Episode summary

Most membership organizations don’t lose members in one dramatic moment. They lose them quietly, one ignored email, one silent year, one stale website visit at a time. Doug Morris, VP of Sales, Support & Engineering at Advanced Solutions International (ASI), has watched that pattern repeat across hundreds of associations, unions, and regulatory bodies over decades in the iMIS community. In this episode, he names the five hidden mistakes behind it.

The five:

1. sending the same email to everyone,
2. ignoring the once-a-year member,
3. not helping members grow,
4. letting one voice do all the talking,
5. and running a digital experience that isn’t worth coming back to.

Doug’s argument is that none of these require a full technology overhaul to fix, pick one, start small, and members will notice. Along the way he makes the case for texting (90% of texts are read and actioned within minutes), year-round mobile apps, learning management systems that members actually want to open, and the unglamorous power of calling one member a day.

He also lands a bonus mistake that turns members off faster than anything else and explains why he now calls DataScout’s enhanced member profiles “the number one secret weapon” for any organization that wants to act on retention instead of guessing at it.

In this episode

• Why “email noise” trains members to stop reading — and the three-part fix: segmentation, dynamic content, and personalization that goes deeper than “Dear Doug”
• Texting as the channel that cuts through: 90% of texts are read and actioned within minutes, and mobile numbers rarely change
• Why the once-a-year member is your highest-risk member (the health-club analogy), and how a year-round mobile app pulls them back into daily contact
  Helping members grow with learning pathways, certifications, and an LMS — without necessarily buying new technology
• The 10-minute rule: people tune out one voice, so bring volunteers and staff into your emails, website, and content
• A digital experience worth returning to — plus Doug’s analog counterweight: call a member a day
  The bonus mistake: credit card surcharges on dues and events (and why donation forms are the one exception)
• Why Doug calls DataScout’s enhanced profiles the secret weapon for retention conversations, segmentation, and volunteer recruitment

Hosts & Guests

Riley Miller – Host

Sales and client success lead at Bursting Silver, helping membership organizations modernize iMIS, data, and AI workflows across North America.

Doug Morris – Guest

VP of Sales, Support & Engineering at Advanced Solutions International (ASI). Doug founded CSI, an iMIS-focused solution provider, and joined ASI when it acquired CSI’s product line in 2025. A longtime leader in the iMIS community, including NiUG board roles, he has spent decades watching what makes members stay — and what quietly drives them away.

About Bursting Silver

Bursting Silver is a fully remote consultancy specializing in modern CRM, iMIS, and AI solutions for membership organizations across North America. We’re a 3-time Great Place to Work Certified company that helps associations, unions, and regulatory bodies modernize legacy systems, improve data quality, and deliver better experiences for staff, members, and registrants.

Our unique ability is finding the simplicity in the complex.

Learn more about Bursting Silver

The Modern Membership Org Podcast

Full Transcript

Doug Morris (00:00)
So if you’ve got that person that’s only showing up once a year, my my first argument is that’s a high-risk member. That is that is like a person that doesn’t go to the health club but pays their membership. They are most likely to stop renewing. because some someday they’re gonna realize.

The delta between my membership dues plus the conference registration is not that much difference than just the conference registration, non-member. I think it’s a real important thing. So reach out to them, right?

Riley Miller (00:37)
All right, welcome here for the Modern Membership Award podcast. It’s Riley from Bursting Silver again, and I’m joined by a very, very special guest. We’ve got the VP of Sales, Support, and Engineering at ASI, Doug Morris, a man that honestly needs no introduction. He’s been around the game for quite some time, and I’m really excited to have him on the podcast. Doug, welcome here on our show.

Doug Morris (00:57)
Thanks, Riley. I’ve been watching podcasts. I’m impressed, and I will say I’ve actually learned quite a bit watching them. So really excited to be on here. This is awesome.

Riley Miller (01:05)
We’re off to a great start, you’re making me blush already. Happy to hear that you like the episodes. ⁓ And yeah, that’s the name of the game. We’re kind of using this as an outlet to talk about our experiences that people don’t have to hop on a call to learn about. These are things that we work with every day and driving value. So that’s also why I’m incredibly stoked to have you on. You just recently did a webinar.

and we can get into that, it’s essentially about membership retention and five key mistakes. before we dive into those steps, maybe for our listeners, just give them your background and who you are and how you got here.

