Growing your group and audiences

In this recording of our webinar, our guest speakers discussed different ways of engaging with your communities.

If you’re looking to connect with new members and audiences, getting out into your community with performances and workshops could invigorate your group and help you reach more people. In this event, we heard from two UK-wide organisations that put on annual events that you can use as a springboard in your own community. Plus, a member group talked about how they filled an entire year with exciting collaborations and performances. 

Finding new members for your group requires commitment and effort over a prolonged period of time. So, once they have joined, it’s important they keep coming. This resource looks at what you can do to make sure your members stay engaged and happy in your group.

Contents:

Recruiting new members is the biggest challenge leisure-time music groups face. Unfortunately, this is not an exact science and there are no quick fixes, but there are some improvements you can make. Work your way through this five-part toolkit to help you build a recruitment strategy, starting with thinking about who you want to recruit.

The joining journey

When someone joins, it is probably due to a combination of multiple circumstances and influences that could take place over days or even years.

There are many circumstances that might prompt someone to join a music group. Understanding how people find you and what might be getting in the way of joining is key information for helping you build a new recruitment strategy.

How do people join?

Before you start telling the world what you offer and asking them to join you, it's worth considering what will happen when they do.

It's important to understand how your group might appeal to potential members. Your current members are your recruitment success stories, so start by asking what makes them keep coming back and use this to inform your strategy.

Current members

Music groups give people joy – members join because they enjoy making music in a group. But enjoyment comes from different places for different people. For example, it might be:

Once you have a better understanding of your current members, it's time to look at how you can use this information to understand who your potential new members are.

Who might join your music group?

In Part 1 of this toolkit, we listed some example steps a person might take before joining a music group. We are going to re-visit these now.

So far you have defined your recruitment aims (Part 1), reviewed your joining process (Part 2), understood what your current members like about your group (Part 3) and what will appeal to potential new members (Part 4).

Try Booking online ticketing makes life easier and helps to grow audiences. 

Music groups face a range of challenges – from finding committee members with enough time to do the organizing, increasing costs and declining audience numbers.

Small changes can make a big difference and one easy win is moving to online ticketing.

If you currently manage ticketing manually consider:

Welcome to the MM Platform service hub. This area is for members who are already using the service and provides the latest news updates as well as links to the Making Music help guides for setting up their platform

Music making and experiencing music as an audience member are rich social experiences that connect participants. To build a group or audience that is more diverse and inclusive, thinking about how you invite, recruit and welcome people is crucial.