The WI

The National Federation of Women's Institutes (NFWI) is the largest voluntary organisation for women in the UK, with 205,000 members in England, Wales and the Islands. (Jersey, Guernsey, Isle of Man and Isle of Wight).

Originally formed in 1915 to revitalise rural communities and to encourage women to become more involved in producing food during the First World War, they now play a unique role in providing women with educational opportunities and the chance to build new skills. They are encouraged to take part in a wide variety of activities and to campaign on issues that matter to them and their communities.

The NFWI is grouped into around 70 county federations with over 6500 affiliated WI's. Membership has been falling but has now stabilized and over the last two years has started to grow again.

The Trustees of the NFWI now wish to undertake a major recruitment and retention drive during the build up to their Centenary in 2015 and realised that as all of their members are volunteers, there are varying degrees of knowledge and understanding of marketing and the ability within the organisation to undertake the drive. They plan a major marketing training programme involving training ten National Marketing Trainers who will then be responsible to cascade knowledge and training down to regional and local levels in order to improve the service and experience received at grassroots level.

In the early 1990s, the then CIM Charitable Trust, made a large grant to help NFWI members market the WI to potential members. Representatives from the CIM spoke at workshops, gave advice and generally trained a small 'army' of members to understand marketing and its use in the growth of WI membership.

Twenty years on, in 2010, The Marketing Trust was pleased to again assist the WI in funding Stage One of their programme to Train Ten National Trainers and to fund a one-day cascade conference enabling representatives from the 69 Federations, Federation Marketing Leaders, to be taught how to cascade the information on marketing techniques down to their local branches to improve recruitment and retention of WI members.

www.thewi.org.uk

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