Doug Morris (01:32)
Yeah.

Yeah, let’s see my elevator pitch, make it really quick. Got into ⁓ the association market many years ago. ⁓ people like to brag on the number of years, that makes me sound old, so I’m not gonna do that today. ⁓ started selling iMIS and in ’99, with my company, I decided that’s all we were gonna do. We were gonna focus on ⁓ iMIS because I believe that the in the power of focus, it’s just an incredible thing. So we’ve been doing other things. fast forward to 2025.

And Advanced Solutions International said, You got some great products. would like your products and you to come to ASI. And I’m incredibly fortunate to have a president at CSI, the firm that I had founded, Bill Boehner. And he said, I would love to continue running the consulting practice. So consulting practice went to Bill, still CSI, a ⁓ great solution provider out there. And now I work for ASI. ⁓ and I’m technically the vice president of sales, support, and engineering, which technically means

I help work on demos, I help do presentations, our RFPs, all those fun things that happen with pre-sale stuff. But ⁓ I love this community and ultimately the reason I’m still here is I want make a difference.

Riley Miller (02:47)
Awesome. Well, I’ve just been new on the circuit to jump into the road shows and we’ve hung out quite a bit talking about

all the new advances that are coming out with the EMS platform from data warehousing to the Power Suite, which is a collection of those tools that you had brought over. And so there’s a lot of really exciting things and who better to talk about it than yourself. ⁓

Doug Morris (03:09)
Well, I appreciate

that, but one of the things I’m most excited is the data scout product as well. So we’re gonna get into that as well because I think that can help people, even though that wasn’t probably something you were ready for.

Riley Miller (03:19)
Well, yeah, mean, I think getting into the point of helping and back to our original point about this podcast being able to show or tell some insights here for that webinar that you just ran. We’re talking about member retention. You came up with five key points, an easy takeaway, sit down for lunch that can help.

change the trajectory of how organizations are looking at retaining their membership and improving their engagement. Can you break down those five points for us here?

Doug Morris (03:50)
yeah, I think the the first one is so many organizations today are email noise. They’re sending the same email to everybody. and what happens is people just stop

Reading those emails. They they just delete them because they know there’s nothing special in there for them. the other thing that happens is, and I’ve seen this with organizations, ⁓ the members they show up once a year for the big conference and then they’re silent. They’re not a volunteer, they’re not interacting, they’re not helping other members. You will never hear from them again and poof, they’re they’re gone one day. And you’re like, Where did Bob go? And he’s just not there. So and one of the reasons that happens is you’re not helping members grow. People join.

going not for profits to grow, to learn, to become better. And they want to be surrounded by peers that are going to help them do that. And when we stop doing that, that’s a big problem.

I see this too. You just a lot of organizations are small, they’re there’s one voice, and people are like, I know that voice. And so that means you’re just not getting enough volunteer engagement. So a lot of times we have it where someone’s there’s just one voice and it becomes monotonous. As you saw in the webinar yesterday, we had three different people talk in 30 minutes. We want to break it up. We don’t want the same person talking just like today. It’s not just me lecturing the world or you talking everything. So and then it all sort of combines into your digital experiences and worth coming back to. People aren’t

People want to get on their phone and check out LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, TikTok. They wanna do that. It’s fun. It’s good to go back. But if you’ve got nothing fun or exciting for them to come to, they’re gone. And these are all just little things to be aware of.

Riley Miller (05:20)
Yeah, I mean it goes back to one of the episodes I talked with Al where, it’s maintaining that relevance. You’re competing with a lot of these different platforms that have engineered the attention economy and they’ve raised the bar for what an experience should be. If you’re not keeping up with that and you’re not meeting those expectations, you’re going to fall by the wayside or get ignored. think calling back to that point about being a conference

Doug Morris (05:36)
Yeah, exactly.

Riley Miller (05:46)
organization as well where you only see them once per year or it could be around renewals as well. You’re always like catching up when it’s time to pay. Yeah. So with all of these problems that organizations are facing in terms of capturing that relevance or not falling into the noise, maybe break it down for the first one with the emails, how organizations can

Doug Morris (05:53)
You want money.

Riley Miller (06:10)
adapt or overcome this common challenge.

