Case Study Tag: Staffing our Membership Strategy

Newsroom overview

Who They Are
A Dutch member-driven news organization that brings context to the news by rejecting the daily news cycle and collaborating with their readers.
Location
Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Founded
2013
Membership program launched
2013
Monthly unique visitors
550,000
Number of members
69,340
Percentage of revenue coming from members
53.8 percent*

De Correspondent built a member-financed newsroom from the ground up. Building a company that retains members is something they’ve long practiced across internal teams. But they’ve of course encountered challenges, including in scaling the model globally. The organization has demonstrated the importance of intentionality and organization-wide methods for meeting members where they are at.

The research team explored the daily newsroom routines and external member engagement activities that they’ve found most powerful for keeping members front of mind. Mayke Blok, membership strategist at De Correspondent and The Correspondent, told MPP that “the fact that we started off as a member focused organization really, really helps. So it’s in the DNA. But I think we did stray a bit from what our members thought and wanted for a while and resolved that by getting more in touch with them.” See how they’re doing this now.

*95 percent of De Correspondent’s revenue came from readers in 2019. The remainder came from book sales and donations.

Why this is important

De Correspondent Managing Editor Maaike Goslinga and Conversation Editor Gwen Martèl have both worked at the publication since its early days. In reflecting on what has worked in collaborating with members, they noted, “The most important lesson throughout the years to build a membership-focused newsroom is: don’t consider members as an afterthought, but include them in your daily thinking.”

Editorially, this entails taking the suggestions of members seriously and increasingly responding to member requests for specific information. But that becomes a huge task when your membership program approaches almost 70,000 members.

In its seven years of publishing, De Correspondent has found that it isn’t enough to chase competitors in the Netherlands and around the world and relentlessly publish stories. Among their core principles are “we are your antidote to the daily news grind” and “we collaborate with you, our knowledgeable members.”

The two principles are closely tied. Articles need to reflect correspondents’ unique vantage points and offer members new ways of understanding contemporary problems, often including their expertise. Strategically, this combination helps De Correspondent focus on member retention (as opposed to acquiring new members), with a current organizational goal of maintaining 70,000 De Correspondent members.

What they did

In practice, editorial and membership teams realize the “don’t consider members as an afterthought” goal in a number of forms, starting with strategic staffing or identifying appropriate point people internally. De Correspondent co-founder and CEO Ernst Pfauth identified a trend that’s common in many newsrooms: for organizations with relatively flat hierarchies, it’s easy for responsibilities that seem like everyone’s shared concern to not move forward in the shuffle of day-to-day work.

In response they created a conversation editor role held by Gwen Martèl. Members tell staff that De Correspondent actually feels more personal than when there were fewer members on the platform, thanks in part to the introduction of this role. 

As detailed in this post, the conversation editor role involves coaching staff on how to work with members, including:

Efforts to build a member-focused culture from inside the newsroom, such as:

  • Transforming lessons learned about member participation into new features for a “member rolodex” and the wider platform.
  • Helping correspondents enrich their reporting with members’ knowledge and experiences. Martèl said that for each article or new pitch, “We ask: how can we involve members? It all boils down to the simple realization that members have a lot of knowledge and experience that can be useful for our journalism.”

Improving conversations with members, and their experiences overall, by:

  • Bringing more diverse voices to the on-platform comments section
  • Inviting members to take part in discussions they’re knowledgeable about
  • Organizing dissent

Martèl works closely with Pfauth, who is serving as product owner for De Correspondent’s site and new mobile app. They’re working to ensure that their design and development of features don’t deliver on only a small group of members’ requests. They’re stepping back to see which member voices they’re taking into account when making decisions (and recently have begun other staff projects focused on improving service for specific groups of members, including new members and people whose engagement on the platform have waned). 

This is all part of more direct communication practices between staff and members as part of developing “a continuing story with them,” said chief engagement and campaign leader Lena Bril. In the past members have shared their experiences on De Correspondent podcasts and in articles on the platform too, and they’re asked to pose their questions to correspondents and podcast guests in advance of interviews.

