Membership Chair
Membership Chair
The Connector Who Builds Our Buckeye Community
Membership Chair
As Membership Chair, you are the strategic engine behind your group’s growth, retention, and long-term sustainability. Your role provides the vital foundation that transforms casual alumni, fans, and friends into lifelong, active stakeholders. By managing and promoting our unique donation-based membership model, you turn strategic board goals into local scholarship funding and vibrant community engagement.
Role Description
The Membership Chair helps build a vibrant, welcoming Buckeye community. This role ensures that alumni, fans, and friends feel connected, informed, and excited to participate in group activities. Membership is the foundation for scholarships, events, volunteer projects, and long-term group sustainability.
- Oversee the donation-based membership model and ensure members understand how to join.
- Promote club benefits including events, networking, and traditions.
- Maintain accurate membership lists by reviewing the monthly OSUAA membership report.
- Partner with club leadership to allocate membership funds strategically, whether toward events, operations, or scholarships.
- Collaborate with communications leads to ensure the website and promotional materials stay accurate.
- Serve as an ambassador for new and prospective members during events.
- Growing membership numbers year over year
- A welcoming onboarding process for new members.
- Clear, consistent communication with OSUAA and club leadership.
- Members who feel valued and recognized for their contributions.
- Friendly, enthusiastic connectors who enjoy meeting new people.
- Organized leaders who like maintaining simple systems and checking monthly reports.
- Individuals passionate about strengthening Buckeye ties in their local community.
- People comfortable communicating via email, at events, and online spaces.
- 2–4 hours per month reviewing membership reports and updating records.
- Occasional participation in executive board meetings.
- Optional support at events and outreach activities.
You will meet passionate Buckeyes, build a strong local community, and play a key part in supporting scholarships and local programs. This role offers high impact with flexible time commitment and the support of OSUAA resources.
Membership Chair Toolkit
Foundations & Strategic Vision
- Strategic Visioning: Look beyond month-to-month numbers to build a long-term culture of belonging. Ensure that new graduates, long-time fans, and established alumni all understand the unique "pay-it-forward" membership model of our group.
- Synthesize, Don’t Just Track: Excel in your role by diagnosing early trends in your monthly reports. Do not just watch names fill a list; recognize shifts in donor retention and proactively collaborate with the board to adjust programming before membership drops off.
- Establish a “Single Source of Truth”: Maintain highly organized membership records using shared organizational tools. By keeping clean monthly report data, you allow the entire executive board to make data-driven decisions regarding event targets and outreach campaigns.
- Document the “Why”: When presenting membership numbers to the board, simplify the data. Clarify how growing membership directly impacts local scholarship accounts or operational funding so the board can confidently back recruitment initiatives.
Instead of flat, arbitrary dues, your can or already does utilize a Donation-Based Model housed directly on your group’s website via the "Join" button.
- The Threshold: A gift of a group chosen amount to the group’s designated fund via giveto.osu.edu automatically triggers official membership.
- Two-for-One Value: A single donation grants the donor membership in both your local alumni group and the global Ohio State University Alumni Association (OSUAA).
- 100% Local Impact: The Ohio State University does not take a percentage or charge fees.
- Tax-Deductible: All gifts are processed through the OSU Foundation, providing donors with full tax deductions and official university giving credit.
- Year-Over-Year Growth: A steady, measurable increase in total active donors on the monthly OSUAA roster.
- Onboarding Efficiency: Ensuring 100% of new donors receive a personalized welcome and engagement invitation within 7 days of appearing on the report.
- Active Board Reporting: Delivering clear, concise monthly updates to the executive board that highlight membership trends and "Wins of the Month."
The Member Journey Lifecycle
- Identify and Invite: Actively engage prospective members at events, game watches, volunteer opportunities, and through personal outreach. Focus especially on recent graduates, relocated alumni, and first-time attendees.
- Share the Membership Story: Clearly explain the donation-based membership model:
- A gift to a specified fund activates membership
- Donations will directly support local scholarships and programming
- Alumni receive both local and global OSUAA membership benefits
- Promote Across Multiple Channels: Use events, social media, newsletters, QR codes, and board outreach to consistently promote membership opportunities and upcoming engagement activities.
