All right. So good afternoon. Welcome everybody to our Amherst Community Chat for April 1st. Today we've got some of our Amherst ambassadors joining us and we'll introduce everybody in just a moment. Before we do that, I'd like to give your town manager, Paul Balkaman, a chance to give any general updates he has. Thanks Brianna. Yeah. So this is the start of our budget season. Today was the deadline for the school department and the library to submit their budgets to me, which they have done. There will be a hearing public forum on the regional school budget on Monday, and then the library and elementary school budgets will be incorporated into the budget that I present to the town council on May 1st. So that this launches off a pretty robust period of the next three months really of during April, May and June of having the town council review the budget proposals. Deciding what the priorities of the town because we all know that your budget is as a statement of your priorities. And it'll be really interesting things we're really interesting times a lot of new initiatives that people are trying to do to push forward with not much money. And so we're we're still suffering from the pandemic deflation of our a lot of our funds that normally come in so we're we're struggling on the revenue side with a lot of demand so it's a it's a it'll be a really fun time to be thinking about things. So that's what we're going to be headed next few weeks. Budget time budget season. And for those folks who are interested in staying up to date with that you can visit us online amherstime.gov slash budget. From there you can see the current previous and upcoming budget and any information that's available right now for those documents so first we're going to introduce cat Taylor and Joe. I've been with us a couple of times for updates on the program off and on cat is the coordinator of the Amherst ambassador program and so I'm going to invite cat to introduce herself first and then we'll go around the room. Thank you. My as you said my name is cat I use she her her pronouns I am the coven 19 ambassador coordinator it's a mouthful. And I've been running this program since it started in September. And yeah, my background is in gender studies in Spanish my undergrad and my master's is in social justice education. And when I'm not working I competitively power lift and hang out with my dog. Thank you cat and I'm going to go to Taylor next because she's in my, my top top left screen here so Taylor. Hey, I'm Taylor Martin Graham I use she her hers pronouns I am on the ambassador team I work in the social media and outreach department area. And I am studying at UMass for my bachelor's degree in international business and environmental law. When I'm not studying like crazy, I am either in my garden, or working on my latest craft project or hanging out my cat. And yeah, that's me. Awesome Taylor thanks for being here today. And Joe. I use he him his pronouns. I have a master's degree in history. I've been with this program since September. I help cat with a lot of the programmatic things and I kind of have my, my hands on the pots here so I'm eager to talk about everything this program does. Thank you all for your, your intros and just before we launch into some questions that we have prepared for for this team. I just want to put it out there that the ambassadors are just have been so great positive team to have on board and they roll up their sleeves and are willing to help with almost anything we've, we've ever asked of them so I want to just acknowledge that and say thank you for that. Over this last difficult year. So we early on we've we've had cat on to talk about the program and I think one thing we wanted to discuss is the evolution of the program and what's changed since when you first started and have that mission critical. What does that look like now. And that's for anybody to answer so cat go ahead and Yeah, so I'll start a little bit and I think, you know, Taylor's working bringing that on kind of shows some of the steps and how we've expanded and then Joe you can talk maybe a little bit about the vaccine clinics and the hotline but really you know at its core when we when we started this program, there was the mask mandate in downtown Amherst and really, you know, as many folks know, sort of creating a culture of care and compliance through education I think over sort of enforcement. So you kind of catch more flies with sugar than with one that then with vinegar I think is the same right. So we really started out as really just handing out masks and being a mass distribution program and walking sort of the downtown area and letting folks know like hey you forgot your mask or do you know that you're in the mask mandate zone and kind of reemphasizing that that And then really over time one of the things that we structured the way that we built up the program and the way that we sort of communicate and staff the program is to be highly flexible. And so what we then saw was, you know, we do outreach which is sort of face to face interactions with residents so we did some out in October was a big push for both our permanent residents as well as our student residents in the town talking about sort of Halloween safety and things like that. We also do smaller outreach weekly in different targeted neighborhoods, but as the sort of the year went on, you know, coming like back into November we saw that we were then shifted to work at the polling sites and sort of insured social distancing just kind of handed out masks there let people know about some of the changes that were in place because of COVID at the polling sites such as hand sanitizer and things like that. And then community testing launched in December with a grant that UMass had received. And so starting December 16 we then were at the Mullen Center and greeting folks with community testing and what's been cool about that is we're at almost 25,000 interactions that we've been with community testing folks since that time which is really exciting. And then sort of as time went on and then once we had a vaccine, now multiple vaccines, we then shifted our focus and kind of helped be at some of those sites to greet folks, help sort of with like outside sort of line management, and then also work with the COVID line, which we had been staffing since the fall but has kind of taken on a new role which I'm going to let Joe speak to that because he often staffs that line, but you want to talk a little bit about that. Yeah, absolutely. So the hotline, again, has kind of changed since the fall. We've seen that since the start of, you know, January ish, a lot more vaccine calls have been coming in so people calling asking you know how to get an appointment, where appointments will be just general questions on how they can get started on the process. This is actually another ambassador staff the hotline on the weekends from nine to five on Saturday and we have somebody else 12 to three on Sunday, where we answer these questions live, also return any messages that might have been left during the week. So you try to get back to everybody and connect them to the resources that can best help them. This is kind of a change in the fall when it was a lot more questions about testing, contact tracing, you know, guidelines with reopening as we're still in the early stages of reopening. It definitely has shifted more towards vaccine calls now. But I think the spirit of the hotline is that we're more of a triage center for support so no matter what kind of question gets thrown at us. We're there with the resources to kind of point you in the right direction. I just want to mention that we're not just a concern line. Sometimes people, you know, cause the code with concern line. We're here to answer questions. We're here to hear your feedback. Doesn't always have to be a negative thing if you want to call us if you just generally have some questions and want more information on something we're here and happy to help you. So really the core of our work is it's a lot of relationship building and just, I think, particularly in the pandemic right when folks are feeling isolated having a number that you can call and speak to a real person in live time, or get a call back is is just really reassuring and Taylor I want to tag you in to talk a little bit also about the virtual side of our work that we do. So a big step in our programs evolution was obviously joining social media. So I work on the Instagram which I'll give you guys later but our Instagram really is focused on not just keeping up with like the state but also our town and our community specifically. And so what I work on a lot is, you know, just not just keeping up with like everything, all the new information, but also fielding some of that so similar to what Joe does is I we will put out information about what's new, the new phases a new scene clinics will put the dates and the times out for our town. And then we also get a bunch of questions and our dms, and we'll often put in our stories like people give the chance for people to ask us questions in our stories. And we can actually post a lot of the answers there as well. So we kind of try to jump ahead of, of, you know the calls that we're getting so if we know that a new phase and rollout is coming, we'll talk and post about that to kind of field some of those questions before they get back to the, to the line the COVID concern plan. So that people aren't just, you know, talking about that with them, but our Instagram is a really great way for people to kind of ask those questions to if they might not feel like calling all the time. And it's very open to a different, and a much wider range of people, especially for those who maybe have disabilities or anxieties about calling they can always come to us on our Instagram as well. And it's a little bit more. So people are able to kind of see the information rather than just hear it so it just takes on a different type of person. So we're really excited to have our Instagram be launched, and we are loving all of the feedback that we get on it too. And Taylor how can people find you on Instagram. Yeah, so if you want to go ahead and search for us an Instagram or online at at Amherst ambassador, all lowercase all one word that's it at Amherst ambassador and you can find us there. Can you talk about who you have a frequent special guest in your posts. Can you say a little bit about, of course, that. Yeah, so our posts we try to make it to a wide range of people. So your audience is actually so about 51% is between the ages of 25 and 44. So that's a pretty wide range so we try to hit a little bit of everyone and every Wednesday we do Winston Wednesdays so a lot of you guys have met Winston the comfort dog and so every week we share him in some way. It's always a joy because he's just the cutest thing so how can you not want to see that too.  