More recently, one frequent member request for an audio app with stories read by correspondents crossed the threshold of being potentially useful to many members. The request was included in development of the audio app and the conversation between members and correspondents will feature prominently.

In September 2020 members were notified of the new audio app via email: “The world’s a busy place, but independent journalism that cuts through the noise is more important than ever.”

The results

In order to stay member-focused while scaling, De Correspondent has

  • Created substantive routines for keeping members in mind throughout a story’s life cycle.
  • Started surveying members regularly about their experiences and ideas.
  • Added a full time conversation editor whose job it is to enrich the site’s journalism with the knowledge and experience of members (including ensuring that the online comments section is an open and safe space).
  • Created a weekly membership metrics and engagement report for all staff and more broadly published member sentiments through all-company Slack channels.

Initiatives that are keeping De Correspondent member-centered are highly grounded in listening to members and reporting insights to colleagues. Bril said the organization is in the habit of talking directly to individual members whenever that feels logical. In general, members are the first to know when there is important organizational news, including new features and correspondents. For the latter, the daily newsletter to members will include a note explaining that the staff would like to introduce members to their new correspondent. Members are regularly thanked in that newsletter for their support and contribution to De Correspondent’s journalism, and they’re encouraged to respond with their feedback. 

As detailed in this case study on how De Correspondent refreshed its member insights, De Correspondent surveys its members quarterly in addition to soliciting their thoughts at the beginning and renewal phases of their memberships. The membership team then shares updates on what members have told them, which ultimately helps the rest of the organization understand what is preoccupying their membership at any given time. 

Internally, the membership team’s introduction of a weekly membership metrics and engagement report for all staff has been successful. In a monthly presentation to staff the membership team presents the most insightful information from traffic data (pageviews, growth, engagement, requests, and more). The information is also helpful for story sourcing. Recently De Correspondent received many member questions about the workings of 5G connections that resulted in publication of a “super explainer” about the technology. The report was useful in helping identify member interest in 5G that led to the explainer, and when the story was published, members were informed that their request was heard and acted on. 

Instead of forwarding individual pieces of member communication only to the most relevant correspondent, engagement staff are now sharing more broadly on relevant general Slack channels. To improve transparency and visibility into members’ reasons for cancelling their memberships, there’s also now a real-time “cancel channel” that’s available to the wider company to watch.

What they learned

The portion of members who care about on-site comments doesn’t represent all readership. Pfauth said that early in De Correspondent’s operations, he was highly focused on the communications that staff, members, and non-members could see: their on-site comments. (The comments sections below correspondents’ articles are accessible for posting by members only, though all readers can see the comments.)

Pfauth has since learned through member research how little many of the organization’s members cared about those comments. Because only a percentage of members said they valued comments on their own, the team now serves a curatorial role in directing members’ attention to those individual comments that are especially meaningful, including through emails to members. Today the engagement team regularly organizes Q&As with relevant invited guests whose contributions may have otherwise been buried deep within the comments.

The team has also learned the value in being flexible around hosting live gatherings. One form of listening that De Correspondent regularly practiced — meeting its members live at in-person events — started to change even before the 2020 coronavirus pandemic kept members at home. The organization previously hosted large live events several times annually, partially to remind staff that they exist because of their members’ financial support and participation. While it created goodwill and community between members and staff, it wasn’t financially viable to keep ticket costs low and host events without sponsorship.

They’ve since had experts join smaller groups of members for 40 or 50 person gatherings (sometimes taking the form of small events and panels at the newsroom) and hosted smaller hackathons that are more focused around De Correspondent’s journalism itself. Pfauth said that with the changing strategy around live events, members see less of staff in real life but that the decision helped the organization be more resource considerate, particularly around use of staff time.

Key takeaways and cautionary tales

Keep members top of mind takes work in a mature member-driven newsroom. When your membership program reaches the size of De Correspondent’s, it can be easy to let it run on autopilot. Instead, De Correspondent hired a conversation editor and implemented several new newsroom processes, including a real time “cancel channel,” to ensure the whole newsroom continues to keep members on their mind.

Other resources

Disclosure: De Correspondent is a founding partner of Membership Puzzle Project.

