Internet Society survey: ISOC Membership System

Summary By Peter Godwin, ISOC IT Director - July 17th, 2006 As part of ISOC's continuing efforts to provide Chapters with an efficient and effective membership management system, a survey of Chapter delegates' experiences and requirements was carried out during the month of June. The survey questions were designed to enable us to get a better understanding of how ISOC Chapters work with membership management as well as to gather suggestions for improving ISOC's current system. The survey was also an opportunity to learn more about Chapters' own membership systems. The survey results, presented here, will help ISOC direct the focus of future activities in this area. Responses were received from 34 Chapters around the world (including one Chapter in formation - see Appendix 1). Participating Chapters represent nearly 6,000 members - from a large Chapter with 600 members on down to the smaller Chapters as well. Almost all survey participants agreed that they have a need for a membership system. There was general consensus that simplicity is a key requirement for such a system with many of those that have implemented the ISOC GO system feeling that the current application is too complex. The vast majority of participants is open to implementing a new ISOC membership system. Local language support, and features such as improved reporting and mailing list support are considered more important than the possibility to accept online payments or integrate with other systems. The latter features appear to be of interest primarily to the larger Chapters. A significant number of participants indicated that their Chapters are ready to provide competence and/or resources to support any future collaborative development effort. An analysis of survey responses follows.

Survey participants by region Africa 27% Asia 13% Europe 34% Latin America/Caribbean 13% North America 5% Oceania 5% Non-geographic 3%

Does your Chapter have a fee-paying membership level? Yes 32% No 68%     Some Chapters have multiple membership fee levels - e.g. individual member, student member or organization member. In some cases, there are even multiple levels of organization membership fees depending on the size of the member organization. Those Chapters that participated in this survey and who collect their own membership fees represent a total of 1,325 fee-paying members.

Does your Chapter need a membership system? Yes 92% No 8%     Almost all survey participants agreed that they have a need for a membership system.

Which membership system features do you consider to be important? Ease of use 92% Local language support 61% Data protection and privacy 87% Ability to handle online payments 26% Integration with other systems via open API 42% Implementation based on open source 53% Mailing list support 81% Report generator 66%     (percentage of respondents that consider factors to be important or very important) Ease of use was clearly the most sought-after feature with over 90% of participants rating it as important or very important. This was followed closely by data protection and privacy. The ability to support mailing lists was also a highly-ranked requirement as was local language support and report generation. There appears to be little general interest in having the ability to handle online payments - although this, along with integration with other systems, does appear to be important for some of the larger Chapters. Many participants proposed other features that they considered important - clearly many of these inputs were based on experience of using the current ISOC GO system. Several participants suggested improved handling of membership renewals (e.g. automatic renewal of non-paying members, email alerts when renewals are due). Another common theme was implementation of smooth, realtime operations - without the need for multiple approval processes for new members. There were also some ideas for 'nice to have' features - these focussed primarily on member services, including such things as single sign on to a members-only area, online voting, inter-Chapter communication etc.

Which languages and character sets are commonly used in your area? Responses to this question illustrate well the linguistic diversity of ISOC Chapters. Languages commonly used include: English, French, Spanish, Galician, Dutch, German, Finish, Swedish, Hungarian, Polish, Japanese, Bangla, Urdu and Turkish. Concerning character sets, only a few participants mentioned their use of UTF-8 - while many use ISO-8859-1.

Would you consider implementing a new common ISOC membership system? Yes 92% No 8%     The vast majority of participants is open to implementing a new ISOC membership system.

Could your Chapter provide resources or competence to support a collaborative development project? Yes 74% No 26%     A significant number of participants indicated that their Chapters are ready and able to support a project to develop the ISOC membership system.

In which of these areas could you provide resources or competence? Project management 32% User requirements gathering 29% Application/architecture design 21% Open source software development 34% Product/software evaluation 32% Internationalization 50% Standards compliance 18% Human factors/interface design 29% Accessibility 18% Documentation 21% Testing 63% Training 34%     Many participants are interested in participating in testing. But only around one third of participants said they could support system development activities, with even fewer proposing help in the critical areas of requirements gathering and application design. Chapters that noted local language support as a priority also proposed to support internationalization efforts.

Does your Chapter currently use the ISOC GO membership system? Yes 32% No 68%     About two thirds of participants do not currently use the ISOC GO system. The system's complexity was most often cited as the main reason for not working with it.