So definitely check us out because we always have the best content for him on our page on Wednesdays and then you know some secret surprises every now and again on our stories. So we do that and then definitely look out for our posts we try to do a lot of outreach with our community so in our stories. So people often will send us you know different information or different businesses and Amherst will reach out to us and we love updating the community on what different businesses and community members are doing. So it's not just COVID stuff it's also about reaching out to our community and making this like a really wonderful and safe place. So definitely follow us for Winston content but also for community content and COVID health and safety content. Yeah, the color yellow. Everything is yellow. Yes. Which is a very happy color. It is immediately.  It's very it pops you know. We took the photo of Winston in the shirt when we did because I don't know if he would fit in one now. So we've had Joe and I have well sometimes Taylor's remote so we'll sometimes do the video and sort of send it over to her and we did when community testing launched I just remember we kind of picked him up on the desk and kind of like used his pause to navigate to show that it was pretty easy to sign up for community testing and now he's kind of the size of a bear. So last week when Joe and I were in the office we both got startled because he snores. It sounds like he's pretty fun to work with. We're going to have to get him a spandex or some kind of new shirt that will keep up with the growth. Well thank you Taylor for that description I think that's great we'll make sure to include a link to your Instagram page which we did initially when we post up this video for everybody so they can find it. So that's one way that you can keep up with the ambassadors virtually so one thing is where can people expect to see you kind of in the wild and on the streets what does that look like. Joe do you want to answer that one. I can take this one. So, you know, initially, the ambassadors were the program was created to hand out masks and we call the mask zone downtown, which runs from the border view mass down to College Street where Amherst colleges from Lincoln Avenue in the west to triangle So that's the sort of area that you can kind of see ambassadors out and about walking around, you know, interacting with town residents, distributing masks, answering questions, etc. But we have branched out from there. So you'll also see us at the Mullen Center, helping with community testing guiding people as to where they need to go answering questions about the basic process. Just as a sort of reminder, there is community testing that's ongoing Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursdays, Tuesday, 75 Wednesdays, 830 to five Thursdays, 830 to seven. So you'll see us there during business hours. And then additionally we do assist at vaccine clinics as they come up again, helping with line management answering questions about the process kind of getting people into the building what to expect and distributing masks as they do come in. The last ways you can run into us around town. But yeah, I just wanted to bet you mentioned the testing that's going on at the Mullen Center. A lot of folks are going to be traveling over the next few days, and just want to encourage everyone when they come back, go get a test it's free it's so efficiently run. You're in and out. I mean, my average time was about seven or eight minutes. It's free parking and just like shoot through get you know if you've gone away for the weekend or seen family or anything like that I know we're everybody sort of loosening up a little bit. There is the fear of a resurgence in our community. So we got to keep tracking it so going down getting a quick test would be really important for folks. That's a great point Paul, you know with with holiday travel anticipated it really is I think, from beginning to end and really easy process getting your appointments. Very easy there's always appointment slots there every time I go to schedule my weekly appointment so. And I think Joe are you the map guru on the team. He is actually our map. Yes, I love your maps great job. I wondered, you know, you guys get to actually be out in the community doing something. We talked a little bit about this that maybe Paul and I probably are jealous of we don't get to necessarily, you know, meet and greet and see people out in the real world as much as much so have there been. I want to share like maybe a story of impact, or something that really stuck with you through your work over the last few months whether it was a phone call or an in person at the vaccine clinic just something that really stood out to you that kind of signified the importance of your work. I'm going to go first yeah absolutely. So, I don't know why I keep running to this person in the same place. But there is just the nicest old woman, I see walk by the IS sushi downtown, I run into her maybe once or twice a week. And every time I see her we stop and chat. She just tells us she's really happy to see us out there asks us you know how things have been. Where we'll see it's kind of the same questions that we've been answering here. And just having a conversation with this person, I think it's, it's really a good thing that we have that element of human face to face interaction, you know, mask and six feet away, but being able to be that presence in the community. So I look forward to walking by the IS sushi on my shifts for sure. I love that. Thank you. Kat Kat has some stories I bet. Yeah, so I have two that I can think of one was when we were outside the vaccination clinic for the 75 and up. And we had a couple of like, that was just a really heartwarming kind of experience all around because I think for many folks in that population many had not left their home since last March and so there were cute little moments from sort of you know letting folks know like oh you can step up in line, you know, the line is you know progressing forward and having folks sort of say oh I'm so sorry I just was enjoying the breeze on my face and watching people because I haven't people watched. Or we had some folks. We had one fella who was 94 who looked super sharp and just buried dapper and we had complimented his outfit and he said oh I was so excited to go out of the house I spent three days picking my outfit out. So those kind of smaller moments to you know we had somebody who had stopped us and she said is this what my tax dollars are paying for like this program and really a lot of people in that population and up sort of hadn't really been in the downtown area because they were staying home because of the pandemic so it was really the first time that they had seen us we kind of had that a couple of those interactions similarly at polling sites. That's cool to see but a very notable last one that I can think of. I had a staff member come in after her shift and she had engaged with some of the folks who identify as homeless in our on one of her shifts and she had come in and she said, you know, growing up, she was from the Boston area and she said growing up parents had kind of taught me to sort of stay away from folks like that and she said they had such rich stories and I spent about 20 minutes just having this really lovely conversation with this person and I said you know what like, if that's what you take from this job that like everybody has a unique story and everybody is worth that time to sit and just get to know people. You know, like, I was like great, then you've done a great job and as you know in my opinion my humble opinion but there's just, there's so much richness in the community of Amherst and so just like you said, you know, we're really lucky and that we get to have those six feet away mass interactions but it's, it just it's exciting to kind of hear folks and it's also cool because our program, our youngest person is 18 and our eldest, our oldest person is 71. So when we got to do the vaccine clinics and things like that when we talk about peer education I think in the, in the context of Amherst it's often talked about as student to student sort of peer education. But I think in the pandemic which is really intergenerational it's been really cool to watch how we've had some of these folks that are non college age, you know, folks on our staff be able to kind of create that that peer based relationship and our team, Steve who's our eldest member on our team, he had said I had this wonderful interaction with this person at the vaccine clinic can I work the next time you know two weeks from now when he gets his shot because he was really, he was really nervous and I just feel like we had a connection and I told him I would be there and so you know we got to make sure to do that and having people show up and say oh you're Joe and Elise I talked to you on the phone like it's it's those sort of small town feels that highlights the privilege of this work in it in a different way I think. I actually have a story to even though I am a remote worker. I. So, a lot of the times we are always looking through the Amherst tags and everything on Instagram. And I come across so often like small businesses self employed people who are making their own things, and who are part of our community and right when it was pretty bad still and people hadn't been out for a long time. We got a lot of people who, you know we're obviously in a tougher place mentally, and we're, you know, struggling to kind of do their thing and feel inspired and so I was looking through pages and I remember once I had seen this artist, local artist who was just really incredible and we featured them on our story. And we got a lot of feedback and they messaged just saying like it just made their day and it was just a really wonderful way to pull people into our community when they were feeling very isolated, and we could actually do that virtually, even though it wasn't, you know, us seeing them in person so not only are we interacting with people in person but we are making meaningful connection online too. That's great and it really does take all different methods and mediums to reach everybody in our community so I think that's, you know, equally as important to be doing that in the virtual space. So we are coming up on our last five or so minutes. I, one thing I think people should be aware of and maybe it's not fully planned but what's next for the ambassadors, where will we see you this summer. Will your, will your reach expand from where you've been and will you be filling any other functions or roles. We are, we're kind of a constantly evolving program to have you hadn't guessed. And so I think for the summer, many of our students choose to sort of leave the area for