National Digital native Developing Memberful Routines Staffing our Membership Strategy De Correspondent Retaining our Members

Newsroom overview

Who They Are
A local news organization that covers public education in Chicago, Colorado, Detroit, Indiana, New York, Newark, Philadelphia, and Tennessee
Location
Multiple locations in the U.S.
Founded
2014
Membership program launched
2018
Monthly unique visitors
743,000
Number of members
1,100+
Percentage of revenue from membership
1 percent

When thinking about their audience development goals, Chalkbeat faced a challenge: how could they make connections between product and editorial staff? When an audience or member project comes up, who should own it, and how could they bring relevant expertise from across the newsroom into the problem-solving process? In 2019 they set up an “AudSquad,” made up of their director of earned revenue, editor in chief, chief strategy officer, senior marketing manager, director of product, and engagement editor. This group comes together every two weeks to review their overall audience goals and take steps to connect Chalkbeat’s editorial, engagement, membership, and sponsorship strategies.

Why this is important

Hiring new staff for your membership program is not always possible or necessary; the skills you need may already exist in your newsroom. But you may need a new way to bring them together. Chalkbeat’s AudSquad is an example of how to establish an interdisciplinary strategy team to solve large problems and create holistic and scalable solutions.

What they did

Chalkbeat’s AudSquad is comprised of five senior leaders from across editorial, product, and the executive team. It includes:

  • Sky Barsch, Director of Earned Revenue
  • Bene Cipolla, Editor in Chief
  • Alison Go, Chief Strategy Officer
  • Kary Perez, Senior Marketing Manager
  • Catherine Green, Engagement Editor
  • Becca Aaronson, Director of Product

The group meets every two weeks against the backdrop of a shared roadmap for the year, with annual goals and key metrics that they track. Director of Product Becca Aaronson told MPP AudSquad meetings are primarily used to talk through long-term audience initiatives and challenges (How do we create new products that teachers/parents would need to build a new relationship? How do we have a meaningful relationship with members? How can we move a casual reader through the membership funnel?) and how to make the best use of staff, skills, and resources at various points in a project.

For example, when working on redefining their newsletters last year, Senior Marketing Manager Kary Perez did much of the initial  strategy – competitive research, best practice principles, how to meet editorial and membership strategy needs – before Engagement Editor Catherine Green took it over to lead implementation and training in the newsroom. This collaboration and handover was facilitated via the AudSquad.

The Squad doesn’t use a framework such as sprints to plan its work, but keeps its format more informal. After setting annual goals together, the Squad keeps a rolling agenda where they can add topics for discussion in between meetings. Aaronson said they keep their annual goals and key metrics in mind, as well as the fluctuating workload of each Squad member. “For the most part we have a good sense of how overwhelmed each person is with their current level of responsibility and that’s the main thing we use [to organize tasks],” she said. 

The results

Establishing the AudSquad has allowed Chalkbeat to bring ideas from the newsroom and other parts of the organization to one central place where they can hash out priorities for member-related projects, and work out how best to support them. In the absence of a dedicated audience development team, this format has allowed them to make the best use of the skills already in their organization.

A major challenge the Squad tackled in its first year was to redefine Chalkbeat’s audience funnel by creating new goals and metrics against which to judge their progress. The motivation behind this exercise shows why it was important to have an interdisciplinary team in place: they wanted to find metrics that would hit both their editorial ambitions and the mission of their organization, and allow them to package these in a way that make the case for Chalkbeat to potential sponsors, advertisers, or funders.

The AudSquad selected four buckets for its funnel. Perez outlined them as follows:

  1. REACH the education community, with a focus on educators, parents and students.
  2. ESTABLISH TRUST through quality journalism, and build a community of informed and loyal readers.
  3. INFORM AND ENGAGE our audience by providing opportunities to contribute to and connect with our journalism.
  4. IMPACT education communities by elevating the perspectives of people of color and other marginalized communities, so that their lived experiences of inequity inform the decisions and actions that lead to better outcomes for children and families, especially those in low-income communities.
Courtesy of Chalkbeat

They then selected appropriate metrics for each goal. For example, for Reach (the top part of their funnel), key metrics include total pageviews, total users, average pageviews per story, and Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram follower counts. Their strategies/projects to increase these key metrics include local market social boost campaigns and newsroom partnerships to help boost reach. See the table below for details of the key metrics for each of their audience funnel goals.

