Local Party Membership Officer
Find information on the role and responsibilities of a Local Party Membership Officer here.
Already an LPO and looking for further resources? Use this link to jump to the relevant section.
What's the role?
Time: 3 - 4 hours per week
You are the main point of contact for most members, making sure that they are involved with the Lib Dem community where you live.
You will arrange events for them to attend and get them involved with campaigning.
You've also got the important job of keeping your members up to date with their payments, and are the local party lead on recruiting more members.
Key tasks
Managing your local party’s membership is a big task, but is also a highly rewarding one. It suits well organised people with great personal skills.
- Ensure all membership data from Lighthouse is reconciled with Connect and matched to an electoral roll record where possible.
- Check Lighthouse on a regular basis to identify new members in your local party area.
- Send an initial contact email from your local party to all new members when they join, with details of how to get involved.
- Ensure personal contact (phone/doorstep) is attempted with all new members and details about them are recorded on Connect.
- Communicate regularly with your members by email and post (and maintain accurate contact details to enable this).
- Aim for all members to be personally contacted on at least an annual basis, and record the data on this interaction.
- Encourage local members to get involved in campaigning on both a local and national level.
- Organise a programme of social events to inspire members to get involved.
- Monitor lapsing members each quarter and ensure personal contact is made with lapsing members.
- Update Lighthouse with details of local party officers on an annual basis after the AGM.
- Be the local party's lead person for recruiting new members.
- Report to the local party Executive Meetings.
Help & support
- If you are a membership officer and you would access to a shared folder of resources, you can request it by emailing help@libdems.org.uk.
- Join the Local Party Officers Facebook group.
- For peer-to-peer help with learning and using Connect, join the Connect Users Facebook group.
- To find out how the Liberal Democrats use digital technology for their campaigns, join the Lib Dem Digital Campaigning Forum Facebook group.
- Membership Officers also have access to the Liberal Democrat Membership Officers and Portal Users group, also on Facebook.
Skills & attributes
Being a great membership secretary means you'll need a few key skills and attributes:
- A good all-round communicator.
- Someone with strong attention to detail and good administrative skills.
- A good event organiser.
- Someone who is friendly and approachable, with good all-round people skills.
How to apply
The Membership officer is a role on the local party executive.
As a part of the Local Party Executive, the role is elected each year at your local party's AGM.
Any member of the party can stand to be Membership officer.
In England and Wales it is referred to as Membership Development Officer (or 'MDO'), and in Scotland it is referred to as Membership Secretary.
Further resources
For the Local Party Membership Officer
To access these resources, you will need to be a member of the Campaigns hub, if you aren’t already you can join here.
Resources for Membership Officers
Find the document with resources for Membership Officers here
Page contributors
- Mark Lunn, South Cambridgeshire
- Elaine Ford, Edinburgh North East and Leith
- John Marsden, South West Wiltshire
- Caroline Leaver, North Devon
- Brenda Tyzack, Brigg, Goole and Scunthorpe
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Simon Fisher, Chippenham
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Owen Temple, Northern Durham
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Stephen Atkinson, Liverpool
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David Lee, Tandridge
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Mike Pringle, South Edinburgh