summer jobs and things like that and so we are going to have sort of a shift in our staff but I think, and this is, you know, obviously up to, to Paul and the chief, who is my direct report as well since we're housed in the police station, but I think what we're looking at is sort of keeping some folks in the walking area and then partnering potentially with the Department of Public Works in the conservation area to kind of look at bringing on some new staff and sort of keeping our folks kind of in the downtown area I think that'll be really important we know, as of today that outdoor dining is coming back to the Amherst area and things like that so kind of a return to the basics is probably what you may see our folks kind of emphasizing particularly as more of our population becomes vaccinated. Hopefully in the fall, you know when we have an influx of undergraduate graduate students back in the area I think again we're going to have that sort of reeducation phase of kind of, you know, reemphasizing that so you'll definitely see us around in the summer. We might be a little bit of a smaller task force if you will but we will still be around and then our intention is to continue to help staff any of the vaccine clinics and things like that as well as the hotline. Great. So we're still in yellow. Yes, and yellow yes, as much as yellow can sometimes be a hard item to find in terms of items people have really become. We are known for yellow people will pull over on the side of the road and say you're the mask folks right like can we. And things like that so we're sticking with yellow and you know I think we like the idea of making a positive impact and just making people have a you know a big smile under their mask faces you can tell you can kind of see them smile in their eyes if you will, so we're going to stick with the yellow so always look for the yellow shirts and come and you know, stop us chat with us ask us questions we're definitely here to support and offer resources or just to have a conversation to because sometimes people just need that in their day. And we should also be at the farmers market probably which is going to be opening up fairly soon so you'll see us in, you know, the 17th. The markets are the eighth I think the June eighth I think. So, we're coming up to the end of our time, is there anything that you want people to know that we didn't get to touch on yet or any actions that you want to leave people with that they can do. And it'd be great to have people follow us of course, and even better if they interacted so a lot of times will post call outs basically on our stories or our posts asking for feedback or for people to send us photos. I want to start kind of engaging more with like hometown heroes and people who are just, you know, sitting at home even. So we're going to be taking photos and making all sorts of stories so people just want to watch out for those and get involved it's a great way to to feel connected. Great thank you Taylor. Yeah I would just say, you know, our program. I really love feedback both from my staff as well as the community and the folks I work for and with and so if you ever see sort of a, you know, a need for our program or an assistance with something. Definitely bring that to us I think kind of being innovative and flexible is sort of where we've excelled and it's allowed us to grow this program in a pandemic which feels kind of like an oxymoron almost but you know definitely come and reach out to us and the only other thing I would say is that oftentimes for both student and permanent residents. We do outreach weekly so open your door if we're knocking because usually we're we're not soliciting we're just, you know, wishing to have a good day, maybe dropping off, you know, a little goodie or things like that. We also have created some sorry we missed you notes that we leave in case folks are zooming or not home. But if you see us around just come and say hi to us. Thanks, Kat. And how about you Joe. Yeah, I just really want to say thank everybody for, you know, keeping doing their good work. We realized that, you know, we're out here to make try to make a difference in the town and so many of the members of Amherst town numbers really kind of reciprocate that we see a lot of masks wearing everybody's following guidelines. I realized I think it's kind of tiring after a while that you know, after getting vaccinated you might kind of want to relax a little bit but keeping up that mask wearing staying socially distant, really kind of keeping up with what you've been doing I think is the message I want to just kind of put out there. Everybody's doing a great job. I'm so thankful. I want to get back to normal everybody else wants to get back to normal. So just keep up the good work. That's great, great positive message. Joe, thank you. All right, so we are at our time. Paul, anything, anything observations you'd like to make. Two quick things. One is when we started this program last year, it could have gone in lots of different directions, you know, it wasn't, it was like we know we needed something we didn't want the police to be always called when someone wasn't wearing a mask and that was sort of the impetus for this, but the the crew here and the others who have just developed this in a really creative, socially understanding way of what was needed in the community at the time so I just want to appreciate everybody's efforts in that because it's been very thoughtful and respectful of people. And I think the other takeaway is that presence matters. And I think cat you sort of alluded to, or Joe you alluded to when you just met the person at IA and just at the vaccination clinics or at the testing center. It's nice to see someone who's there to help whose job is to help make sure you're okay, as opposed to just a sign enter here. And I noticed that at the clinics with the elder with the people over 75. That mattered a ton to those individuals because they were unsure and, and it just occurred it just has just has resonated with me that presence matters and I think you understand that because you said we need to know people need to know that we're present, that's why we're wearing yellow shirts and what yellow jackets people are going to know that we're present. So I appreciate that sort of thoughtfulness that you've given to the entire program so it's really, really well done. Ditto to everything Paul just said and as a local government nerd and diehard I would love to see how this program, or something like this would continue when, and I don't want to say when we get back to normal because that is not, I think where we're heading but necessarily but I'd love to see how this model could be creatively applied to regular local government business so maybe more to come on that. Again, I want to thank Joe, Kat, Taylor for your time today and we will put this up on our channel and share it on our social media. So feel free to get back to us with questions or follow up you can email us at info at Amherstimea.gov and we'll get it to the ambassadors if that's ambassador related. So thank you all very much. Thank you guys. We'll see you next week. Thanks Brianna. Thank you.


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Hmmm … Welcome, everybody! We're going to pass over now to John Atherton, who'll lead us in this discussion. Hello and we've got our first question which I'm going to answer as we're going. Is this relevant to just co-ops or I'm from a community benefit society? Yes, it's relevant to anybody. To be honest, a lot of what we're talking about will be relevant to anybody who essentially ya colleges any form of member. felly sut mae'r unig iawn ei bobl cymuned ac maidegledigrwydiau, ac mae ei syml. Mae'r gwneud yn allan yn unig. Rydyn ni'n rhaid i'w cael gallu y mwynhau sydd yn gweithio'r unig iawn? A'i gofio ar y swyddi cwestiwn? Yma. Rydyn ni'n ei gweithio'r cwestiynau sydd a rwy'n gwneud i'r unig iawn i'r unig iawn. Rydyn ni'n i gweithio'r unig iawn ar y cwestiwn, o'r gwahodd arddog a'n gyhoedd. Rydyn ni'n golygu'r discussion o'r pethau i'r angen i'r helpu gael ymgyrch, i'ch angen i'r pethau i'r angen i'r pethau i'r angen i'r angen i'r bys? Gwymno'i cael ei wneud ar yr angen i'r angen i'r pethau i'r angen i'r pethau i'r angen i'r bys? Prwy ychydig yn y poll ac rhywun o gwyn nhw'n golygu'r pethau i ceisio. Rydyn ni'n gilydd i'r teimlo i'r parwysau fod y gallai cyd-fynol ei ddweud â'r Cwops UK, a rydyn ni'n gweithio wedi'i gael eich gweithio y bydd y cyfenterwyr cy opposition am dweud i gael'r cyffer a'r dweud i gyfer bobl am weld yma sy'n gofyll parsleynol yn cael ei gael.  Ond ydych chi'n gwybod ychydig i'r ffordd a chweithio'r wneud y ddechrau. Mae'n ddau'r ffordd o'r tyfu a'r ffordd a'r gweithio, a'r ffordd a'r ddych chi'n gweithio'r webinar. Efallai, Rhaid i'n gweithio. Yn ddiwedd. Rhaid i'n gweithio. Yn ymddangos chi'n gweithio am y Cwopshuk, oedd chi'n ei ffordd am y gweithu. I'm in the middle wearing another jumper and hair just as dishevelled as it is there. That's that's lockdown for you. My name's John Atherton and I'm Head of Membership for Co-Ops UK. I've been here for getting on 12 years now and then next up we have Irina. Do you want to introduce yourself? I'm Irina Piston. I've now been at Co-Ops UK for two years. My background is a corporate background. I apologise for that and even worse in PR and marketing and communications so I come at this from a kind of heavy communications angle but really pleased to be here and absolutely passionate about co-operatives. Complete convert so thanks. Gareth? I'm Gareth. I've been with Co-Ops UK for eight years. I engage with members on a day-to-day basis around all sorts of queries and potential issues that they may have and also ground to meet a lot of members face-to-face direct either at their place of business or offices and also host some of our co-op connections local networking events which are now moved online. Great so we'll move on to some core concepts of membership. So I apologise beforehand. The other joy of COVID is my hand drawn illustrations to go with the webinar so hopefully you can read the handwriting and I'll explain as I go. So really at the absolute core of membership and membership engagement is behaviour. It's the changing behaviour of your members, your users, your customers and really just to kind of mention that right at the start that you know every from a membership point of view most starts of that behaviour or the action comes from a point of need. You know your member will want something, will need something and particularly with our members that's usually from the point of view of confusion or advice and support they need and really how you interact with how you that first point of contact and that first experience they have moved back with them affects future relationships and future iterations on that behaviour