Audience FunnelKey MetricsStrategies and projects
Reach– Total pageviews 
– Total users
– Avg pageviews per story
– FB-Twitter-Instagram follower counts		– Local market social boost campaigns (CG)
– Newsroom partnerships that boost reach (BC) 
– Build audience around First Person and How I Teach (BC)
Establish Trust– # of Loyalists / Returning users 
– New newsletter sign-ups (CG)
– New members (KP)		– New ESP(KP/CG)
– Paid promos for newsletter signups (SB/CG)
– Evaluate current newsletters (CG)
– # of members by EoFY (KP)
Engage– Active newsletter readers (CG)
– Number of callouts + events
– Engaged reader actions (callout respondents + event attendees)		– A/B testing subject lines (and other factors) in Mailchimp
– Tracking system for callouts, polls, event attendance (CG)
Impact– Impact numbers – Newsroom owns this (BC)

Perez said the AudSquad is well placed to carry out this type of work because: ‘We’re a cross departmental team that understood we’d need newsroom, engagement, revenue, and marketing collaboration in order to prioritize this work, create strategies, and make quick decisions to grow and deepen our audience.”

What they learned

It takes trust to work cross-functionally. Perez said that the AudSquad’s first year was about building trust with one another and creating priorities for their work together. She said this started at the top of the organization. The fact that Editor in Chief Bene Cipolla, Chief Strategy Officer Alison Go, and the larger leadership team supported this work enough to actually be part of the AudSquad, and ensured its members had the space to ask one another questions and work together, helped establish trust and created the space to focus on audience growth. Now that trust is established, they can move more quickly and effectively.

Someone still needs to keep tabs overall. Aaronson added that in terms of managing a cross functional set-up like this, it can be helpful to have a couple of people within the team who keep tabs on progress and feed that information back to the executive level for further prioritisation.

Key takeaways and cautionary notes

Cross functional teams can be an effective way to organize your membership work. They ensure the work is distributed appropriately across your organization depending on where the relevant skills lie, and create a healthy system for transferring ideas through multiple departments – top down, and bottom up.

Aaronson cautioned that having specific people to technically administer a membership program is key, but if it’s going to be core to the business model of your organization, it has to be part of everyone’s brand ambassadorship, and a set-up like the AudSquad can help spread that culture.

“It’s essential to identify what are the operational things that need direct resources applied for them to be effective, and membership is definitely one of those things where if you don’t put someone specifically on membership it can fall through the cracks… You might have someone whose core responsibility is to define the membership strategy, the funnel, the pricing and the tiering, what is the language for campaigns, how are we re-engaging members, how are we giving the benefits  – everyone [else] in the newsroom is responsible for being brand ambassadors for the top of the funnel,” Aaronson said.

Local/Regional National Digital native Single-subject Chalkbeat Adopting a Product Mindset Staffing our Membership Strategy

Newsroom overview

Who They Are
A grassroots, community-led cooperative covering the U.K. city of Bristol
Location
Bristol, U.K.
Founded
2014
Launched membership
2014
Monthly unique visitors
50,000
Number of members
2,200
Percentage of revenue from membership
37 percent

In an effort to avoid a hierarchical structure that would run counter to its cooperative model, The Bristol Cable’s people and teams are organized using a circular staffing model.

Areas of strategy/responsibility are organized as circles, and each circle may contain sub-circles to add increasing levels of specificity. For example, the Cable’s Membership circle is broken down into the sub-circles of Conversion, Engagement, Events, Membership Tech, and Communications. Over the last year, this model has allowed their small team to more effectively allocate and execute membership work, while common connections across circles ensure the work does not become siloed.

Why this is important

The Bristol Cable’s experimentation with this model can be instructive for small and medium sized newsrooms that are unable to hire specific membership staffers. It is one way to both distribute membership work across multiple departments, and ensure clear lines of responsibility and authority.

