Customizing your community with online tools.

When the Emergency Nurses Association, Chicago, conducted a membership assessment in 1998, surveys were sent by mail to a random sampling of the membership. For our 2003 survey, however, the ENA board of directors was committed to using an electronic survey tool that would enable all 24,000 of our members in the United States and abroad to participate. Because the board was intent on developing ENA's strategic plan based on member responses, the idea of increased input was exciting. We just needed the right tool. And we found it through the ASAE Foundation.

I first learned about the State of Community Assessment (SOCA) tool at ASAE's 2002 annual meeting in Denver. Designed to assess the sense of community within an organization, the tool identifies areas of opportunity to create enhanced member value. The foundation's research has shown that associations that connect their members through a sense of community create a competitive advantage by doing so.

SOCA seemed like the solution for us. It was comprehensive and would provide us with a thorough recap of our membership demographics. It also covered members' experiences within the association in areas as diverse as annual meetings, technology, and activities on state and local levels. Plus, it allowed us to add a number of customized questions that we felt would be valuable for our upcoming strategic planning process.

INVITING MEMBERS TO PARTICIPATE

Kathy Robinson, ENA's 2003 board president, felt that it was crucial to take the pulse of the membership before beginning an in-depth strategic planning process. "As ENA was committed to finalizing its strategic plan for 2003-2005 by midyear, a detailed knowledge of the current membership base was vital," she says. "The board of directors understands that ENA needs to focus on issues that are truly meaningful to the current membership and also to address areas where change is indicated for the organization to grow and flourish."

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

Consequently, the entire ENA membership was invited to participate in SOCA. We sent an e-mail invitation to our members and included a front-page article/invitation in the ENA newsletter, ENA Connection. Members could either follow the link in the e-mail or type the URL into their Web browser and take the entire survey online.

IDENTIFYING OPPORTUNITIES

One thing that ENA learned through its assessment was that members wanted a greater array of online educational opportunities. "We confirmed our belief that our members are looking to ENA to provide educational opportunities in a number of venues, from conferences to online learning experiences that are meaningful, interesting, and available to them 24/7," states Robinson. "Our members are clearly comfortable with technology. We found that 90 percent of our members described themselves as either proficient, advanced, or expert users of technology."

Robinson believes that "this membership survey has provided ENA with the data we needed to finalize and implement our strategic plan. We are committed to being a member-driven organization, one that is truly dedicated to defining the future of emergency nursing and committed to fairly representing the many diverse cultures and perspectives present in the profession," she says.

ENA members expressed several other needs:

* Frequent and timely information. To meet members' stated desires for more frequent and timely information, ENA introduced a monthly e-mail newsletter during the past year. "I have received extremely positive comments about our monthly e-mail newsletter," says Robinson. "Members have told me that it helps them keep abreast of ENA activities and news, and they really like the format."

* Wider range of educational topics. "We learned that emergency preparedness, legal issues, and pediatrics are strong areas of concern," says Mary Ellen Wilson, 2004 ENA board president. "Members want more educational offerings on these topics. Geriatrics is also emerging as a key subspecialty, especially given the aging of the baby-boomer generation, and we need to be prepared to provide our members with the tools they need to assure best practices in elder care in the emergency department."

* New credentialing programs. Disaster preparedness and response, pediatrics, as well as management and administration were identified as areas of interest for new credentialing programs. This did not surprise Wilson, who believes that management will become an increasingly significant area for ENA members across the next decade. "Many of our members are moving into management positions within various health care systems," she says. "And they want to feel as confident in their leadership skills as they do in their clinical abilities."

HELPING THE BOARD

"Having the information from this membership survey helped me tremendously as I assumed the office of ENA president in January 2004," says Wilson. "In many areas, the survey confirmed that we are right where we should be and are providing valuable benefits and services for our members. However, our members have also pointed out areas where we need to make changes as we move forward. We very much appreciate the fact that so many of our members took the time to share their thoughts with us, and we look forward to implementing the strategic plan to meet their needs."

To learn more about how the SOCA tool might help your organization create a more robust level of community for your members, e-mail [e-mail].

Linda E. Schwartz is membership and marketing officer, Emergency Nurses Association, Chicago. E-mail: [e-mail].