Membership research for professional bodies and associations

Every project is designed around what you need to find out, so the cost depends on the size of your membership, the methods used and the depth of reporting. As a guide, projects start from £5,000 + VAT for a short online survey with summary reporting. Larger programmes, for example combining a survey with focus groups or interviews, or tracking results over time, are priced to suit. We always provide a clear, fixed price once we understand your objectives.

A typical member survey takes around eight to ten weeks from start to finish: two to three weeks to agree objectives, design and test the questionnaire and prepare invitations; three to four weeks of fieldwork, with targeted reminders to boost response; and around three weeks for analysis and reporting.

We can often work much faster if you have a deadline, such as a board meeting or conference, and larger or multi-stage projects take longer. We agree a timetable with you at the start.

Response rates vary widely, depending on the size of your membership, how engaged and content members are, how often they are surveyed, and how the survey is promoted. As a guide, a response rate of around 20% is generally a very good result for a member survey and gives a robust sample for confident analysis, and many of our surveys achieve considerably more.

Rather than promise a figure, we work with you to achieve the strongest possible response, so the results reflect your whole membership and allow confident comparisons between different member groups. We have shared our five steps to a positive survey response rate on MemberWise.

Yes. Almost all of our member surveys are anonymous and confidential. We host the survey, send the invitations and collect the responses ourselves, so your organisation never sees how an individual member answered. Results are reported in aggregate, and we remove anything that could identify someone. If there is a reason for members to share their identity, for example to volunteer for a follow-up interview, we only do so with their clear consent.

As an MRS Company Partner, we follow the Market Research Society Code of Conduct and UK GDPR, and we are ISO 9001 and Cyber Essentials certified.

Most membership organisations run a full member survey every one or two years. Leaving enough time between surveys helps to avoid survey fatigue and gives you the chance to act on the findings, and to show members what has changed as a result, before asking again. If you survey less often, short pulse surveys in between can track key measures or explore a topical issue.

Yes, regularly. Sometimes lapsed members and non-members are included in the same project as current members, and sometimes they are the focus of a standalone piece of research. They can be harder to reach, and response rates are understandably lower, but understanding why people leave or never join can be extremely valuable for recruitment and retention.

Lapsed members who have left within the last two years can usually be contacted under the legitimate interests basis of UK GDPR, and a small incentive often helps to encourage responses.

No. Most member surveys are now carried out online, but we also run telephone surveys and a great deal of qualitative research. Focus groups are ideal for sharing experiences and generating discussion among similar members, while one-to-one depth interviews suit more detailed conversations and senior or time-poor stakeholders. Qualitative research can help to scope a survey beforehand, explore its findings in more depth afterwards, or stand alone. Most sessions are held online for convenience and geographical reach, and in person where that works better. See our research methods.

Yes. We can track results over time, keeping question wording and methods consistent with your previous surveys, including those carried out by another provider. We can also benchmark your results against other membership organisations, using questions from our pool of standardised questions that have been asked in other member surveys.

Reporting is tailored to your needs and to the people you need to communicate with. That might be a detailed written report, a PowerPoint slide deck, a short summary report, visual infographics, a presentation to your board or senior team, or a combination of these.

Organisations of all sizes, with memberships ranging from a few hundred to hundreds of thousands, including both individual members and organisation or company members. Many of the organisations we work with have international members, and we have experience of translating surveys and invitations into other languages.

Simply get in touch. You don’t need a finished brief: tell us what you want to find out and who you need to hear from, and we will talk you through the options and send you a clear, fixed-price proposal.