What they did

The Cable’s circular circular staffing model is grounded in the theory of sociocracy – a governance system based on the principle of equality between organizational members. As a cooperative, the Bristol Cable has operated in line with many principles of sociocracy since its inception in 2014, but it formalized its adoption into its staffing model in 2019. 

Cable co-founder Adam Cantwell-Corn and membership and distribution lead Lucas Batt said the model is well suited to helping their small team effectively prioritize and execute on membership strategy.  

The Cable’s members are also its co-owners, meaning membership is central to the organization’s business model, and inextricable from its survival. But Cantwell-Corn said this can mean membership becomes “collapsed in on itself… [an] unmanageable mass of work.”

“The principle is to create the necessary space and autonomy and barriers between different groups so [membership] doesn’t become this amorphous thing, but also act on the principle of cross functional teams,” he explained.  

The staffing model has six parent circles, which are Workplace, Media, Tech, Distribution, Projects (for managing grant-funded initiatives and specific large and time limited pieces of work that involve two or more Circles), and Membership. Membership is a “parent circle,” led by Cantwell-Corn and Batt. As leaders of the parent circle, they work to define the ownership and key responsibility areas for each membership sub-circle, and ensure the sub-circles are communicating with one another.

The membership sub-circles are arranged as follows:

Communication 

Circle lead: Alon Aviram (Co-founder)

Circle members: Lucas Batt (Membership & Distribution), Matty Edwards (Reporter)

Areas of responsibility: Branding, PR, members communications, newsletters

Conversion

Circle lead: Adam Cantwell-Corn (Co-founder)

Circle members: Lucas Batt (Membership & Distribution)

Area of ownership: Audience funnel, audience development, metrics & target setting, gift memberships, referral scheme, retention

Membership Tech

Circle lead: Will Franklin (Tech Coordinator) and various others dependant on need

Areas of ownership: Website maintenance, website redevelopment, development of membership system and CRM

Engagement

Circle lead: Lucas Batt (Membership & Distribution)

Circle members: Cait Crosse (Community & Events Organizer)

Areas of ownership: online engagement, member relationships, member experience

Events

Circle lead: Cait Crosse (Community & Events Organizer)

Circle members: Adam Cantwell-Corn (Co-founder)

Areas of ownership: Events and community partnerships

The diagram for The Bristol Cable’s membership sub-circles (Courtesy of Bristol Cable)

Each sub-circle lead convenes and manages that group, and coordinates with other sub-circle leads as needed.

One of the key features of the model is the connections created by staff members being in more than one circle – known in sociocracy as a “double link.” Batt, for example, features in the Communications, Engagement, and Conversion circles. “That has a multiplying effect – a way of spreading information and aligning the goals of these groups,” he said. 

Each sub-circle sets its own working practices for day-to-day task management, but will frequently collaborate with other circles via working groups for specific time bound projects.

The results

Cantwell-Corn and Batt said their circular model has led to membership work being broken down more effectively – with clear lines of responsibility – but without it becoming siloed. As a small team, it has also allowed them to be agile when trying to deal with the skills gaps in their organization.

“We’re trying to plug gaps and holes, rather than having a suite of people and skills that absolutely fit in terms of capacity and experience,” Batt said.

When the team wanted to launch its new community engagement tool, Cable Links, the Engagement sub-circle took the lead. They were responsible for the vision and management of the project. But they relied heavily on the Membership Tech sub-circle (as well as a third party design agency to create the technical infrastructure and implement it. A temporary working group was set up to convene the two circles and move the project forward. Gift memberships were initiated by the Conversion circle, but Membership Tech developed the functionality and Comms promoted the finished product.

What they learned

Be crystal clear about each circle’s brief. Batt believes a review of the brief for each circle is needed in future to make them clearer and identify where the overlaps are. He also thinks the Cable needs to clarify when and why people need to meet between circles, and further improvements could be made to the rhythms connecting membership and editorial. 

Cantwell-Corn said they also want to strengthen the processes by which everyone in the organization is pulling in the same direction for a certain period of time. They’ve recently introduced quarterly organizational sprints to try and facilitate this.

