Strong member relationships are built over time. When members take part in events, respond to communications, use your resources or speak with your team, they are showing how they connect with your organisation. These interactions can show member engagement.
Understanding those interactions can help membership organisations make better decisions. It can reveal what members value, where relationships are thriving and where someone may benefit from a more personal follow-up. It can also help teams make communications more relevant and assess whether their services are supporting members’ needs.
But the information needed to understand engagement is often spread across different places: event attendance in the CRM, email activity in a mailing platform, website visits in analytics, and other interactions recorded separately. Bringing these signals together can be difficult, especially when teams do not have a shared way to define and measure engagement.
Bringing engagement activity into view
At a recent Experts in Engagement session, we brought together membership organisations to discuss these challenges and explore a new engagement reporting searchkit for CiviCRM.
The prototype uses CiviCRM activities, such as event attendance, meetings and phone calls. CiviRules can award points automatically when these activities are recorded, creating an engagement score over a chosen period.
In the example report, 25 points over 12 months represents the baseline for full engagement. The score is transparent: users can see which interactions contributed to an organisation’s result.
This helps teams look beyond a single number. They can explore the activity behind a score, identify patterns and consider what those patterns might mean for their members.
Turning insight into action
For marketing and membership teams, engagement information can help shape more relevant communications and follow-up. Different members may value different services, events or content. A clearer view of their interactions can help teams think about who they are communicating with and what might be useful to them.
For senior leaders, reporting can support wider conversations about member value, service priorities and where to invest time and resources. It can also give teams a shared starting point for evaluating whether their engagement activities are making a difference.
Engagement is not limited to activity already recorded in CiviCRM. Website use, email responses and other interactions may also be important. Depending on the data and systems involved, information from other sources can be brought into CiviCRM to build a broader picture.
Define engagement for your organisation
There is no single engagement score that will suit every membership organisation. A useful approach starts by agreeing what member value looks like, which interactions matter, and how activity over time should be considered.
Explore the demo
You can try the prototype on our Civi360 demo site:
View the Organisation Engagement Scoring report
To find the report, log in using the Admin role, select CiviCRM, go to Reports > SearchKit Reports, and open Organisation Engagement Scoring Report. Select an organisation’s number of interactions to view the underlying activities and weighted scores.
Want to understand how engagement reporting could work for your organisation?
Get in touch with us to discuss your CiviCRM data, priorities and next steps.