If you do not use the GO system, did your Chapter try implementing it at any stage? Yes 35% No 65%     (percentage of respondents that do not currently use the GO system) Only one third of participants that do not use the ISOC GO system have actually tried implementing it.

If you do not use the GO system, have you considered using other membership systems? Yes 19% No 81%     (percentage of total number of respondents that do not currently use the GO system) Very few Chapters have considered other sytems. Those that did, looked at open source solutions.

If you do use the GO system, which aspects of the system work well, and which need improvement? No comments were received on specific aspects that work well although some participants did express general satisfaction with the system. However, many participants pointed out that the complexity of the signup process needs to be reduced (i.e. reduce the number of screens), and that the renewal process needs to be simplified. It was also suggested that the back-office approval process for new members could be streamlined and accelerated. There were also calls for improved functionality, such as integration with mailing list management.

Does your Chapter currently use its own local membership system? Yes 37% No 63%     Around one third of participants run their own local Chapter membership system. Participant comments showed general satisfaction with their systems in terms of simplicity and reliability - they also indicated that more could be done to integrate these systems with other applications. The following questions provide more information about Chapter membership systems.

Which kind of software are you using? Proprietary software package 29% Open source software package 7% Self-developed software 64%     (percentage of total number of respondents using own local membership system) Note that many participants that indicated use of proprietary software packages are in fact using Microsoft Excel, rather than a membership management application. Those that have developed their own solutions have often done so using open source (e.g. PHP and MySQL).

Which of these functions does your membership system support? Members can join ISOC (global) 36% Members can join your Chapter 71% Members can manage membership profile 21% Members can make payments 14%     (percentage of total number of respondents using own local membership system) Those Chapters accepting online payments do so using PayPal.

Does your system have documented APIs for integration with other systems? Yes 14% No 86%     (percentage of total number of respondents using own local membership system) Note that although very few systems currently appear to have APIs, 42% of participants indicated that availability of an open API is an important or very important feature.

Would you find it useful to receive member data from the ISOC GO system in XML format? Yes 86% No 14%     (percentage of total number of respondents using own local membership system) A large number of participants expressed interest in an XML data feed despite the fact that most have systems that do not currently provide integration APIs.

Does your system provide interfaces to other systems? Accounting system 21% Mailing list 57% Event management 17% Discussion groups 21% Members-only area or services 17%     (percentage of total number of respondents using own local membership system)

Does your Chapter publish a privacy policy online? Yes 28% No 72%     (percentage of total number of respondents using own local membership system) Despite the fact that many participants indicated that data protection and privacy is an important feature of a membership system, very few actually publish a privacy policy.

What kind of reports can your system produce? What kind of reports would you like to have in future? Most systems appear to generate simple listing reports - in future there is a desire for more flexibility in report generation.

General comments The need for simplicity was again mentioned as was improved flexibility for integration with other applications. However, one participant believes that some chapters may have unrealistic expectations regarding the system and suggested that a feature by feature price list presented to delegates prior to implementation would probably help them to evaluate and choose exactly which ones they wish to have implemented. Many participants reiterated their willingness to help with any future system development activities.

Appendix 1: List of participants Sincere thanks to all those that participated in this survey: ISOC Bangladesh Chapter ISOC Belgium Chapter ISOC Belgium - Wallonia Chapter ISOC Benin Chapter ISOC Bulgaria Chapter ISOC Colombia Chapter ISOC Costa Rica Chapter ISOC Disabilities and Special Needs Chapter ISOC Finland Chapter ISOC Galicia Chapter ISOC Germany Chapter ISOC Ghana Chapter ISOC Hungary Chapter ISOC Japan Chapter ISOC Kenya Chapter (in formation) ISOC Los Angeles Chapter ISOC Luxembourg Chapter ISOC Mauritius Chapter ISOC Madrid Chapter ISOC Mali Chapter ISOC Nigeria Chapter ISOC Pacific Islands Chapter ISOC Pakistan Chapter ISOC Palestine Chapter ISOC Peru Chapter ISOC Poland Chapter ISOC Puerto Rico Chapter ISOC Québec Chapter ISOC Scotland Chapter ISOC Senegal Chapter ISOC South Africa Chapter ISOC Spain Chapter ISOC Turkey Chapter ISOC Uganda Chapter