Membership Officer - First Steps

Words of Wisdom

New to the role? Start here. You don’t need to do everything at once.

What Success Looks Like

You should have a basic understanding of:

• How new members are welcomed and communicated with
• Who is responsible for what locally
• What tools and systems are used
• What recurring tasks exist
• Who your key points of contact are
  • See: Membership Officer - Working with Other Roles

Best Practices

Common Pitfalls

• Trying to fix everything immediately
• Assuming previous volunteers did things “wrong”
• Overcommitting early
• Not asking questions

Purpose

Your first days are about understanding how things work — not fixing everything.

Focus

The initial goal is to get oriented, build connections, and identify essential tasks.

  Success in this phase means you feel oriented, not overwhelmed.

First Steps

Understand Your Role

• ☐ Review your role page (e.g., Membership Officer) and its Role Overview

Connect with Key People

• ☐ Schedule a Membership Officer - Handoff, if the previous Membership Office is available
  • ☐ If there isn't a handoff, find out if and how new members are initially contacted

• Membership Officer - Working with Local Leadership
  • ☐ Ask the LocSec to have membership@localgroup.us.mensa.org redirected to your email address
  • ☐ Understand the geographic area of your Local Group
  • ☐ Attend your first ExComm meeting
  • ☐ Ask how what type and how often local leadership would like new member events to occur
  • ☐ Ask if local leadership reaches out to new members as well as the Membership Officer doing so

• Membership Officer - Working with Area Coordinators
  • ☐ If your Local Group has Area Coordinators, send an email introducing yourself to each one
• Membership Officer - Working with Local Group Communications
  • ☐ Contact the Newsletter Editor to clarify submission deadlines and the preferred method and format for content submission
  • ☐ Contact other communication contacts in your Local Group to discuss NEED TO COMPLETE THIS
• National Office Membership Staff
  • ☐ Understand who to contact at the National Office
  • ☐ Read the initial emails sent by the American Mensa, Ltd (AML) to new members

Access the Membership Tools Available on the National Website

• Ensure your credentials allow you to access:
  • ☐ Local Group Reports
  • ☐ Email My Members Tool
  • ☐ Mensa Connect Membership Officer Community
• ☐ Ensure you can search the Member Directory

Access Chapter Tools

• ☐ Ensure you can access chapter communication channels (e.g., Facebook, Meetup, Discord)
• ☐ Learn how to access the Local Group file repository, if the Local Group uses one

What is Not Part of First Steps

• Redesigning systems
• Launching new programs
• Fixing long-standing issues

If You Feel Overwhelmed

That’s normal.

Focus on:

• One task at a time
• Asking for help
• Keeping things simple

Next Step

Once you feel oriented, move to:

• Membership Officer - Next Steps

Related

• Local Group Toolkit
• Membership Officer