Your association’s community is one of its biggest assets, and enabling these individuals to connect with each other is essential for building a dedicated membership base. As such, one of your most important tools is your membership directory.
Every association should have at least a basic membership directory to enable member connections, stay organized, and encourage communication. However, some directories are set up better than others.
To help your association create a useful directory for your members, this guide will address:
Before exploring best practices and software tips, let’s answer a few core questions about membership directories and how they help associations.
A membership directory is a list of all your association’s members with basic information about each member, such as their name and contact information. Some associations have more complex directories that allow individuals to access detailed member profiles, which may include professional credentials, areas of interest, and other relevant details.
A membership directory can be public or private. Public-facing directories tend to provide limited information, while a private one gives out details members would only want to share with other members. Additionally, your association’s staff likely has a fully detailed directory for back-end member management practices.
A membership directory is ultimately a very simple but foundational tool for associations, and almost every professional or trade association should have some list of members that acts as a directory.
Your directory’s usefulness depends on how organized, complete, and accessible it is. When used well, this tool should provide the following benefits:
Your membership directory doesn’t need to be complex to fulfill your needs. To access these benefits, prioritize creating an organized, user-friendly document your members can leverage and update at their convenience.
Different types of associations should include different information in their directories based on what members are likely to search for. For trade and professional associations, your directory should include this essential information about each member:
To improve member engagement and jumpstart networking conversations, you might also include several of these entry fields:
When requesting this information from members, consider making all of these fields required or setting a few as optional. For instance, you might make social media handles optional to account for members who aren’t on social media. Or, you might add an optional hobbies section that allows members to provide non-professional-related information about themselves.
Remember that you can ask members to provide information for your association’s staff that will not be displayed in your directory. For example, when a member signs up, you will likely ask them for their email address so you can stay in touch with them about your association’s offerings. Then, you might make adding their email address to their public member profile optional.
To get the most out of your membership directory and ensure it benefits your members, explore best practices for maintaining, compiling, and promoting your directory. A few tips we recommend include:
Managing a member directory is a significant undertaking and can be a major administrative burden if your team handles it alone. That’s why you should allow members to control as much of their membership profiles as possible. This way, you can count on members to keep their information updated.
A few ways you can make updating directory information easy and encourage members to do it include:
Member directories should be user-friendly, so if your members have any feedback about challenges related to updating their information, take their concerns seriously. Look for membership management software that prioritizes the user experience and provides intuitive self-service tools.
Many new members may hesitate to fill out their profiles for your membership directory if they have privacy concerns. For example, a directory that publicly displays members’ emails may result in members receiving unsolicited messages and spam.
Provide privacy settings to reassure members that your directory is safe and secure. For instance, association platforms like Tradewing allow members to customize their profile’s privacy permissions. Members can select whether any aspect of their profile will be visible to the general public, logged-in members, or only the user editing the profile.
Of course, even if members choose to make information private to your community, it will still be available to your association’s administrators. For example, a member may prefer to hide their phone number and email address to limit unwanted communication from other members, but your association can still use these channels to contact them.
Additionally, you can decide whether to make your directory public at all. Some associations maintain private, members-only directories to protect their members’ security and make networking with their community feel exclusive to members.
Along with being an organizational and networking tool, a directory is also one of your most valuable marketing assets. Associations with large directories full of important industry figures are far more likely to attract new members than smaller organizations.
You can use your directory to bring in new members without sacrificing your current community’s privacy by:
For associations using an open-door membership model that includes free memberships, consider making access to your directory a gated benefit. This creates a small barrier to entry before individuals can network with other members seamlessly, ensuring that everyone who reaches out to your community through your association is a paid and trustworthy member.
When it comes to membership directories and profile creation tools, we recommend our very own community engagement platform, Tradewing.
Tradewing specializes in community management, including networking. As such, associations that use Tradewing empower members to create complex membership profiles that share the information they want to make public. Specifically, Tradewing’s directory features include:
Launch a user-friendly member directory within minutes, and offer valuable networking opportunities your community won’t want to pass up.
In addition to its membership directory, Tradewing is also a full-scale community engagement tool. This means that it provides a host of other tools associations need, including:
Tradewing also integrates with a wide range of popular association management software. This means you can incorporate Tradewing’s community engagement tools, including its membership directory, effortlessly into your organization’s current tech stack.
For more information about Tradewing and how it can help your association’s community, reach out to our team to request a demo.
A membership directory is an essential tool for keeping your association’s member base organized and active. Explore tools that allow you to create a directory that aligns with your members’ needs, such as providing proper networking features without sacrificing privacy.
To start your research into member directory platforms, explore these top provider lists of alternatives to the top association software solutions: