BitCurator Consortium Membership Committee

Background:

In Fall 2018 to Spring 2019 the BCC Membership Working Group, consisting of members of the Executive Council (EC), met regularly to consider fiscal changes to the BCC’s membership structure. They created benchmark documentation to assess member benefits and rates in other communities and devised potential tiers of membership benefits and rates that the BCC could implement. With this documentation in hand, the BCC is in a great place to form a membership committee to produce a member recruitment strategy that includes membership benefit and rate changes that meet future BCC sustainability needs. The proposed changes will be voted on by the community.

Proposed Committee Charge

The Membership Committee shall oversee work related to maintaining and growing the BCC membership base, including developing a new member recruitment strategy, evaluating new member onboarding and member offboarding documentation and workflows, and developing potential member outreach strategy and advocacy support. This group may also conduct periodic evaluation and analysis of current member needs, and respond to member needs identified by other committees of the BCC.

Scope

The membership committee is open to all members of the BCC and will be a standing committee that recruits annually. Members will serve a two-year term. The committee will work closely with the EC to address both short-term and long-term member needs.

Milestones

Develop a Membership Recruitment Strategy (Jan - June 2020)

• With support from the EC, identify financial and community targets for 2020
• Using documentation from past membership committees combined with future goals (as outlined in the BCC Action Plan), prepare and bring to the EC for a vote a recruitment strategy and 2020 execution plan that takes into account:

• Research or data analysis to inform the strategy
• Any new or revised 'benefits' (e.g., discounts, etc)
• Any new or revised ‘tiers’ of membership
• Communications: market services to a broad range of staff roles and other stakeholders

• Enhance onboarding procedures

• Recommend updates and create content for the BCC onboarding package
• Consider potential roles for current community members in the onboarding process
• Recommend additional steps to integrate new members into community
• Propose a timeline for any conceived training or orientation events to occur

Launch the Recruitment Strategy (??? 2020)

• Work with Educopia to launch any recruitment events and steward institutions interested in becoming members through the process

Develop an Advocacy Toolkit (July - September 2020)

• Develop a set of materials to send to individuals at potential member institutions to help them make the case for joining. These will likely be multi-format (e.g., graphics, one-pagers, blogs, presentations, videos) and aimed at different audiences (e.g., IT departments, Admins from various types of LAMs, government budget people).

Develop the 2021 Member Recruitment Strategy (October - December 2020)

• Using the data produced throughout 2020 and experiences from executing the membership strategy, develop a 2021 communication strategy and materials for reaching individuals from different disciplines and professions (potential archival researchers, data scientists and/or librarians, journalists, etc.), as well as institutions based outside of the United States.