and so really just to really reinforce right at the start that you know your member does need something from you that's why why they're a member and whether you're in contact with them through events through phone calls through through your website your social media presence through email or through face to face if they have a bad experience and that experience goes badly and you may not even know it goes badly they will they will walk they will lessen their want and their behaviour to engage with you and it will be harder and harder for them to engage with you in the future because you've essentially disengaged them from that first contact if you have a great experience if they have a great experience of you whether it was a friendly face a really supportive initial email or the the event or webinar was very useful then they're happy you've satisfied their need you've made an impact a positive impact on them and so when it comes background for the next time they need you as a co-op or a community business they're that much more likely to engage with you because the last experience they had was so positive so first impressions absolutely do count and you and by building up good contact experiences over time it means that engaging them in the future becomes easier and easier although that's what the theory says moving on to the next slide so a really interesting graph explaining a bit more on where I'm kind of going with this this core point of engagement which is to get a behaviour if you change to get somebody to do something it really comes down to two points how motivated are they to do it how how much of a problem do they have that you're going to solve or how excited are they in your calls or aligned with with what you want to do as as an organisation and if their motivation is incredibly high they will probably put up with quite a lot of effort to to be involved and to engage whereas if their motivation is very very low it's just buying something from the shop or or there's lots of other things they could do then if you still have a high bar of effort they probably won't engage and so really see membership engagement on this sort of spectrum of of how easy is it for a member to engage with you and how much motivation do they have to engage with you and you can't and you have to balance those two things out so in other words the easier you can make it for them to engage with you the less you have to sell the less you have to really motivate them to engage or if you know that something is quite hurdle to get over applying for membership or or the rest of it then you have to work that much harder to engage them in it to get them over and that's the final point on this slide which is even at the point at which your your motivation their their motivation to engage and the amount of effort it takes to engage is about right they still need a trigger point to jump over so you've got to imagine they've come up to that if you see that red line as a fence they've got up to the fence and to actually engage with you they've got to climb over that fence they've got to do a little bit of a an extra bit of effort to get over and then once on the other side of that they're kind of you kind of away with them then they'll engage with you so both think about in every every piece of contact you have with a member does the effort they have to expel warrant their level of motivation to get involved and if that's about right what's the trigger you're going to do to make them go actually yeah actually yeah I will come to that event or respond to that email or or go and shop there and just think about those those two things so that's the some core concepts of membership moving on to the next slide something you might have come across if you've done your own research around membership and membership engagement is that the ladder of engagement or the ladder in participation and and it's very true it's you know there's loads of research out there around this and it's kind of building on the the point I've made before that it's very unlikely that you're going to if your first engagement with a member is trying to get them to be on the board of your cooperative or or to do something that takes a lot of effort don't be surprised that they won't do it because the amount of effort they have to expel the amount of risk and investment they have to make to do that activity is just too too great it's it's it's too great for them to do and very few people will take that much of a risk or invest that much in something without knowing what's going to happen and so usually what you would like to do with any any member is break up that journey in a way and start out and look at all the things you want to engage a member in and work out what you should do first to get them to warm them up essentially to get them engaged at a low level in an easy to do thing that's that that's less risk reputational risk for them or financial risk for them that's easy to do and get them involved in that and then when they've had a great experience of that you then move them over to the next level what's the next thing that's a bit harder a bit more of an investment and and then so on and so forth and eventually you may well find the next leaders and directors of your cooperative in the future and so this ladder of engagement is what that's really about and so the way I break this down and you can break this down in many different ways for many different situations is it starts with awareness so actually for a lot of us your members just being aware of you just being conscious of your news what you offer what they could get involved in if they wanted to get involved in even keeping abreast of what you do is an organisation takes a level of investment and an engagement and so really that's the first thing are your members aware of what you do the next level is do they associate with what you do so they're aware of what you do and they actually like it they actually tell other people they actually say oh yes I'm a member of or I did this and they're happy to associate with you as an organisation and associate that they're a member of you and that's a next level of engagement in your organisation the next level beyond that tends to be a comment or a criticism so you know yes they that they like you on social media they follow you on social media and things like that but when do they actually comment or reply or retweet what you're doing when do they actually complain or criticise what you're doing it shows a low level you know they've got some sort of buy into what you do they're not going to contribute heavily but just a comment or a criticism a challenge shows you that next level of engagement and you really should be asking for those you know positive and negative feedback then one of the call areas I suppose a lot of us want to get our members into it's that really active contribution and participation coming to an event buying something producing helping you produce helping you volunteer whatever is in your cooperative or community business where you know the member is physically and actively doing something and that's that's what we're all aiming for really but to get there you have to go through those other phases and then finally once you've got members who are contributing you know next actually they want to start having a say they want to be co-designing or co-creating or leading and actually putting themselves forward for position like being a director or or on a committee and things like that and so really be aware of that that ladder of engagement and just realise that but the further you go up the more effort it takes and therefore the more motivation that member needs to have so everything you can do to make their motivation to to improve their motivation but equally make make them feel like it's not so hard but actually they've already done so much there's a great load of work around the sunk cost fallacy which basically says the more people invest in something the more they're willing to do it because they've already invested so much and actually if people realise that's usually this case with volunteering if people realise at the start of their volunteering journey what volunteering would entail they would never volunteer in the first place it's just they got so far down the line and so invested in that organisation that actually they've done more than they ever expected and so that's generally what a ladder of engagement looks like and it's also being mined for that the ladders of engagement will be different for different people so for some people they will find it really easy like an elevator engaging in some parts of what you do and other parts of what you do they will find really hard and differently for different people so for example some people love a meeting you know they might be retired they might not have many responsibilities at home so they can give up an evening and come to a meeting that's not a huge issue for them whereas somebody else that's just really hard they just could not give up an evening or a weekend because of their time and on the flip side getting engaged digitally somebody might find it really hard to engage in a technological and digital way just because that's not the way they operate and it's a concern and a risk for them whereas somebody else a younger person it's not an issue they can use any platform in any way and they'll pick it up so just being mindful that all of your members and users are very different and how they what they will find hard is different for different audiences can we move to the next slide and so final this is suppose more of a tip really than than a concept it's knowing that all of that users and members are very different than each other and knowing that within your organisation you'll have very different ways of engaging with members it's really useful to do an activity called you know user journey mapping or you know when you when you google it google customer service or customer journey mapping or user journey mapping rather than member mapping and what this really is is it's an opportunity as a as a team within your organisation to really map out some of those member relationships and I think it's a really useful activity to do so I'll quickly go through it essentially what you do is you get the people closest to the members in a room and even better some actual members as well but that's not always the case and you map out a journey so it could be anything it could be engaging an event it could be joining whatever whatever you want to do but try and have a distinct journey with a start and an end point so at Cops UK a classic example for us is a member joining throughout the year we serve them and at the end of the year they renew and so that would be the journey we'd take a member on then what then what you do in in and using a