Most membership-based organizations have a treasure trove of data at their fingertips. But figuring out which data points to analyze to gain the most helpful insights about your members can be tricky.

According to the MemberSuite blog, analyzing these five trends delivers the most impactful insights: demographic data, renewal trends, recruitment information, event data, and the average length of membership.

Demographic data can tell you all sorts of information, including the location of your members and which generation they belong to. “This information can help your team determine a variety of things from the best place to host an event to the best way to communicate with your members,” writes Graciella Jason-Daubon.

You can probably spout your renewal rate off the top of your head. But do you know the similarities among your renewing members, like which channels they renew through or if they’re in similar programs? “If your association is able to pinpoint commonalities between folks that choose to renew, you can continue and improve those practices,” says Jason-Daubon.

Hackathon Inspiration

"It's a little bit of Silicon Valley coming to a 130-year-old media institution."https://t.co/1BdKUEUYiB pic.twitter.com/4WtxUq2YaD

— Poynter (@Poynter) April 24, 2017

The Dallas Morning News had a problem: Over the years, its website built up a cache of bugs to resolve and upgrades to address. It needed new advertising units, author pages, and navigation, among other fixes.

Instead of addressing each problem one by one over months, the News attacked all of these problems in one fell swoop by holding a two-week hackathon, according to Poynter. Internal and external developers holed up in meeting rooms around the office to fix each issue in a sustained sprint.

Does your organization’s website have a host of issues your team has been meaning to address? A hackathon may be something you should consider.

Other Links of Note

Are your videos any good? SocialFish discusses how to make the right video by setting the appropriate goals.

Think outside the box. Omnipress’ Big Ideas Blog shares a few ways to find unique presenters for your next meeting.

More like this. TechCrunch argues that every feed-based app should copy Pinterest’s new “Instant Ideas” button.

(iStock/Thinkstock)