Six strategies for motivating member participation in your next board election. By Laura Lynch
Getting people to the polls is no easy feat, as any local elected official can tell you. Encouraging members to participate in choosing the leaders of their credit union is no cake walk, either. Here are six ways to get more members voting, suggested by Charles Dahan, a consultant for Votenet, CUES' strategic provider for eVote: Elect and Educate, and a University of Florida research fellow and Ph.D. candidate.
- Reach out to long-time members and ask for names of potential leaders. Use this list to assist the nominating committee in finding board candidates. Also, ask the members on this list to vote (and to ask others to vote); use specific messaging about their leadership in the CU to help motivate them.
- Use a commit-to-vote site. This is launched prior to the election and asks members to simply say yes or no to whether they plan to vote or not. The credit union can follow up with members who say yes and remind them of their commitment. Behavioral psychology says they are likely to vote if they said yes and you remind them of it later.
- Add the incentive of the CU making a donation to charity for each member who votes.
- Use gamification. Dahan suggested that sharing participation numbers by segment will encourage members in the groups with lower participation to vote. For example, some credit unions might look at membership by geographic area and encourage lower participation areas to boost their involvement.
- Customize emails to test out different messaging and voter behavior.
- Analyze voter participation data after the election. This will help to further customize messaging for certain segments in the next election.
Laura Lynch is CUES' products and services coordinator. Read more about the psychology of getting people to vote in "Boost Board Election Votes by Asking and Reminding Members to Participate," also on this blog. Watch a short demo video about CUES eVote: Elect and Educate.
