The moment someone signs up to become a member of your organization (arts and culture, professional society, industry group, etc.) is a key opportunity to learn about your new member. It’s an opportunity that almost certainly won’t present itself again.

Why is this the ideal time to capture more information than just the basics needed at sign-up? When someone decides to sign up, their engagement and willingness to share is already high. And this may be the only time that you have this person’s undivided attention to make this request. You already need to ask for some basic information to process their membership so asking a few more questions isn’t a significant ask.

Sure, you can survey your membership later—and we do love surveying—but despite your best efforts, not everyone will reply. Maybe you plan to ask more about them at renewal, but at renewal, even more than sign-up, you probably want to decrease the friction in the process to make it as easy as possible. Plus, if they’re on auto renew, they may never have the opportunity.

Maybe you don’t know how you will use that information, or don’t know how to write questions that will collect the best data. That’s where we can help—read on for our recommendations based on working with dozens of membership organizations on data we find to be the most useful to collect.

General recommendations

First, a few general recommendations:

  • Try to capture evergreen data. Meaning, collect data in a way that doesn’t cause it to “expire” immediately. For instance, for age, consider collecting year born vs. current age. That way, in several years, you can still calculate their age accurately.
  • Append the date you captured the information. For some data, like income, you can’t collect it in a way that you can automatically update it over time. By appending the date to when the data was collected you can estimate how accurate it may still be years later.
  • Give opportunities to update. Not everyone will update their information, but for items that can change, give members a chance to update their profile, perhaps under a member portal or by asking the same questions at renewal and updating their record or asking new questions at other touchpoints (e.g., event registration) and appending that information to their record.
  • Be sure to have data privacy protections in place. While beyond the scope of this article, be sure to have an up-to-date data privacy policy in place. Think about the type of data you’re collecting, how you’ll use it, and how you’ll protect it.

What type of data to collect?

Ultimately, what you collect is dependent on your organization’s needs and what you are comfortable with asking. Below are some examples of the basic types of data you may want to consider collecting in addition to contact information.

  • Age. As noted above, asking year born vs. a specific age or age category can help keep this data more current. This is where capturing the collection date can help you update it later if you cannot ask year born.
  • Gender. The way gender has been asked on surveys and forms has quickly evolved in recent years. To prevent you from needing to change the question too often, ask a simple question like, “are you… female, male, or prefer to self-describe: ____________ .“
  • Kids. For organizations that may target households with children, asking about the presence of kids under 18 may be helpful (this is one where it’s probably best not to get too specific due to privacy concerns).
  • Languages spoken at home. This is especially important if you’re delivering services in different languages.
  • Zip code. If you’re not collecting a full mailing address, consider at least collecting a home zip code. This will typically be enough for any type of analysis by geography you may want to do.
  • Current interests. Collecting current interests, whether specific to your organization or more generally, can provide a lot of useful data for program development, marketing, etc. It can also serve as a proxy for other demographics, if you’re unable to ask those. For instance, if they are interested in programming for children, then you probably know they have a child in their household (or have grandkids, etc.).

There are numerous other categories of data you could collect. For professional organizations, you may want to collect years in the industry, career stage, etc. For philanthropy, you may want to collect other causes they support.

Some categories of data should be given extra thought as to how critical they are to know before you ask. For example, income and race/ethnicity can be extra sensitive and turn people off from responding (or worse, abandoning the sign-up entirely). If you ask these, know how you’ll use them ahead of time and give people an option not to respond.

Even these few data points can add a lot to your understanding of your members. The more you know, the better you can message to them and ensure you are providing services that will meet their needs.