Highlights from our 2020 Membership Survey

We had 600 responses from our members, followers on our social media accounts as well as supporters that are signed up to our mailing lists. There were a range of respondents from different career stages and areas of work, with the majority being academic staff and students. It was also great to see so many of the respondents based internationally.

We are very pleased to see such great responses to questions relating to; how our members rated their membership, how likely they would be to renew, as well as how likely they would be to recommend us to a friend or colleague. We were also thrilled to see that in total 92% of our members rated their membership as “Good” or above!

Like last year, it was wonderful to see that “being part of a global ecological community” was the benefit which members most value. Our members are central to what we do here at the BES and our community is incredibly important to our work. We hope to continue to be able to connect you with like-minded individuals through our activities.

The top three communications which members see from us include; our bimonthly Email Newsletter, our quarterly members’ magazine The Niche and reminders about their membership. We had great feedback regarding The Niche, with 92% of respondents rating it as ‘Good’, ‘Very Good’ or ‘Excellent’! If you are a member and would like to access the Niche digitally, you can do so via the members’ area of our website. Both members and non-members can sign up to our newsletter to receive regular updates on the latest news and activities from the BES straight to your inbox!

We asked our members ‘What is your perception of the BES?’ and 86% of responses were “Positive” or “Highly Positive”. We also asked  “What would you like to see from us?” to determine the type of benefits members would like to see from us going forward. The top three most requested areas related to; education & careers, further internationalisation of membership services, as well as more grants. See below for how we will be taking these ideas forward in our ‘Next Steps’!

Next Steps

Thanks to your feedback, we have had some great recommendations as to how we can improve what we offer in the coming year.

Training opportunities will be expanded and we will soon be reaching out to you to hear which topics you most value. We are also aiming to review and expand our current mentoring scheme. Last year we introduced a “Members’ Training Hub” that can be accessed through our membership portal; new courses will be added here, so please do keep an eye out.

This year the move to online events has enabled us to connect with our international members more than ever. Although it is difficult to predict the future of ecological conferences, we will continue to put on events that best serve the ecological community and explore opportunities to engage with our international members. We will also be exploring new payment methods to see how we can improve the way in which our members pay for their membership and other services.