Thank you for taking the time to provide feedback about your ICMA membership experience. We value your perspective and wanted to share overall survey results as well as our next steps.
ICMA conducts an annual survey to gauge members’ satisfaction, learn about their customer service experience, obtain feedback on programs, and identify new ways in which ICMA can help members in their jobs. The December 2013 survey went to over 6,600 ICMA members who have an e-mail address on file and who have not opted out of membership surveys. Almost 1,200 responded.
Congratulations!
Congratulations to Shane A. Horn, city administrator/director of utilities, Adrian, Mich., who was selected at random from the 2013 survey respondents to receive a free registration to ICMA’s 100th Anniversary Annual Conference, September 14-17 in Charlotte/ Mecklenburg County, N.C.
Here’s What You Told Us
Satisfaction and Engagement
As a membership organization, ICMA’s goal is to offer value to its members through excellent programs and services and to have members feel a part of the ICMA community. Ninety-one percent are very satisfied” or “satisfied” with their membership. Over 77% of members indicated that they feel part of the ICMA community. Newer members (67%) and those earlier in their careers (65%) indicated that they do not feel as strongly connected to ICMA.
Value for Price
Results show that 88% of respondents rate the value of membership as “excellent” or “good.”
Less than half of the respondents reported that they budget funds for staff to join ICMA. While staff often belong to other professional organizations, ICMA is interested in attracting and serving those whose career track leads to the executive levels of management.
Customer Service
Customer service received good marks from members, with 90% rating it as “excellent” or “good.” Positive comments were included by members about staff responsiveness. One of the challenges for staff when a member mentions a problem with customer service on the survey is that it's not clear if the problem was with ICMA staff or a third-party vendor, and the member may not know either. Regardless, ICMA wants to understand the member experience in order to improve service to members and other customers.
Work Issues
Members identified a number of challenges they face in their jobs and these issues were mentioned repeatedly:
- Finances
- Staffing
- Transition to a leadership position
- Succession planning
- Unfunded mandates
- Council-manager relations
- Union issues
- Pension/benefits/legacy costs
- Infrastructure
- Economic development
- Political polarization
- Rising sea levels
- Technology.
How Can ICMA Better Help You Do Your Work?
In responding to an open-ended question, members identified ways that ICMA can help them in their jobs:
- More free resources included with paid membership.
- More best practices and examples of what other communities are doing.
- Simplification of the website.
A majority of respondents rated ICMA’s resources on various topics such as ethics, civic engagement, performance measurement, and finance and budgeting as “excellent” or “good,” with the exception of economic development, which was rated as “excellent” or “good” by slightly under 50%.
Members indicated that they prefer to receive content through local or regional workshops, followed by electronic publications, and live or recorded webinars.
We Listened and Here’s What We Plan to Do
Overall the results are positive and give ICMA staff direction in planning resources and programming. Member feedback supports or informs our decisions. We plan to:
- Conduct market research to gauge member and prospective member feedback on a new dues model developed through the Task Force on Financing ICMA.
- Evaluate the member value proposition for members in all career stages – both what members get and how we communicate that value.
- Expand professional development offerings (including more regional opportunities) and alignment of professional development offerings with information resources.
- Focus on content development in key topic areas.
- Emphasize the personal connection with all members.
- Redesign the program to welcome new members to the organization.
- Consider new ways to allow members and others to search the icma.org website.
We will publish periodic updates to the membership about our progress in these areas.
Thank you again for responding to the 2013 membership survey. ICMA also appreciates your ongoing feedback to membership@icma.org or 800-745-8780 (202-962-3680 outside the United States).
New, Reduced Membership Dues
A new, reduced dues rate is available for CAOs/ACAOs, along with additional discounts for those in smaller communities, has been implemented. Learn more and be sure to join or renew today!