workshop format is you put on a big whiteboard all the activity the contact points you have with that member and by that I mean print off the emails print off the web pages put actual examples throughout the the journey of what they what they will see and how they will interact with you what's your process you're following and put that at the top really if you're doing this on a a flip chart or a whiteboard then think about the why so you've got your processes written down why do members engage with you and why do you want members to engage with you at each of those phases and have a think about that and then the most important part of this workshop is to track actual experience from members which is why it's great to have members in the room or if you can't have members in the room collect loaded data on actual behaviour from members or quotes or testimonials from members and track what they what you think or what they tell you they think that they're feeling and experiencing throughout that member journey with you and so you you will plot that on usually between you know minus minus 10 to plus 10 and you track that and if you've got the image up you can see there's a red line where I've I've plotted and tracked it and what this is really useful for is you can marry how you think members are feeling and experiencing you and their journey against the actual bits of contact they've had with you and it's a really good way of analysing whether a specific email or a specific process you can improve because at that point in the journey members are not as happy and so you can do this for multiple different user journeys and of course okay this is what we would do and we will take time every so often to unpick a piece of engagement we're having with members and trying to work out why they didn't engage in it or why it was massively successful and it didn't engage in it and so doing a member journey exercise is really useful so that's it for some core membership concepts hopefully that's giving you some food for thought and we're now going to move into a bit of a discussion piece that Gareth is going to lead. So following on from John's concepts there we want to think a little bit more about the actual interactions that we have with members and how and why they might be meaningful to us as a co-op to us as an organisation. Irene can you introduce the next slide wonderful thank you so to kick this off let's actually run a poll and see if we can get an idea of everyone's thoughts on this so Irene's going to launch the post sorry the poll even and you can respond with three answers so the question we're asking is what member interactions are most meaningful to you? Well leave this up for a moment or so or until at least we get a good amount of responses that we can draw something from it so hopefully on your screens you should have sent the poll pop-up if you can select as many as you think are relevant to your co-op and the interactions that you have with your members and by all means if there's interactions that we don't mention there stick them in the chat. Of course yeah continue to use the the chat and the Q&A. So just about half of voted so we'll just wait a little bit longer as as people start voting more so interesting results coming in which we'll share. From the Q&A I'll try and speak a little bit louder as well all right Lucy's saying that she can only select the one not multiple if you select the most important then we'll go from there sorry just a few more we're waiting to hear from give you a little bit more time yeah I think we'll probably call a day there and end the poll okay and in some respects not by surprise the most the the member interactions that are most meaning for you are AGMs and meetings so you know a core part of being a co-op member is is taking part it's being involved and not more so than end of year annual annual general meeting or perhaps a monthly members meeting and I suppose why we tried to to bring this up and to focus on this is you only have a certain amount of time to engage your members and trying to think about what is most effective in how you do engage and what's most cost effective getting bang for the book as it were and how much effort does this actually involve you know running an AGM depending on the amount of members that you have can be a huge endeavour I know certainly with our AGM coming up and the the shift of that being a more online event this year that has meant a lot of time and effort and thinking this has to go on into how we actually shift that and certainly the thinking about this is an essential function that we have to run there and we know that it's meaningful to to both us and our members in terms of how they they take part in it and close second I think we've got there two social media zoom meetings since the lockdown a closing of spaces outlets opportunities to actually meet face to face so by you know no surprise their zoom meetings I think from conversations that I'm having with our members now we've all moved very quickly and a lot of our members have also made that transition to online very quickly it's been a necessary evil and a a means for an end for us so we've seen a really sharp uptake in members member co choosing to use zoom meetings and I think some of the learning from this is that those that have found it easier than others are now thinking about how they utilise this and try and engage with members in the future because I know it's it certainly can be difficult to try and attend lots of different events and being many places all at the same time so travel being taken out of the equation allowing members to to join in and to engage online is now providing us with opportunities to engage with those who might not necessarily have got involved with us gareth sorry john john's raised his hand just a part of this um poll discussion he just wants to say something anybody else who wants to raise their hand following john please do we can bring you in no problem yes i was going to say it'd be great to get other people's thoughts on why why they put a gm up um as a as a membership person for 12 years a gms are the what's the word the bind of all of our lives I think and it's something that we all struggle with I was in a really liberating conversation with a nationwide of all of all organisations and they've consciously decided really that the a gm is not the central point of their engagement with members it's it's a process that has to take place and they do it but actually they've decided that they're going to shift more of that sort of engagement into other meetings and and tours where the chief executive goes round and and tours in much smaller shorter meetings and they found it's a much better way of of trying to engage the members rather than to shoehorn lots of different interactions into one solitary event like an a gm so it's a this is one of the reasons why we pose this question is a what what meaningful what's meaningful to you as an organisation and we'll go on to another poll afterwards is that's the key thing you know an a gm is very much of interest to secretaries of cooperatives and community-based societies and I think as membership people with the focus on members always be mindful of of that but anyway I'm rambling does anybody else have any comments they want to come back with or thoughts in terms of a gms we put it as a we work with hails and cooperatives and we put it as a stipulation within their pre-tenancy that they participate in a gms so it's our opportunity to engage with members thank you any other ones that you would have chosen if you could have done probably social media because we do a lot of engagement through social media thank you so we've been thinking about what interactions are most meaningful to you your co-op your organisation but of course members members come first and so what what flipping this on its head what do we think the interactions are the most meaningful for your members going to run another poll it will just be the one answer then I'd imagine so to clear that up so it's quite a similar list but we're just asking you to flip this on on its head to the side perhaps think with your your own member co-op hat on and how you interact with the co-ops that you're a member of okay so the results are in then top on there direct phone calls and emails closely followed by joint second pre-covid events conferences face to face and the social media and I think thinking about meaningful engagement with members here this is going back to john's concepts and the behavioral change break points and that a member's motivation compared to the amount of effort that it takes to actually get involved and to engage something is is really crucial to that that meaningful engagement there and the direct phone calls and emails there I know it's not exactly um it's not something that every co-op team can do sometimes interactions are very much just over the counter or in a space of work or or wherever your co-operative operates out of there but I think in some respects this is a missing part of engagement that some co-ops are often overlooking that um you know having that that quick short phone call to try and help a member or to gain insight in what they need and and why they're wanting to engage or are already engaging is is really crucial as to what's useful if you are doing research around the topic a lot of general marketing and comms research is is applicable to membership and so there's a lot of research that says um people people engage both for transactional reasons you know a direct transaction of value they need something they get something from you but also emotional and emotive reasons for for why they would engage with you and I suppose what we what we tend to find at Coops UK and it might be the same in your organisation is you tend to hook people with a transactional relationship um the the specific piece of value they get from you but what keeps them in membership for longer is that is that emotional physical contact and so you know at Coops UK that if a member attends a physical event or has a physical face-to-face chat with with us they they get that much more of a bond and so it's within your organisation it's it's working out actually an again going back to the point at the start what really easy things and simple things can you get people engaged with to start with but because you know you're building up to harder things like events or physical face-to-face but the payoff and the reward for for those those harder engagements really do pay off as long as obviously the whole underlying point for all of this is the the the the contact they have with you is positive and a positive experience rather than a negative experience obviously those that have um replied direct phone calls nine of you do you have any views on why you know that's important to your members