How do your members get involved?<\/strong><\/p>\nOur strength stems from the combined results of the work of our members. Without their involvement in our strategy, plans and ways of communications, our success would be short-lived. An example of this, is our \u201c2021 World Heart Day\u201d campaign, \u201cUse Heart to \nConnect\u201d, which won a prize for Best Campaign from the International & European Association Awards. Less visible is the process of keeping the members engaged, inspired and empowered to contribute. Virtual and in-person meetings, emails, newsletters, surveys, public and member-only events, all these come together to ensure that members participate. This participation is what lets us share the ownership \nof campaigns and events \u2013 and most importantly, the involvement keeps us aligned on the strategy and why we are doing it. Campaigns like this get a boost from us in the form of a WH Grant. In giving these grants, we look at their strategy for including people who will benefit from \nthe activity, how are they monitoring change \u2013 and potential for improving people’s knowledge of heart health. The grant supports them financially, so they can do more of what they are already doing.<\/p>\n
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How do your members connect and collaborate?<\/strong><\/p>\nOur community is very diverse, and this is where its strength lies. Our power comes from being able to unite the membership and mobilise their support and resources. The flipside of this diversity is that we are often faced with the need to compromise, and our messages could lose some of their initial intensity and clarity. We put our energy into a congress and summit to showcase members\u2019 work, a journal for sharing \nknowledge, and our campaign playbook. These platforms allow all our members to have the same resources \u2013 whether they have the strength \nand finances of successful organisation, or the independence and individuality of a one-person show. Our goal is to nurture the exchange between members and give voice to those with limited resources for awareness raising and advocacy. Our publication \u2013 Global Heart \u2013 is a good example of how we share and validate members\u2019 research, developments, trends, solutions and public health programmes.<\/p>\n
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How do your members move things forward?<\/strong><\/p>\nBeing a unified voice for heart disease makes it easier for institutions like the World Health Organization to listen. It would be hard for them to reach out to all our members; we make it easier for our members\u2019 positions to be recognised. This recognition leads to awareness (e.g. the impact of air pollution), changes in policy (e.g. taxation of unhealthy products to underwrite universal healthcare) and regulation (e.g. front-of-pack labelling that informs consumers about products impact on health). Our members have a lot of scientific data. Our role is to bring all their facts together and shape the story that brings the data to life \u2013 to make it useful and compelling \u2013 for all our members, as well \nas the audiences our members want to reach.<\/p>\n
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How do you recognise a member\u2019s talents?<\/strong><\/p>\nBesides featuring the articles of members, we offer awards for prominent cardiologists as well as for campaigns. The campaigns are driven by members or teams of members who we match-made, and use the playbook that we created for all to use. The Awardees apply their own creativity to make the campaign take off in their area; and when we see potential in their initiative we provide them with funding for the \nfollowing year. Sometimes, we have been deeply involved \u2013 for example, we worked with BBC to run sessions on storytelling in my native Bulgaria which heightened the credibility of our members there, and brought about a whole new level of media coverage. Other times, \nwe are happily surprised by member\u2019s initiatives, like when Indonesian members used one of the five senses for each of their campaigns \u2013 making issues accessible through visual arts this year. Brilliant. In all these cases, we had 3 key ingredients: a strategy we built together; a playbook they could pull resources from; and a platform where we could celebrate their results.<\/p>\n
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Any other advice for creating <\/strong>engagement?<\/strong><\/p>\nAlign messages to strategic goals. Keep it clear and simple. Don\u2019t just think about outputs; elevate your work to strategy. Nurture your community. Help people get in touch with WHY they are doing this work, and HOW to tell the human story about it. The WHAT is often already known, it is fundamental. Don\u2019t hide behind data, transform your information into a compelling and memorable narrative. Put the heart in your story.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
This interview was first published in Headquarters Magazine in February 2022. Members are the lifeblood of an association. Fully engaged, they make our associations thrive, have impact and offer a meaningful experience. But having active involvement can be hard \u2013 and when it dips, so does membership, morale, finances & results. So, how to boost […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":10973,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_relevanssi_hide_post":"","_relevanssi_pin_for_all":"","_relevanssi_pin_keywords":"","_relevanssi_unpin_keywords":"","_relevanssi_related_keywords":"","_relevanssi_related_include_ids":"","_relevanssi_related_exclude_ids":"","_relevanssi_related_no_append":"","_relevanssi_related_not_related":"","_relevanssi_related_posts":"","_relevanssi_noindex_reason":"","footnotes":""},"event":[],"project-campaign":[],"topic":[],"class_list":["post-10970","news","type-news","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n
Membership Engagement: Get to the Heart of Your Story - World Heart Federation<\/title>\n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n\t \n\t \n\t \n \n \n\t \n