Steven M Burghart, DPh, MBA, BCPP
CPNP President-Elect, Board of Directors
CPNP is growing steadily. We currently have over 1500 members (figure 1). Growth is one measure of success for an organization. Individuals see value in CPNP by joining. CPNP provides outstanding education, recertification, networking and opportunities to present research to colleagues. Unfortunately, we also see a number of individuals who join CPNP but later drop their membership. The question then is, how does CPNP remain relevant for our members? There are many demands on our members’ time and their personal resources. Members rightly ask, “What is the tangible return for the dues I pay to CPNP?”
Figure 1. Membership growth
What do our members want? The annual membership satisfaction survey measures importance and satisfaction in a number of areas. Figure 2 provides a look at satisfaction by comparing our effectiveness with perceived importance to members. Items close to the line are currently receiving appropriate amounts of attention based on their importance. Items to the right of the line are our strengths. Items to the top of the chart are what members want to be our strengths, which could be seen as opportunities.
Figure 2. Strengths based on 2013 membership satisfaction survey
Several areas our members identified as highly important but also needing improvement are in the areas of receiving timely and relevant information, meeting professional needs and advancing professional practice, and communications. These needs were incorporated into the Our Membership goal in the strategic plan.
Web site redesign with support for mobile devices. CPNP website traffic has grown dramatically in recent years (see figure 3). We have seen a similar increase in the use of mobile devices to access CPNP web resources. In fact, over 10% of attendees at the most recent annual meeting used mobile devices to access meeting content.
Figure 3. Web site visits by membership year
Greg Payne, CPNP Technology Director, has done an outstanding job within the current framework. The increased use of workspaces for board, committee and taskforce work is just one example. The last redesign for the website occurred in 2008. Members note that the website is becoming increasingly cluttered with content and difficult to navigate as the number of features continues to expand. An improved website design is inevitable and a strategic imperative for CPNP.
Facilitate communication between members with similar special interests. We are developing Communities to improve member engagement, member retention, and volunteer enthusiasm for the generation of resources and discussion. Our goal is to provide for the needs of members with specific interests without splitting the cohesive CPNP membership. The first Communities being developed are Comprehensive Medication Management (CMM) and Research. More information on Communities is available at cpnp.org/community.
Improve member driven content on the website. As you can see, all the objectives of Our Membership have connections to the website. Shared Resources on the CPNP website is provided by members for other members to access and use. Our goal is to make this content more useable and searchable and therefore of more value to the membership. We will create a unified strategy for ALL member-generated content in a way that promotes official content (i.e., products and services) and facilitates further member content generation and discussion.
As stated in our strategic plan, Our Membership will focus on connecting members with the peers and resources that are most important to them.