Doug Morris (06:13)
Yeah, and I think I was I was thinking about this earlier today. ⁓ one of the first things you can do is segmentation. it’s not the same email to everyone. And I know you’ve got an incredible way to do that now. With Data Scout, I like that where I can actually break my members or donors into a group. Those are the groups if I’m gonna send a very specific email, they should feel like they’re special, not dear member. And even writing dear Doug doesn’t make that email special. That email needs to be segmented to me. So I want to make sure.

that I’m getting email that not everyone’s getting. So if if you were to get the same email I got, you’re like, why are they explaining this to me? I don’t care about this stuff. Right? So we want to segment it. The other thing is get some dynamic content in there. As you said, you’re you’re somewhat new, you know, five years or whatever into this community. I’ve been around here forever. I’m an old guy, you know, segment the content too.

Doug Morris (07:03)
You know what I might or dynamic content, right? The content that I read should be a little different than what you read if we’re getting the same newsletter. and back to the personalization, you know, you’ve got to go a little above dear Doug or dear Riley. Those are three quick things you can do. and I I

I think a common theme in what Al and James said in your earlier podcast is you don’t have to do them all. And you don’t have to do it’s not like you have to reinvent the wheel. Pick one small thing and address it. And it’s not like you need to buy new technology.

Or anything now, technology is gonna help you, but just pick one of those things and just say, Are we sending the same email to everyone? Let’s stop doing that. Let’s find and do five emails to five different segments of members and let’s figure out how to segment them. So you can pick you can start small and actually create something really powerful, and members will notice.

Riley Miller (07:51)
Yeah, and staff too. I think

it’s very considerate when you’re changing processes and how you’re approaching it. You’re leaving yourself some controlled variables. If you’re starting with those problem cases by case, then you can actually see what we’re doing different, if it’s creating an impact, and scaling from there.

Doug Morris (08:08)
Yeah, and that’s a great way. You know, if you check check your open rates or whatever, you should see it increase. And then really our big wow, real opportunity for ⁓

You know, your email noise is texting. some people go and say, that’s terrible, but it it’s a surefire way. Yeah. Ninety percent of all texts are read and they’re actioned within, you know, minutes versus emails. So I believe that if you want to get through that email noise, it’s a text. And that doesn’t mean you text every day. It doesn’t mean you text every week, but you text when it’s important and you want to get through to them. I’ve often said that I’ve missed the early bird registration for an association, an event that I love to go to, and I’ve missed it.

Every year because I don’t read their email. But boy, if they texted me and said early bird ends tonight, ⁓ the thousands of dollars I could have saved over the years would have been wonderful. because it’s two hundred dollars and nothing drives me more nuts than when I log on on July.

fifth and I go, I missed it by a day. my gosh. So you want to you want to cut through the noise? It’s texting. I really believe ⁓ that’s important. The other thing I’ll say is the mobile numbers don’t change these days. That’s a real important thing to get in the right way. You can’t abuse it and you have to follow the your local laws, but a person’s mobile number rarely changes. So I love that from a you know member identifier if you will.

Riley Miller (09:24)
Yeah, because when you’re working with these organizations, trade associations for example, or unions, they’re tied to an employer email. If they change employers, they’re changing emails and it can easily go into their junk or into an inactive inbox. I, for one, have had the same number for years and that’s just based on convenience.

Doug Morris (09:43)
Nobody changes. You move, you can move. I I I promise you, if you if I were to move to Canada, I would do everything in my power to try and keep my cell number.

Riley Miller (09:50)
Yeah, keep it strong. think to your note about even as a new avenue for connecting being text messages, I’ve seen it quite a bit with keeping in touch with artists that I follow when they’re going on tours. It’s maintaining a new connection where one has been oversaturated and there’s still an opt-in process. It’s not invasive if I’m accepting to put my number down too. So it’s just one more outlet that I’m…

Doug Morris (09:52)
Yeah.

Riley Miller (10:16)
I’m asking to be contacted. I think it’s very important to look at it that way.

Doug Morris (10:19)
Same sort of thing, you know, you and I we we love our music and I rely on my friends saying don’t forget so-and-so is coming to town. I’m like, how would I know? I would love to know a text if I were to put it put in my 10 favorite artists and get a message that it’s saying, Don’t forget so-and-so’s coming this, you know, in June, July, August. I would love it because I won’t see those emails from the promoters.