High demand and limited capacity mean sacrifices still have to be made. While this staffing model has helped to improve connections across the organization – and to place membership front-and-center for everyone – capacity is still a problem in a newsroom with 10 staff. The fact that people exist in multiple circles means “if there’s demand here, we take capacity from there.” Cantwell-Corn said: “It’s hard sometimes [to work out] whether things aren’t working because the structure isn’t right, or because of practicalities with regards to capacity or the application of skills and experience.”

Consider the imbalance between sub-circles. Another weakness of the structure right now is that the powers of initiation are uneven between sub-circles. The Conversion sub-circle, for example, currently has responsibility for much of the core work around membership product and growth. “Other circles are a little bit in service of that… There’s more agency sitting with conversion,” Cantwell-Corn said.

Key takeaways and cautionary notes

A circular staffing model can help small and medium-sized newsrooms with limited resources to organize membership work, set clear lines of responsibility, and facilitate cross functional working.

This model may not iron out all workload imbalances between teams involved in membership, and careful consideration needs to be given to how involvement in multiple circles will impact each staff member’s capacity.

Other resources

Local/Regional Digital native Staffing our Membership Strategy Bristol Cable

Newsroom overview

Who They Are
A national, born-digital publication focused on policy analysis and investigative journalism that has branched out into lifestyle, sports, and business coverage.
Location
South Africa
Founded
2009
Launched membership
2018
Monthly unique visitors
3,500,000
Number of members
13,693
Percentage of revenue form membership
25 percent

When the Daily Maverick launched its Maverick Insiders program in 2018, two people were working on the membership effort. Two years on, the Maverick Insiders team has grown to seven, with roles including a general manager, membership retention manager, and marketing ninja. They have found that some areas need dedicated roles – such as events and retention – while others can see skills and responsibilities come together in unusual combinations. 

This case study explains what hires were made for the Insiders team, when, and why, as well as how the Insiders team now works together with the rest of the Daily Maverick newsroom.

Why this is important

The way the Daily Maverick grew its Maverick Insiders team offers one blueprint for staffing a full-service membership team – from product to community management, events to marketing, and tech to retention. The Insiders experience offers a great example of how to build gradually by prioritizing your membership needs, and then using that team to distribute membership efforts across your organization more widely.

What they did

Prior to the launch of Maverick Insiders, there were two people working on getting the program off the ground. Publisher Styli Charalambous led the planning of the program, acted as product manager, and secured buy-in throughout the company, while former head of product Brett Lensvelt considered how technology, editorial, and business, would all work together to implement the program. 

This two-person team worked with external developers for engineering and testing requirements as they built out an MVP. After that showed promise, they realized  that Insiders would need someone working on it full-time after launch.  Publisher Styli said they were looking for an “allrounder” to take on the coordination of member events, member-related copywriting, liaising with editorial, public speaking, and more. Francesca Beighton was hired two weeks after the program’s full launch, initially as a part-time community manager, but within two months this role went full time, and Beighton (now Maverick Insiders’ General Manager) was charged with running the program and building the membership team out. 

With member communication and engagement a high priority, this build-out began with graphic designer and community manager Sahra Heuwel, who was already a designer at the Daily Maverick. Her responsibilities include everything from creating forms and surveys, to designing direct mailers and banners, to managing comment moderators, researching new comments policies and platforms, answering member emails, and managing the inbox support team.

Five months after launch Tinashe Munyuki joined the team to help with inbox support. With maintaining hard-won members another top priority, he is now Membership Retention Manager.  At eight months, events specialist Nicole Williamson came on board (her job description grew to include “Live Journalism Manager” once the coronavirus pandemic arrived) , followed by Junior Membership Business Administrator Suleiman Krigga, and most recently Marketing Ninja Fiona Berning (full details of their each team members’ responsibilities can be found in The Results section). With the exception of Sahra and Head of Product Rowan Polovin, all team members were hired after Insiders launched. 

Beighton said: “I think if membership is working, you’ve got to be prepared to reinvest in people and training.”

Their next hire will be someone to cover member inbox support, currently the junior membership business administrator’s job, as well as bringing in freelancers to help with copywriting and design overflow.

