this post finds everyone well.  As we prepare to reopen our garden and begin membership sales, I wanted to check with others to see if they have begun to plan on how membership sales will happen onsite?  We sell memberships through our website and that will be the preferred method. We offer to deduct our parking fee if someone purchases a membership the same day and prior to closing we would deduct that over the phone if they called to purchase a membership as we did not have any staff at our information desks. We are hosting an exhibit this summer (outdoors) that will increase membership sales and we do hope to have our information desks staffed but want to keep staff safe. After you reopen, what plans do you have for face to face membership sales transactions? Will you be accepting cash and how will you do credit card transactions with minimal touching of surfaces? Will you ask the membership purchaser to use their own pens or will you find a way to enter constituent information directly into your software (we use Altru). We do not have a dedicated front desk staff person to only sell memberships. During normal times, we would ask new or renewing members without a membership card to fill out a membership form but we would like to avoid this amount of touching shared surfaces between our staff and the public. Any information and innovative ideas you would like to share would be great.

Laura Schmid

My organization has already opened. The
primary reason people join us is to spend time outdoors on our
2,000 acres and 20 miles of hiking trails. We are allowing
visitation for members only at this time through a timed ticketing
system.

 

We are not doing any on-site membership sales.
We are telling everyone to purchase online or to call the
membership office and do it over the phone. So far so good for us!
I’m finding that people are adapting and doing what you ask them to
do. But this is an ever-evolving process, so we may get to on-site
sales again when we re-open to nonmembers. For now, I am happy with
how things are going and it seems to be working.

 

If you—or anyone else for that matter—has
questions with how we are managing things, I’d be happy to be a
resource. My email is lschmid@cincynature.org.

 

Laura Schmid | Membership Manager
4949 Tealtown
Road | Milford, OH 45150
(513) 831-1711, ext.
416 | Membership Office (513) 965-4893
www.CincyNature.org