Riley Miller (10:40)
Right. And so on the topic, good segue on showing up, you highlighted ⁓ the other issue being that your members only show up once per year. So it could be once per year for renewal, it could be once per year.

for conference, but you only have that one touch point over 365 strategies, are you employing or recommending for organizations that face that challenge to be able to engage more consistently?

Doug Morris (11:02)
Well it was interesting. I met with a lady who’s run several associations, Bonnie recently, and she said you can only go so far with everything you’re doing, you have to reach out to them sometimes and ask them.

She said volunteers love to be asked to do more. So if you’ve got that person that’s only showing up once a year, my my first argument is that’s a high-risk member. That is that is like a person that doesn’t go to the health club but pays their membership. They are most likely to stop renewing. So a person paying their dues that shows up once a year, I believe, is a high-risk member because some someday they’re gonna realize.

The delta between my membership dues plus the conference registration is not that much difference than just the conference registration, non-member. So I think it’s a real important thing. So reach out to them, right? We want to

our engagement scores. We want to be able to act on them. But the real opportunity, I think, and everything we’ve been talking about, is a mobile app.

⁓ yeah, mobile app really allows me to I can look up other members, I can reach out to them, I can get push notifications and whatnot. That’s gonna pull that once-a-year member into interacting with your organization every day. And I think that’s super powerful. So I do believe the second, you know, magic bullet, if you will, is a mobile app.

and don’t use it just for your event of course. Make it year round. That’s the other mistake people do. They get a mobile app and they use it for their event.

That’s great, but you’ve just wasted all that money and you could have done so much more. So I do believe it’s a real key thing, especially as the membership demographic gets younger. ⁓ the mobile app, the texting are going to be things that associations are gonna have to start to embrace as they support a younger member base.

Riley Miller (12:44)
Right, right. Yeah,

I’d be guilty there.

Doug Morris (12:46)
Yeah. I didn’t want to call you out there, but

Riley Miller (12:49)
And so when it comes to that consistent engagement, not just from a renewal standpoint, but conferences lead into professional development, and you mentioned not helping your members grow. So maybe for those organizations dedicated to providing those credentials or those learning opportunities, what would you say to those ones that are struggling to support their members’ growth?

Doug Morris (13:11)
I think it’s a valid thing. I think ⁓ what happens is I join an organization because I want to get better. I wanna I wanna learn more. As I’ve mentioned, it’s it’s important for me. And if you’re not providing that, why am I a member? You know, if you’re not helping me grow. They they the ASAE says the number one thing is community. And I think that happens over time. But in the beginning, you don’t instantly become part of a community. So you’re there to learn, you’re there to grow.

⁓ I really think that the number one way to do that is I think almost every organization should have a learning management system, an LMS. and how you design that and how you structure it is critical. Now, I’m not saying you have to go buy a learning management system, right? We’ve got you’re gonna have you’ve got a great podcast going, you know. I could go and if I had a ⁓ modern membership organization, I might put your podcast links on there. that’s simple enough, right? It’s it’s the learning is

Is there, ⁓ you know, there’s a new podcast out. I love that. Now, granted, I could subscribe to it, but even that, so you don’t have to buy an LMS. I do believe an LMS helps people on their journey, it helps them try to get that certification, it helps them try to get what we like to call the gold star. People love that. Look what I got. You know, you always talk about all those certification, you know, after people’s names and everything. You know, someday I’ll have all those. Actually, you have quite a few of them too, come to think of it. And and you’re a little proud of those, and you worked for them and you got those through an LMS.

Riley Miller (14:17)
Try to little Try to be a little bit created.

Where are my badges?

Doug Morris (14:33)
a mess. So there’s my point proven. You’ll just put put a dot on that period and cross that T.

Riley Miller (14:40)
Well, yes, ⁓ I get as I’m a solutions provider into the ⁓ CiSE and making sure that I’m wearing those credentials proudly because that’s part of my business. That’s also my professional growth and that comes back to always learning as well. I’m tied to an organization that is trying to improve my performance and ergo I get to

perform better in my role. So that has a full circle effect, I think.