The results

Today the Maverick Insiders team consists of seven people, with responsibilities broken down as follows:

  • Francesca Beighton, Maverick Insider General Manager: manages the MI team, edits the MI newsletter, drives membership growth, conceives and implements marketing plans, liaises with newsroom on all member-related initiatives, manages member benefit relationships
  • Tinashe Munyuki, Membership Retention Manager: manages retention and churn, manages MI inbox, provides technical support to MI community, leads tech training of support staff
  • Suleiman Krigga, Junior Membership Business Administrator: responds to community queries in MI inbox, assists with retention management
  • Nicole Williamson, Live Journalism Manager: concepts and implements events and webinars, manages speaker and sponsor relationships, handles logistics, manages budgets and invoices, assists with engaged journalism efforts
  • Fiona Berning, Marketing Ninja: implements and reports back on marketing and advertising campaigns, coordinates social media, provides design assistance
  • Sahra Heuwel, Community Manager & Graphic Designer: produces design elements for marketing and branding campaigns, provides membership support to MI community, liaison on community moderation, trains and manages member support staff
  • Rowan Polovin, Head of Product: project manages all technology related activities, tracks and analyses MI growth metrics

The team, Publisher Styli Charalambous, and Editor-in-Chief Branko Brikic meet weekly to discuss upcoming projects and challenges. There is also a weekly webinar and events meeting, and a weekly marketing meeting. Meetings to coordinate engaged journalism work remain ad-hoc, but they plan to formalize this process too. 

Team members report to General Manager Fran and work full time on membership, but Daily Maverick’s aim of being a memberful organization means the Insiders team get involved in other areas of the operation. Charalambous explained: “For example, webinars started out as a member benefit but evolved into live-journalism efforts to [serve] a wider audience that is now part of membership acquisition efforts. It’s run by the membership team and requires coordination with journalists and editors in the hosting of these events.”

“If membership is to really be about community building and for it to be a success, it’s our view it cannot be a siloed effort that sits on the side. It has to be integral to the entire organization and be the thing that brings it all together.”

What they learned

It’s crucial to have someone responsible for securing buy-in at the top. Particularly at the proposal and planning stage, this person will fight for resources to get things off the ground and act as a lobbyist or champion for membership more broadly across the organization.

Think outside of traditional role boundaries. Creating positions that play to each person’s varied skills and strengths. For example, Sahra Heuwel is both a community manager and graphic designer. General Manager Fran Beighton said Heuwel’s patience, calm, and natural problem-solving marked her out as a great fit for community management as well as graphic design, and the diversity this dual role offers keeps her stimulated.

Create career paths for people within your membership team. Fran said they are constantly thinking about how they can upskill their people. 

Staff elements that are central to your membership program accordingly. Be clear about how critical different skills and initiatives are to membership success, and prioritize those in your organizational chart. For Daily Maverick, this meant having a dedicated person to run and manage webinars and events.

A member saved is worth more than a member gained. In recognition of this, staffing retention efforts has been key for Maverick Insiders. 

Adequate training for membership staff requires time and space. The Insiders team has learned to step back and analyze what is and is not worth their effort so that they can refine their workload and make space for that training. For example, the team is careful not to spend time on unnecessary events, which Beighton defined as “putting on an event as a tick-box exercise as opposed to a genuine opportunity for an important discussion [and] engagement.” Other areas where the team have pulled back include unnecessary surveys or big-effort projects like referral programmes that don’t have the same level of return on effort. Beighton added that setting OKRs has allowed them to focus: “If it doesn’t serve our objective, it’s culled from the workload.

Key takeaways and cautionary notes

Prepare for success when starting out on your membership journey, and assess the resources that will need to be added every few months. You can “layer” new team members or skills onto the team in priority order. If you can afford it, it’s easier to scale back the resources you provide than to play catch-up. 

From Publisher Styli: “Membership touches every part of the business, every part of the business needs to be represented there, editorial, business, product and tech, finance might drop in, maybe account managers. We buy into the fact that membership is such an integral part of the organization’s effort/mission.”

Other resources

Disclosure: Membership Puzzle Project has provided support to the Daily Maverick’s membership program through the Membership in News Fund.

National Investigative Digital native Daily Maverick Staffing our Membership Strategy