and perhaps um didn't wasn't as important on our first poll um I think it's that instant contact that they can have with somebody do you know what I mean so um you know whether it's a phone call or an email um we're we're a service provider so we're a managing agent to several hazing cooperatives do you know what I mean so I think it's that kind of reassuring instant contact that they that they can have with somebody and if if um you think members actually do see this as one of the most important contacts with us do you think as organisations we're putting in as many resources as possible in terms of that side of our engagement um yeah I think we are I think we're doing as much as we can in terms of you know we do explore other avenues as well as engaging with members but I think um particularly direct phone calls and emails I think that's that's probably one of the most important things that they expect from us really in terms of being able to get in contact with us and and having that sort of instant contact fill it commentary oh yeah we've certainly felt like it would be really nice to just be picking up the phone a lot and speaking to our members and trying to find out how they're doing at the moment but it's just been really difficult to find the time and we keep talking about it but they're not finding the time to do it and um I don't I don't have any answers it's just that I do recognise that as um a really tough one because it sort of seems like that gives the ones who receive that phone call really kind of clear experience that we reached out to them but um at the same time it is a very laborious so it would eat up a lot of staff time trying to do it so um we haven't kind of cracked it but uh I think it would be it's it sort of feels really desirable but yeah we haven't found a way to make it a sort of systematic approach yes John did you want to say something yes I suppose it's more of a top tip I suppose um before we we are moving on to top tips in a minute but um one of the things we're going to look to do at Cops UK more is we do a lot of member calls but we have over 800 members now and so we're probably going to instigate monthly or weekly kind of end of the week webinar chats so now everyone's very ofe with zoom then we'll probably start to particularly new members as they join invite them to take part in a bit of a conversation where they can meet the membership team and and and actually other new members as well and so it's a great way of using time efficiently so rather than having to phone have lots and lots of one to one engagements with lots of members by doing something like a zoom call or a webinar you can have one to many relationships which is just a little bit more time efficient for your staff and actually the member probably gets as much value out of it because they both talk to the the member of staff but they also talk to other new members or other members in a similar situation to them so I think I know we're looking at doing more of those sorts of like one to many conversations and calls that might just be informal you know they don't have to be structured webinars or anything that's bit of a top tip just to quickly come in on on the phone calls and you know trying to engage members one to one in recruitment we talk about member get member but also you know depend on the the size type structure of your co-op members talking to members may happen at an age or a meeting or in the place of work in the the shop the outlets wherever it is so I know certainly from some of the mutual aid groups they've been looking at organising calls from either certain areas or certain interests and and so it might even be worth looking at the option in the same way as the NHS volunteers were potentially going to do so in in members talking to other members or more engaged members trying to reach out and engage with other members so I've not really heard of many exploring it but it's you know the potential is there we we don't know how long the the long-term lockdown and implications of that are going to go on okay so top tips from our perspective on my perspective as I said I'm from a PR communications background and I've also done lots of different things like own cafes as well and this was before I knew enough about cooperatives but now and in hindsight if I was running a small business again and it could be anything it could be a cafe because that's what I've done before but it could be a bookshop it could be any kind of small organisation it could be office bound it could be a venue I know there's some energy groups on the line swimming pools whatever it is that you run if I was doing my cafe again I know that I would go mad on the co-op element so to the point where I would be in touch with co-ops UK and I'd be asking them for 50 of their finest posters and I will literally wallpaper one wall in my cafe with those posters and I know it seems odd but when you come from a kind of gorilla PR background of mine these are the discussion points in your premises that lead very much to the right conversations that get you members and as everyone knows who's starting a business you've got your kind of four to eight people founding members who are absolutely trying to make this business the best that it can be get heavily involved in the operational side of things and then you realise the co-op or the social enterprise element and messaging starts to wane a bit because everyone's doing the business I know how that feels but it's the element of the co-op messaging that is absolutely crucial and you've probably just lost your best advocates of that message because they're all embroiled in the business so use your premises use your what you where you are as your talking points and so I would definitely go big on the co-op element it would be the thing about my cafe that's more important than the best coffee that we sell it's the thing that I'll always be keep talking about and then when you start the conversation I'll be always saying but we need more members we can't do this without you so this is the nudge technique on explaining why this cafe or this work that you do this office this swimming pool what would be happening in your area if you weren't around and we all know a little bit of the nudge technique on our texts that we get from hospitals or medical or medical centres which say if you don't make your appointment that's going to cost the NHS £160 well now in Covid times we know that that's not something we want to cause a difficult with the NHS it makes you want to go to your your appointments it makes you not want to let people down so it's just looking at the similar sort of nudge techniques in order for us to engage our members to come to our events get involved in their meetings and just want to be with us in terms of time whether it's money or time you just want to nudge them in that direction so think of the equivalent nudges for your organisation is what I would say in order to get members to engage Thanks Irene, Gareth what are your two tips? From me this comes from experience and day to day anyway that is never presumed that you know what your members want I remember making this mistake some years ago and then spending a couple of days regretting what I'd said and how I'd engage with that member and it was because I had heard something and I presumed myself what their actual need was so regardless of whether this is a new member that's recently joined or someone who's been with you and your co-op for a long part of your journey my tip there is really just don't try and presume or second guess what their actual need is you know ask them and try and ask them to be as explicit as they can be about what it is they really want to engage with you on the other one which I think we've already touched upon earlier talking about direct phone calls and contacts is to address a member's immediate concerns you know whether a member comes to you face to face whether it's by email or by a phone call is that they're calling with a need about either a service or a product or some sort of interaction that they're going to have with you and it's about really trying to boil down what it is that their concerns or their issue is there and making sure that you get it right first time and if you're not able to to to to sort that thing immediately then it's going away and thinking about how how can you do so because essentially all the members are going to have this concern as well. Thank you. My top tips first one and be really clear on why why why you're engaging people in something particularly if that is a KPI from up high in the organisation so I had many people contact me over the years about youth engagement we need to engage the youth and my first comeback is why what what are you going to engage them in what's the purpose of it is it to improve is it to because the board have told you to engage young people or is it because you want young people to do a very specific thing and so be really clear rather than just setting yourself engagement it you know performance measures and all the rest of it it's really work out why what's the point of it and if there isn't really an obvious point then don't be surprised as people don't want to engage in it so young people being a good example is actually young people really do want to get involved in things where they can make a difference make a change and they're not interested in getting engaged in things in a tokenistic way and so be really clear from the start why why should they care about what you want to engage them in second tip for me is breaking breaking the membership meal into bite size pieces so you might have within your organisation a a big chunk of work or a big thing you want to engage members in and because you deal with it every single day day and day out it might not look that big or that that's scary but it really is if somebody's new to your organisation or doesn't even know your organisation then engaging is a huge hurdle to go through so what can you do to break that up and make it less scary so just for example a tip might be if you know you're doing an event where you want your members to join coming to an event on your own is really scary so can you get another member to give them a call and say I'll meet you outside and so they go into the room with another member or or other ways you can make the interaction or the initial interaction with you just less scary just smaller easy to do easier to bite into so that's my two tips and so now over to you really if you've got any tips you want to raise you can either type them into the chat or you can raise your hand and we'll call you out and you can share your tip on how to engage members or ways you found to engage members that's worked really really well so so put them in the chat or raise your hand and Irina will introduce you and and