Building Association Membership with Demographics

Stephen J. Tordella, Decision Demographics
Tom E. Godfrey, Decision Demographics

Since 1988, Decision Demographics has been working with the National Education Association to help them understand and serve the fastest-growing segment of their membership—the Education Support Professionals, including teacher’s aides, janitors, and school bus drivers. Lacking ESP about the ESP, we do it the hard way: by isolating the ESP in Census Bureau microdata as well as many other federal datasets. Everything that can be learned about ESP from the CPS, the decennial census, and now the American Community Survey, we pursue: demographic and socioeconomic profiles, maps for recruiting, earnings updates for calculating dues, etc. Now, with the help of a Small Business Innovation Research grant from the NICHD, we are building on this model to serve a broader group of professions. This paper describes some of the challenges inherent to doing this kind of work, and presents plans for enhancing and expanding this approach to multiple professions.