Catch the post-graduates. Focus on young and online journalists. Appeal to people who belong to more than one journalism organization. Convert journalist leaving the business into associate members. Track members who switch job.

These were just some of the ideas that came out of a May 9 meeting of the SPJ membership committee when we discussed a recent survey of why members opt to leave SPJ.

In March, the Scripps Survey Research Center at Ohio University conducted the survey of 515 SPJ members who did not renew their membership.

The study found that most of the people surveyed cited a change in jobs or a departure from journalism as the most frequently cited reason for dropping out of SPJ.

The survey also found that two-thirds of those people left SPJ within 5 years of joining and 40 percent left within the first two years.

By and large, membership committee members said those results jibe with their experience. Both Ellen Mrja of Minnesota State University at Mankato and Sarah Bauer of Minnesota Pro said they’ve noticed that people who leave their chapters do so within 2-to-5 years.

Since many Minnesota State University students head to the Minneapolis area looking for jobs after they graduate, Mrja agreed to share a list of the next class of graduating SPJ members with Bauer to help the pro chapter recruit them.

Joe Skeel, who recently took over the job of coordinating SPJ recruitment and retention efforts, reminded the committee that SPJ does send letters to all graduating SPJ student members congratulating them and encouraging them to join their local pro chapter.

We discussed the possibility of systematically putting the names and contact information for these graduates into the hands of membership activists with the pro chapters.

Ellen also suggested we address the perception of “high dues”, which were cited by 21 percent of the survey respondents.

Several committee members said they were glad to see the survey’s finding that many of the departing members left with a high opinion of SPJ’s work in areas such as ethics, freedom of information and shield law advocacy.

Given the good marks that SPJ got, John Hopkins of Miami suggested that perhaps some of the members who are leaving the business could be persuaded to continue as associate members.

Hopkins also focused on another interesting fact. The survey found that more than 60 percent of the respondents reported that they belonged to at least two other journalism organizations besides SPJ.

Journalists are notorious for not joining organizations, but it would appear, based on these survey results, that SPJ members tend to belong to more than one outfit.

That fact lends some credibility to two membership-building proposals that the committee has recommended: trading ads with other journalism-related magazines and trading exhibit tables at the conventions of comparable journalism groups.

Joe advised that we be careful not to appear to “poach” members from other organizations. However, he agreed to explore the possibility of swapping booths at conventions.

John Ensslin noted that SPJ has been able to keep its membership levels relatively steady despite the exodus of some 2,400 journalists who have left the business within the last year.

Ensslin suggested that one implication of this finding is that SPJ should concentrate on recruiting more young journalists and people who are working for online news outlets.

In Denver, for example, of the 40 or so people who accepted buy-outs from the city’s two daily papers last year, only one was an SPJ member (albeit a former chapter president.)

Meanwhile, Colorado Pro has nearly doubled it membership rolls within the last two years. In part, that’s because the chapter’s growth has been in student, post-graduate and online journalists.

Some committee members who were unable to attend the meeting e-mailed their views of what the survey means for growing SPJ membership.

Bill Bleyer of New York suggested that we need to do a better job of tracking job changes and trying to match moving journalists with new chapters.

Bill also wrote, “There’s not much we can do about those worried about hard times except lowering dues, which isn’t likely.”

John Huotari of East Tennessee noted how the survey found departed members were more satisfied with SPJ nationally more than their local chapters. John offered the following suggestion:

“It looks to me like (former) members value networking and would value networking and would like more local chapter activity.”

“I guess my “take-away” is figuring out how to have more ethics programming and networking, probably particularly at the local level. Maybe this will help retain members and make the “high dues” less of a concern.

Several members also had some questions that the survey did not answer. They were puzzled by the fact that when asked what SPJ could have done to retain the former members, about 80 percent of them supplied no answer. Ensslin agreed to explore this question more with the survey’s author.

SPJ by the numbers

Membership this week                  9,391

Membership one month ago         9,216

Membership one year ago            8,810

A recent survey provided some interesting insights into the reasons why members leave SPJ.

One third of the 515 randomly selected former members who took part in the poll said they chose not to renew because they have left journalism.

The survey was conducted by the Scripps Survey Research Center at Ohio University in March 2008.

Here are some other interesting findings from the survey:

-         Half of the people who dropped out of SPJ worked for newspapers.

-         The people who left gave SPJ high marks for efforts on ethics and more than two-thirds said they were satisfied with SPJ.

-         About 21 percent said they felt the dues were too high.

-         Job change was the most frequently cited reason for not renewing.

The survey comes at a time when newspapers across the county have been shedding jobs.

In April, an American Society of Newspaper Editors survey reported a loss last year of 2,400 jobs on full-time professional staffs, a decrease of about 4.4 percent to a total of 52, 600. That’s the biggest drop in 30 years. See link at: http://www.asne.org/index.cfm?id=6936

Despite that trend, SPJ has been able to hold its own, with membership remaining fairly steady between 8,800 to 9,200 over the last year. In fact, there has been a slight but steady uptick in recent weeks, owing in part to a 21 percent increase of postgraduate memberships.

However, in order to do a better job of growing SPJ and retaining members, we commissioned this study to determine who is leaving and why.

Here are some of the findings:

About two-thirds of the members who did not renew were SPJ members for five years or less. Nearly 40 percent left after two years or less.

When asked to rate SPJ on a scale of 1 to 5 with 5 being the highest, former members graded SPJ with a 4.55 for journalism ethics, 4.49 for freedom of information access issues, 3.99 for enacting a federal shield law and 3.97 for diversifying coverage and sources.

When asked to rate SPJ communications, the former members gave the Quill an average of 3.88 and gave the SPJ website an average of 3.54.

Just over 70 percent said they were either completely or somewhat satisfied with SPJ. Local chapters drew a slightly lower score with 61.5 percent of the respondents saying they were completely or somewhat satisfied with their local chapter.

When asked what might draw them back to SPJ, 4.5 percent suggested lower dues and 3.3 percent suggested more local activity. Significantly, 80.7 percent did not respond to this question.

The SPJ membership committee will be discussing these finding later this week. We’d also be glad to hear from you. If you have a comment or you would like a copy of the report, please e-mail me at damon_runyon@hotmail.com

SPJ by the numbers

Membership this week               9, 171

Membership one month ago     9,000

Membership one year ago         8,694