Membership Officer - First Steps

Words of Wisdom

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

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

To provide a checklist to help you get oriented, build connections, and identify essential tasks.

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