- Create Immediate Connection: Invite prospective members into the community right away by encouraging event attendance, social media engagement, volunteer participation, or introductions to board members and active volunteers.
- Reference the New Member Welcome Email Template to communicate with returning/renewing members.
- Verify: Cross check the monthly report for first-time donors. Look for indicators of new graduates or recent transplants to the area.
- Welcome: Send a personalized welcome email within 7 days of receiving the report, acknowledging their specific donation and confirming their dual membership status.
- Invite: Direct them immediately to the next group event, game watch, or volunteer opportunity to anchor their connection to the local group. Reference the New Member Welcome Email Template to communicate with new members.
- Impact Reporting: Share how much money was raised thanks to their contributions. Connect their $25+ gift to real-world outcomes, such as the number of local students receiving scholarships.
- Exclusive Access: Offer early bird registration, preferred seating, or unique member-only perks at major annual events to show tangible appreciation.
- Appreciation: Use regular touchpoints to say thank you for continued support, ensuring the relationship does not feel purely transactional.
- Reference the Returning Member Welcome Email Template to communicate with new members
- The Calendar Year Window: Official memberships follow the calendar year (January 1 – December 31) to be in line with IRS personal tax years.
- The Soft Ask Strategy: In February and March, review the roster for individuals who have not yet renewed. Reach out with a warm, impact-focused message rather than a hard sales pitch. Remind them of the local students their past gifts supported and invite them back into the fold.
Operational Runway & Event Checklists
As the membership chair, use the following lists to guide your work on a monthly basis.
- Week 1: Download & Analyze - Retrieve the monthly membership report from OSUAA. Note new members, renewals, and the total balance in your assigned foundation fund.
- Week 2: The Welcome & Onboarding Wave - Reach out to every new member identified on the report using the standardized onboarding protocol.
- Board Meeting: Present membership numbers and a “Win of the Month” to the board to build excitement.
- Quarterly Digital Audit (January, April, July, October): Test the "Join" button on the website to ensure the link redirects to the correct giveto.osu.edu page. If the text, links, or benefits listed online are outdated, work with fellow board members to submit content for OSUAA can use to update your website.
Personalized Welcome: Send a welcome email acknowledging their specific donation to the group's fund using the text from New Member Welcome Email or Returning Member Welcome Email.
- Data Sync: Send new email addresses to the Communications Chair for the local distribution list
- Social Connection: Provide links to all official group social media accounts and encourage them to follow for real-time updates.
- Immediate Invitation: Share the details, dates, and locations for all upcoming group events.
- Value Reinforcement: Clearly outline the local benefits offered by the group (e.g., preferred event registration, networking opportunities).
- In-Person Setup: Print a visible "Scan to Join" QR code pointing directly to your website's membership page and place it at the event check-in table. Do this in addition to your physical sign-in sheet to capture emails for follow-up messages.
- Engagement: Act as an ambassador during events. Strike up conversations with new faces and share the benefits of membership in the group and how to pay dues.
Succession Planning & Passing Torch
The true strength of a Membership Chair's legacy is measured by how seamlessly the next volunteer leader can step into the role without starting from scratch. Your records should be so transparent that future chairs feel fully supported from day one.
- Align with the Mission: Every leadership placement, committee expansion, or structural update must directly reinforce the core mission of connecting alumni with each other and back to the university
- Define Measurable Success Metrics: Move past ambiguous definitions of board health. Establish clear targets for volunteer engagement, such as board meeting attendance retention, committee transition completion rates, and new volunteer acquisition
- Identify Structural Hurdles Early: Evaluate your board's operational tempo quarterly. If a committee chair is consistently missing milestones or expressing burnout, intervene proactively to provide support before the initiative stalls. Refer to the Board Position Risk & Capacity Audit for guidance on how to manage situations like these.
- Convert to Static Files: At the end of each fiscal year, convert your completed monthly report summaries, roster archives, and outreach logs into view-only static PDFs within the shared transition folder. This prevents accidental data loss or formatting changes.
- Year-End Transition Workshop: Participate actively in board transition meetings. Sit down with your successor to hand over shared folder access, walk them through the OSUAA report retrieval process, and share key lessons learned.