also I'd really like to know from anyone what what are the kind of frustration parts in your organisation that you'd really like to be able to nail from a member engagement point of view so I'll just let Jane come in to talk but have a think about if you could and let and share with us if you can what are the the most difficult parts of your organisation to put across is it the messaging let us know what's the most difficult part for you to to get over to your members and let's have a chat about that go ahead Jane one mute Jane can you hear me I'm just trying to unmute you now okay so is that right yes yes okay sorry so I'll start again my name is Jane Avery I'm a director of central England co-op and also a co-owner of case a co-operative that promotes other co-ops in Leicestershire so the so I think for me meaningful membership the importance is meaningful so looking at central England co-op I think it's important to engage with members in different on different levels so some members are members purely because we provide a need for people providing food in their locality and also funeral services and so on and so forth so and that is their engagement and and that's fine that's active membership and that's fine and others want to be engaged and we want to engage with people on all levels so I think variety for us at central England co-op is the is the key really to engaging with members and our members engaging with us so in this coronavirus one of our drama groups has obviously had to cancel what they were doing so that's cut back on their income and they have started doing quizzes online and that's brought in a lot more people to know about them who are particularly interested in drama maybe but that's that's about being support and being cooperative so that's one example and there's been an engagement it's hard when it's a big co-op to engage with grassroots levels and so that's just one point and the other point is from cases point of view it's using on the ground networks I think that I think there has to be a push and pull there has to be a reason for people to want to be members but that and some of that reasoning can be altruistic and some of it can be this is what I want what I need and the co-op meets that economic need or social need or need in my community yeah it's interesting Jane I wonder if I can ask a question in terms of your members do you think they they get why you need members do you think that's important for you to get across is that is that something that you grapple over well I think it's I think that I think one of the first slides that John put up about that ladder of engagement was quite important so a lot of people um and there are there are degrees of involvement in membership so I don't think it probably is very obvious to people when they are first engaging with the with the co-op why membership is important and integral to being co-op and you know the difference between a good co-op and one that is a sort of a co-op in name only yeah does anyone else have any other experiences with members wanting to get members on board but then finding it difficult to express and um and just interpret why the need is great why you want to member and what to do with them do they know who they are do you know um do they know what a member is to you um anybody else got any experiences of that that they want to share John do you want to come in I just think if there's no more tips from anybody else we could move on to the kind of Q&A surgery bits with our last so this is what arena mentioned before um this is really your opportunity now uh to really share any burning questions or or trials and tribulations and issues you're working through at the moment and you've got at least three membership people here on the line but also everyone uh in the webinar who might be able to help you with that that that question or that issue so if you've got a question or an issue you want to raise type it into the chat or uh or ask raise your hand and arena can bring you into the conversation so you can explain what your question or your issue is. Thanks Richard. So um our biggest issue at the moment is obviously um how we go forward in terms of holding ADMs at the moment because um we've got a lot of you've got a lot of members from our housing cooperatives um a lot of them are elderly they won't necessarily have the technology or the ability to um go online and do virtual meetings um so it's how do we move forward with anything like an ADM because uh a few of our co-ops at the moment would be looking at holding their ADMs uh in May. So um we've caught your case got a lot of uh guidance on online which we can point you to after this session is finished on how to how to conduct what you can and can't do essentially um everyone's rules are different but uh things around proxy voting or doing entirely online ADMs or essentially postponing ADMs so we've got loads of advice and guidance which we can share with you uh yeah Gareth put something up about how to do that and and like I say it kind of depends on how your co-ops builds so for example co-ops UK can run an entirely online ADM with online voting and there are lots of options out there whether it's Zoom or you can essentially you can pay pay organisations to to run your ADM for you online so it's personally perfectly possible to do it if your rules allow you to hold uh online ADMs but like I say our our advice and guidance is there um I didn't say this but what you could always do is hold a meeting on the presumption that nobody comes and then you can postpone it uh which I know some people have have done which it's not entirely uh good practice but it but it does work if you physically have to have a physical meeting and there's nothing you can do about it they've essentially just held it at the chair's house and no one's gone and then they've postponed it until a later date but yeah if you you can't do something else uh I do and like I say although our advice and guidance on on how to do it is uh is online does that help at all or can you do you know if you can do online ones I think our biggest problem is that our co-operatives operate under the 1981 fully mutual co-operative rules which virtually don't allow sort of meetings in a digital format so meetings are a technical space we don't face to face only yeah and one of the things we're lobbying for at the moment and getting see getting clarity on is how long a society can postpone an AGM for because I know that with the company legislation there they're allowing companies to postpone them for longer periods and at the moment we're just getting clarity on how exactly how long the society can postpone it if it if physically can't can't hold the meeting um so we'll we'll make a note of yours and get back to you offline about it okay thank you the Q&A sorry I was just going to jump in because Alice um has asked a question here can anyone give examples of how members participate in the organizations and their organizations except for AGM votes um this is what we struggle with in how how do members participate and that's a community farm running a veg box scheme um you know of course um well I'd imagine you're still able to potentially run the veg box scheme I know some community shops that do so I still managing to do so it it's looking at your members and how they they can still feel part of what it is you're doing I mean I know some community pubs have still managed to run their quizzes and they're asking for the members to form smaller groups and they can essentially have their own quizzes together other members such as I know um what was it we talked about feeding things back to the website so engaging members perhaps in a photo competition or something they can do at distance so they still feel they have a connection and they're still able to be recognised and shown as as members doing things and participating with the society so for these is the veg box um it's breaking down all the all the things that you need help and support with us as an organization and then trying to work out whether engaging members with those issues will will help you out so it could be do do do can you ask members for their engagement in the setting of your environmental policy and um for example all your policy on deliveries or any part of your business and all that doesn't mean is doing a huge long document sending it out to members asking them to really read a huge long document and comment on it that's a lot of effort but it might mean is polling your members through social media on some very specific questions about your environmental policy or or whatever and then essentially taking on board their views and feeding that back and so it's it's working out you know co-operatives and community benefit societies can you've got all these members you've got data on tap you've got people who are loyal to your organization who will give you advice for free which private companies tend to have to pay for so really do you think about how can you break down all the things you need to work through as a co-op ask members in bite-sized ways and then feedback to them what you did so as a veg box could you could you get um get them to fill in a survey of what are the most popular veggies and then that will inform your your your priorities for what goes in the veg box you know it's really simple things like that it doesn't have to be about voting at AGMs and elections it could be asking their opinion on anything and the crucial piece is as long as if you've asked their opinion for something you you do the you say we did you know you said you wanted more carrots in your veg box so we've done it and and that kind of response to to any sort of member feedback makes people realise that what they what they what they gave you you did something with and we've got a few more comments to just go through quite quickly I'll just bring Philip in very quickly who I know has been waiting for a while so just to unmute you Philip thanks um yeah I just had a quick one which was uh kind of when we're thinking about member engagement at the moment one of the things what we want to do is tell them what we have been doing on their behalf and kind of for them during the COVID stuff in relation to kind of how it's been impacting them and we've been trying to respond to that so I just wondered if you had any advice about how you judge the tone of on the one hand sort of respecting that it is a crisis and the extent to which we've actually helped them when they might be really struggling personally and professionally is probably limited uh but at the same time wanting them to know that we have actually responded and done some things and kind of tried to be there for them during this time um yeah just sort of from a communications perspective do you have any advice about how to how to judge that balance go ahead