This week we introduce MemberWise Ambassador (Member Engagement / Retention), David D’Souza, Membership Director at the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD).

David works with a Membership Team of 100 professionals at their headquarters in Wimbledon. The organisation currently has 150,000 members and is the 47th largest membership body in the UK – an official Influence 100 Membership Body.

We asked David about his key responsibilities at the CIPD:

“I’m responsible for ensuring that we grow our Membership through providing support, challenge and value to current Members and communicating the importance and benefits of Membership to potential Members. My internal remit includes Membership Development, Customer Services, our Branch network (over 700 volunteers supporting over 1000 events) and our Regional teams based across England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland”

David has worked within membership for the past 5 years and he explains how he ‘fell in to the Wonderful World of Membership’:

“It was far from planned. I contacted the CIPD about another matter and someone mentioned that they would be interested in me applying for a role. After a number of conversations the ability to influence my own profession at scale was too interesting to pass up.”

We asked David about his current key challenges:

“We have some immediate challenges, as do most organisations (COVID-19 and economic environment) but the organisational challenge remains the same as prior. Meet our Members’ needs better than they have been met previously and evolve our capabilities (digital and otherwise) to help support that. The best way to de-risk the current situation is to be excellent at what we do.”

David was introduced to the MemberWise Network a couple of years ago by a colleague at the CIPD and he has since found the online member community (MemberWise Connect), connections, guides and events really useful. He has also hopped on to the odd webinar/conference stage more recently!

Finally, we asked David something that people might not know about him. He responded:

‘I have no sense of smell!’

We welcome David on board as MemberWise Ambassador (Member Engagement / Retention) and we look forward to him championing the critical task of retaining and engaging more members.