Doug Morris (15:10)
Yeah, it drive it drives the right people and those are the people you want as members because not only are they going to be engaged, but I suspect they’re gonna be great volunteers. ⁓ and if you know you don’t measure engagement as volunteering, I think you should. But the volunteering, the engagement, the wanting to share, you know, as we’ve been on many roadshows together, you’re sharing, you’re showing best practices, you’re showing things you love doing that. I’m assuming you love doing it because you smile when you do it. but you know, I think that’s because you want to give back.

Riley Miller (15:39)
Yeah. And I mean, this kind of leans into that next point that you made about hearing from multiple voices. It’s not just me on the road. We also have

James Harrison, he’s on the road talking about data scout but we’re also in rooms with other people from the iMIS users group who are sending their members to train and teach and pass along a lot of golden nuggets of knowledge as well. I think that kind of plays well into your point about not hearing from one voice. What does that look like in addition to the example that you made from the webinar, what does that look like then from an organization standpoint if there’s just one kind of…

person, pillar of knowledge or one vocal point.

Doug Morris (16:18)
Once again I think people start to tune out.

Studies show that after 10 minutes of someone talking, people stop listening. I always liked watching Steve Jobs during an Apple event. He’d get up on stage, show something good, and poof, he was gone. I’m like, why is he not on stage? Dynamic gentleman, love him. And but he was gone so fast. Well, even he, people start to tune out after a while. So they bring someone new in. So when we’re in person, we’re changing voices as we’ve talked about. But the same thing happens in our text messages, in our mobile app, in our LMS. If it’s one person preaching to everybody.

They’re gonna see through it. So ask your volunteers to bring in a different voice. Ask your staff members if you have them to bring in a different voice. I believe that website upkeep or updates should be a community-wide function, not just staff, not just your top volunteers. Get the whole community involved in your website updates because the more voices, the better. ⁓ as you and I both know, we have different strengths, and when we were out there ⁓

showing great stuff to people, it’s a different voice. People love that. They listen, they lean in, they go, well, this is a little different. And I think it applies to everything that we’ve talked about. That email you’re sending out, it can’t be written by the same person. They’ll read right through it. It’s we we have a tone. Even if I take every email I use and I drop into AI and say rewrite this better, it says this I’ve made this sound more Doug like. So AI even knows my tone and my inflections and everything like that. That’s fine.

But if that I’m the only voice and I’m the only one doing that, AI is tweaking my voice and saying I’ve made this more Doug-like over and over again. We don’t want that.

Riley Miller (17:53)
Dear Doug. Well, ⁓ so that I think kind of rounds off into the experience as well. You’re seeing from multiple channels, you’re seeing multiple voices, and you’re seeing multiple opportunities to get involved. How does that play into a well-rounded…

Doug Morris (17:54)
Yes.

Riley Miller (18:11)
experience to touch on the final point that you addressed as well as maybe the experience isn’t worth coming back to.

Doug Morris (18:17)
Yeah, ⁓ if once again I’m I’m going on social media because I’m hearing different people talk.

Right. I’m I’m seeing different stories and different perspectives. I am I’m I’m interested, everything we’ve talked about. If you have the if if it’s all the same and you’re not texting, you’re sending the same email on your your and your website’s stagnant or it’s all one voice, your digital experience isn’t worth coming back to. I have no desire to go on that website because it’s the same thing. I have no desire to open that email. So once again, the text, right? Let’s change up the digital experience a little bit with

Texting. Let’s change up the digital experience a little bit with a learning management. ⁓ what new courses are out there, right? And let’s go and drive with that. Hey, how about a text that says a new course was just released? You know, that would be awesome. And then let’s go and do it with a mobile app, right? I could go ahead and get a push notification. I keep wanting to grab my phone. I could get a push notification that says new learning management course available, early bird discount ready to expire and stuff like that. So get me back or new content on my website. So I think.

I think all that’s important. And then the one thing Bonnie wanted me to remind me of is

Doug, you’re talking digital here. I mean, that’s so important, but don’t forget the in-person thing. So there’s nothing wrong with picking up the phone. and I think a lot of us are so busy with work and we’re so busy with that next thing. And then we just listened to another podcast that told us everything we were doing wrong. And I got a whole list of things to address. You know what? Call a member a day, call a donor a day. The insight you will get will be amazing. ⁓ and you know what, you might get a new volunteer out of it, you might get someone new. So as we’re talking digital.

texting and LMSs and apps and all these things, don’t forget the in-person thing. It’s just so powerful.