John I saw my colleagues pausing then it's a really difficult one because members people are all different and I suppose as if you're involved in membership you try to build an insight into the sorts of members you've got and so I know at Crocs UK we've got a fairly robust set of members who have high expectations but equally we can be fairly robust with them back we tend to find and so I'm always of the view that you're you're open and honest with your members about both your faults and where you've made mistakes or when they've missed something that they that you did send them in an email or all that sort of thing so I'm I'm personally of the opinion that I tend to be open and honest with members and and people give you the benefit of the doubts and people tend to respect openness and honesty yeah and Philip did you mention what sort of organisation you're from oh sorry I thought I didn't realise I was unmuted still um yeah I'm from community energy england which means that I'm more like commute co-op to UK than I am about one of your co-op members perhaps um so I'm sort of asking from a smaller peer really rather than one of your members perspective as such but yeah and um and do you feel that you've got a um a kind of a clear line on why you need members and you can express that to them um clearly or do you feel that's that's an area that you need to work on um definitely something we want to refine where we present ourselves but we certainly have um a really established message about why our members are really important to us group kind of particularly from the representative perspective in the sense that we call ourselves the voice of their sector so that's that we need their membership to um to justify how we advocate on their behalf so we're sort of a um a feedback loop in the sense that uh we we think they need us to help them get a supportive policy environment just as we need them um to justify our existence and the voice that we have but it's sort of within that context responding to the COVID stuff we've we've done it from that angle but it's just I we don't want to kind of shout about it and say aren't we amazing because of all these things we've done for you and this is why you should stay a member it seems like trading on a really kind of awful situation that some of them might be finding extremely difficult to to make ourselves look good yeah go ahead John I was going to say I'm conscious we've we're kind of running over so I'm thinking um we're quite happy to stay on the line and carry on q and a's and conversations with people uh past past past four o'clock um but if you do have to duck out duck out early and just to say if you do have to duck out we will be sharing all the tips and and answer questions afterwards and there will be a a feed a feedback form that goes out um but I'm quite happy to stay on and carry on with some answering some questions if that's and if you're happy to stay on do stay on um I saw a question from mid counties I think it was about engaging young people um I suppose just to say I go back to the point I mentioned before is particularly with young people be really clear what you want to engage them with and what's in it for them and equally because you know young people expect results pretty quickly so again structure your engagement around things that you can realistically respond to very quickly because they're not going to wait three months for a consultation to be over and you to get back to them so um try to manage their and your expectations around the sorts of things you can engage them with because you know you can ask them you can poll them you can have a workshop and you know fairly quickly you can get back to them with the results or what you're going to do about it and if it's a if it's a big issue that you know you're not going to be able to respond to them very quickly about then just try to be mindful of that and try to think of ways you can shorten the gap between getting their opinion on something and feeding back to them and equally you know real things you know I've we did a great workshop a few years ago from uh by a young person about how to engage them and they were very passionate and they were very passionate about uh social change and and the world and but they wanted it grounded in how it would affect them as as young people um so yeah yeah just just on that as well with young people um we have seen and also um provided fairly good and engaging discussions with business colleges um further education business colleges and then you've got a group of about 80 or so young people all thinking they're going to listen to a a business related powerpoint and then they start to unravel this almost secret um about cooperatives and that's a really good way of um engaging with young people in the business education sector just to jump on that um towards the end um when thinking about those strategies also be thinking about the platforms and the tools that you're going to use to try and engage with young people um I know in speaking to a co-op a couple of years ago they said that they were they were looking at how they engaged and tried to bring in more young people that would engage with what they do but also then potentially come members and one of the simplest ways that they they understood this was asking a younger member and saying you know what is it you you glean from your membership your interactions with us ended up then passing them their um facebook account and they allowed them to post and use that for the week and I think that helped them to understand there how young people wanted to be taught to and with John saying about getting some of those instant um you know combats rewards as it were from that engagement with them yeah and the other thing I would say about um particularly engaging young people or new new audiences is you could have a fantastic journey around something particularly aimed at them as an audience and then if at the end of that journey there's kind of this hard stop and they just enter the normal relationship or normal experience that's a key point that they'll leave on get disengaged and so I suppose the analogy could be you could engage a young people in a really fantastic exciting activity in game or whatever and then they come to their first member meeting and it's a really boring meeting done in a very old-fashioned way they're not going to come to a second meeting so some of some of the engagements about how how do you take the best bits of how you've tried to engage a new audience and try and bring those things into the mainstream ways you engage members because to be honest your normal members will be will be will be usually be happy for you to improve and improve the ways you engage them so yeah do more do more of your normal meetings the way young people might like meetings okay we have got just one comment I think it'll be worth just finishing on if we can Tanya Noon we've been surprised how many older members have engaged by digital means um from a tai chi group to creative writing groups I think we need to embrace this and offer more training it's a really good point isn't it and I think I've been surprised as well when the needs must the old generation actually will put the time into engage and have seen the great value in it so yes thanks Tanya for that um we're struggling with engagement with surveys during COVID-19 we've done that and I think I have a question regarding the strategies to try and engage young people thank you um I think we've we're coming to the end of it now so unless there's any other comments or hands up from anybody else if you do want to say something please do um we're just wrapping up anybody else want to discuss the final points John? It's not from me I don't think Gareth any final comments um I think we've we've covered quite a lot in a short space of time there um I know we've already said about members getting in touch with us uh certainly you know we're talking about engagement here and we want to hear from members whether it's COVID related or it's membership related we still want to hear you so um yeah just a call to say do get in touch with us if you need in future


It's one of the worst songs I think ever created, but now the high-hop song I think because it's accompanied with the dance.  I asked my patrons What do you hate more the fight song or the high-hopes song? Which I think objectively speaking is one of the worst songs ever created objectively speaking not subjectively objectively speaking you can you can figure out some scientific way to measure how shitty songs are and High hopes would be near the top of that list so Between the fight song and the Buddha judge high-hopes song My patrons were very clear They hate Pete Buddha judges high-hopes song way more than the Hilary fight song three times more as a matter of fact So, you know this poll isn't surprising I'm glad that they hate it as much as I do But let's look at some of the comments because I think that they really you know describe the situation well Stephanie says listen to me white people who get roped into dancing for a candidate is less cringe than Organizing celebrities to sing a song designed to manufacture hype and good vibes for a candidate They were shoving down our throats as quote the best audio guy says Centrists shouldn't be allowed to access the arts you need soul for that Once you've sold your soul to the oligarchs like their moral compass your musical tastes can only point to shit Tony says I hear the high-hopes song at work and it makes me want to throw up and now that Pete uses it I hate him even more Karen says Hilary sucks watch it Karen You better watch how you speak about the Queen Borgon says Where's the survey for best campaign song ever because even though I thoroughly dislike Donald Trump his song the USA freedom kids The official Donald Trump jam is completely awesome You could not create a better anthem for the alternate reality of our totalitarian present It's like Stalinist realism, but for American conservative kid pop music deal from strength or get crushed Every time Liz says Buddha judge equals cringe Hilary song equals cramp Garrison says definitely Buddha judge. So I mean there you have it I think that people on the left are in unanimous agreement that Pete Buddha judges high-hopes dance is not only stupid, but It makes me hate Pete Buddha judge even more like I Know like maybe I've just become way too cynical Because that's what politics has done to me covering it this closely now for multiple years But I hate it so much. It's just it's weird. It's robotic. It's culty and it's cringe-worthy more than anything It's cringe-worthy.    Stop doing it Girlie Mike Fettuccine needs your support on patreon. What a loser Visit patreon.com Slashed humanist report to support the low ratings humanist report sad My views are much higher