Celebrating our member anniversaries

By Katie Springham, Membership Development & Recruitment Executive

Did you know that some of our members have been in membership with us for more than 70 years? This is such an amazing achievement and is a cause for celebration. Our membership community helps us to support everyone working within the chemical sciences and we would not be able to do this without our members continuing support.  Therefore, over the past two years, we have reviewed how we celebrate and thank our members for their commitment to membership.

An opportunity to say thank you

From the Member Survey we conducted in 2018, we know that 65% of our members are very proud to be a member of the Royal Society of Chemistry. We also know from that survey that pride in being a member, along with a sense of belonging to the Royal Society of Chemistry, contributes to our members continuing to renew their membership. From this feedback, we decided that the time was right to review how we celebrate our members for their dedication to membership. It also gives us the perfect opportunity to really thank our members for their ongoing support and commitment to membership and the wider chemical sciences community.

Each member is an important part of our scientific community, and contributes to supporting our community in a variety of ways such as enabling us to provide a clear professional development framework that recognises skills and professionalism with awards such as Chartered status. We can also provide our members with specialist support from our careers and professional development team and connect members who have like-minded interests with our networks. Not all this would be possible without our members support, and we would like to say thank you.

The milestones

Since the review, we have now introduced some membership milestones, which enable us to thank our members and show them what their membership means we can do to support their community. Our members will now receive a mixture of e-cards, telephone calls and postcards to mark their 1^st, 5^th, 10^th and 15^th year anniversaries. On the 20^th anniversary, a member will receive a letter in the post congratulating them on two decades in membership from our CEO and president. A card is sent out from our president to mark 30 years in membership and on a member’s 40 year membership anniversary, members will receive a gold badge to mark the momentous occasion. Long service certificates are sent to members on their 50^th, 60^th, 70^th and 80^th membership anniversaries too.

Your reaction so far

Since we started sending these anniversary messages in summer 2019, the response from our members’ has been incredible! In particular, the 20 years anniversary letter from our CEO and President have been popular.

Keep a weather eye on your inbox or the post

Please do keep an eye out for your celebratory membership anniversary messages in your inboxes or through the post! We’re always so pleased to hear from you about how your membership anniversary messages make you feel and do feel free to share these on social media.  

40 year gold badges

If by 2018 you had been in membership for more than 40 years and you haven’t yet received your gold badge, please contact us below.