Riley Miller (19:58)
Well, yeah, there’s nothing that…

I think instills a better sense of community than having a personal connection. Face to face, that’s one of the biggest perks from having in-person conferences, but having a phone call being reached out to for some valued feedback, you’re now invested. You’re part of the process.

Doug Morris (20:12)
Yeah.

Yeah. It’s almost like when a teacher calls on you in class. You know, now you’re knowing, no, another call might come in. I better stay on board. You know, they might ask me about the website. So and I care, you know.

I a friend of mine joined a very expensive association and she said no one ever reached out to her. And she’s like, it was a couple thousand dollars. And when it came to time to renew, she’s like, Absolutely not. You know, ⁓ not a large association, so it would have been that hard for the executive director to reach out and say, I’m glad you joined. But she never heard anything. And so she never renewed. So

So if you’ve talked about in your other podcasts, there’s not some like it’s not a million things you gotta do. Pick one thing that we’ve talked about and go with it and see how it works.

Riley Miller (20:54)
Yeah.

Yeah. And so as we’ve stacked these ideas, we’re getting a clear picture of not necessarily processes, but also opportunities for resources or tools to put into your stack. know we’ve…

Prefaces with James’s conversation about not looking at it as a full overhaul We were identifying that one issue, but as we’re ticking off these issues by virtue of being with ASI, ASI has also adapted your stack to include a lot of Tools dedicated to these features. Could you explain a little bit about ASI’s approach in turning what would be engaging members into?

having resources to engage with those members.

Doug Morris (21:35)
Yeah, and I think this gets into where some technology can help. ⁓ one of the solutions I had at my previous company that ASI acquired is a product called Text Messenger that allows us to easily text from iMIS

and I think we’re seeing more and more people adopt that because they want to break through the email noise. They ⁓ also have an incredible mobile app that they acquired a couple years ago because they saw the need that a wonderful engagement management system like IMIS needs to engage people, and nothing works better than having a mobile app. And then finally, they also acquired a product called Talk Class. It’s an incredible learning management system that really is designed to do everything I’ve talked about, to take your

Your members on their journey. Don’t love that story, that word, but you know, it’s, you know, keep your member. It’s not a journey, you know, it’s just a path. and it’s a great product to keep people coming back. And it was interesting. I was talking with some of the product people there.

And they’re like, it has to look pretty. I’m like, what? It has to look pretty. We’re there about learning things. They said, if the the main page isn’t beautiful, it’s not going to draw them in to start clicking. So they spent a lot of time going, Hey, that intro page has to be beautiful and draw people in and go, ooh, what’s that? And you have to create learning pathways and all these other, you know, incredible things that all these smart people have figured out about how to make people continue to learn. So

Riley Miller (22:54)
Yeah, and gamification. I’m for one a sucker for gamified.

Doug Morris (22:58)
Yeah. there

there are people that fall for that. I just am like, what? I’m so busy. How do you have time for that? You know, and then you win the little prize at the end of the conference. And I’m like, I wish I could have done that. So someday I will win that prize. Yes, right. Someday I will be that person.

Riley Miller (23:11)
Someday, Doug.

Well, I mean, looking at our time here, I wanted to slide in one more note you made at the end of the webinar yesterday. There was a bonus, and I feel like that was your point that you talked to.

Doug Morris (23:25)
Yeah, I believe it’s it’s probably the number one thing that turns off members. and that’s a credit card surcharge on your dues, on your event, on your products. nothing bothers me more than and give us a little extra.

⁓ the reason that drives me nuts is in this day and age, I think we can all agree that right now, not-for-profits need their members more than their members need them. Now, your podcast talk about how to change that. And I love that, right? Because we do want the members to be like, I can never stop paying my dues. I must always be a member of that organization. So important. So we do want to flip the the message here, if you will, or the the dichotomy, if you will. I want

members to need us more than we need them. But that’s not the case today. Today we need them and we want to get our revenue to grow. And what happens is I see CFOs go and say, we’ve got all these credit card fees, we’re paying all this money, stick it to the member or make them pay if they want to use their credit card. And I get that, right? But at the end of the day, you’re going and saying, give me a little more? Then raise your dues, raise your event price.

Doug Morris (24:33)
Do not go and charge them more because all they’re gonna do is go, Well, I’ll write a check. And guess what? The odds, your odds now of renewal just drop dramatically because they’re not the ones writing the check. They’re asking their organization

to write the check or something like that. So

Be very happy you got the money. The one caveat, of course, is in donations. I love when a donation form says, Would you like to cover the donation fees? It gives me the opportunity to go, yes, I would like to give a little more. Almost some of these roundup campaigns you see. I love that on the donation form. So I think you should always do it on the donation form because it’s a non-profit, it’s a not for-profit, and they’re actually trying to get a little extra money. Give me the opportunity. I love that. But do not do that. Your checkout experience.

Should be so seamless that they’re ticking a box and hitting done. Do not charge more, do not, you know, ask for more. It’s just not that. And you were not on the ⁓ webinar I did for Asia Pacific yesterday, but I was excited here. Australia in October of 2026, credit card surcharges will be illegal in the country. So they must have heard my webinar. really? It’s good to hear.

Riley Miller (25:29)
No.

I think that’s going through Canada as well. We’re kind of falling too.

There goes my credit card rewards too, but.

Doug Morris (25:46)
No, well yeah, they’re that’s we’re still fighting with. But it was funny, I did I was I was disappointed that my Australian friends didn’t warn me about that because I really thought it was a big thing. But it turns out they just didn’t read my notes.

Riley Miller (25:57)
You

Well, mean, Doug, obviously you’ve been a font of knowledge and I hope our listeners here got a lot of value. There some quick tips to run away with when it comes to trying things out at their own ⁓ organizations. Before we wrap up, I do like to give an opportunity if there are any other nuggets of knowledge to squeeze out, what would be putting my ED hat on if I came to you and I’m looking for ⁓ a quick win on

how to engage my members or improve our organization’s processes, what would you leave them with?

Doug Morris (26:27)
You know, I definitely th this is a this is a fun one ’cause I ⁓ in I wouldn’t have told you this January first. But I would tell you today, I do believe the data scout might be the number one

secret weapon that an association or not for profit could use. I love the enhanced profile. There’s nothing more powerful. I’ve talked about calling a member. Well if I’m going to call you, Riley, and I all I know is you live in Canada. That’s all I really know, right? You’ve been a member a year. But I can use that Data Scout enhanced profile and find out about your love for ⁓

video, your love for music and everything like that, my conversation’s gonna be a lot more in depth. One of my coworkers, she has a doctorate. I didn’t know until I pulled her up in Data Scout Engage and went, You have a doctorate? She’s like, yes.

Do know how powerful that is to do that? And then we take it to the next thing, the segmentation, you know, that I can actually go that I was talking about and doing that. So I’m sorry, I’m most excited. I think that’s the secret tool. ⁓ Al and James talk about not throwing technology at something. I don’t believe that’s throwing technology at something. I do believe that Data Scout is it’s a secret weapon today ⁓ that really can knock down some barriers and allow you to get engaged, right? I want you as a volunteer. If I can

call you and say, hey, you’re into music. I’m going to a concert by you. I mean, bam. You’re mine. You’re my volunteer now, right? You’re it’s like Doug’s your bud. So there’s just so much to Data Scout that really can take an organization the next level. And I love that you don’t have to buy it all at once, right? I can buy what I need, try it, and if it works, let’s just keep going. If not, move on. So I just I think you guys have got a great product there.

Riley Miller (28:12)
Well, I really appreciate that, Doug. I mean, I’ve taken some secret notes during this call to make sure I go back to My Data Scout and weed out the Dear Doug messages I’ve drafted, so… I’ve got tons to walk away with here.

Well, ⁓ it’s been amazing, like I said, having you on here. Thank you so much for the time and we’ll have to get you back on again. Things are moving so fast, so I’m sure there’s gonna be plenty more to talk about.

Doug Morris (28:37)
Yep, when I’ll see you again in the fall, hopefully. All right. Thanks, Riley.

Riley Miller (28:40)
Hopefully. Take care.

All right, that’s a wrap for the Modern Membership Org podcast. Thank you so much for tuning in. My name’s Riley with Bursting Silver and a huge extra special thanks to Doug from for jumping on here. If you like this podcast and want to hear more, please feel free to subscribe on Spotify or wherever you subscribe to your podcasts and we will see you on the next one. Thank you.