How to Survive While Dealing with Industry Consolidation
As an association leader who may be faced with declining membership loyalty or declining membership due to mergers and acquisitions, what—if anything--can you do to avoid this fate? [More]

Is your assn in a class by itself?
At a time when record numbers of associations are going out of business, merging or otherwise undergoing fundamental restructuring challenges, could this tendency in association leadership to narrow rather than broaden focus and to remain with tried and true formulas of the past be leading to two classes of associations?[More]

Scaring up the nerve to assess your office technology Questions for determining if and when you upgrade
Associations need to define their “core” business—and for many it is not technology. Many associations do not have the resources to have full-time technology staff. And when they do, rarely are they going to be experts in all areas.[More]

Do the ends ever justify the means?
The laws of most nations allow tax-exempt status for organizations that can prove they serve a higher purpose--one that presumably benefits society as a whole. The promotion of a higher purpose--is perhaps the most distinguishing characteristic of the association sector. This characteristic is the association community's strength, but it can also be it Achilles' heel.

Because these organizations do serve clearly defined purposes it is relatively easy for them to manifest a strong sense of mission; and therein lies a dangerous potential—that the nobility of the purpose may be used to justify somewhat less than noble tactics. [More]

Is a Little For-Profit Thinking in Order?
“Is our role just to make money?” exclaimed an exasperated senior association executive who clearly did not believe that it was. Nonprofits tend to attract people who like the idea of serving a greater good and who take gratification from something other than monetary rewards. If it receives any consideration at all, money tends to be viewed by association executives as a necessary evil best left to professional fundraisers!

One might think that this cavalier attitude toward money would give associations an advantage over for-profit organizations offering similar products and services. Giving away things that others charge for provides an advantage…or does it? [More]

Following Market Drivers To New Destinations
Associations are finding success in adapting business practices from the for-profit sector for their own use, and this includes the discipline of detecting and targeting market trends. One nascent trend is the concept of creating a market focused organization – an organization that defines itself by being active in detecting and positioning itself to serve new needs in a rapidly changing environment, rather than simply responding to member requests. [More]

Putting the Market in the Driver's Seat
For generations the key to successful association management was in taking care of your members. Know their names and apply a lot of TLC and the membership numbers will take care of themselves.

However, for the past decade trade associations as well as professional societies have found it increasingly difficult to attract and to retain members. In response association managers have resorted to every membership marketing technique conceivable including “improved member communications,” incentive gifts, discounts and special treatment of one kind or another. Yet in most cases the return on investment has been disappointing. How frustrating then for these managers to witness associations that seem to attract members effortlessly.[More]

Cross-Cultural Deal Making: Don’t Take ‘Yes’ for an Answer!
“But our meetings were so positive—we actually had bought our plane tickets to attend the final session in Paris where we thought our agreement was going to be signed. We called to confirm we were coming and were told there was no need! The agreement is off and we don’t even know why!”

Have you ever found yourself in this type of situation? Many Americans, or other people from classic “low context” cultures occasionally do. The temptation is to dismiss such times when deals go bad as examples of the “perfidious French” in action or the “sneaky (fill in the appropriate nationality) showing their true colors!” By the way, what is a “low context” culture anyway? [More]

The Full Impact of the Internet is Still to Come
Futurist economists point out that it typically takes 50 years for the full economic and social impact of an invention to begin to assert itself. For example it took fifty years for James Watts’ invention, the steam engine (1765), to be widely used in manufacturing and transportation; fifty years before Thomas Edison’s electric light bulb (1879) became widely used in cities throughout the US; and fifty years before Thomas Watson’s computer (1953) began to have its full impact. If this same rule of thumb is applied to the Internet, which came into use gradually throughout the 1970s and 1980s, is it possible for us to imagine what this invention’s FULL impact is going to be by 2020  ? [More]

Monumental Decisions: An HQ Owners Manual
“Associations tend to own their headquarters more often than organizations in the for-profit sector,” according to a real estate research study (“Associations Study,” 3 November 2003, Delta Associates) done of associations in the Washington, DC metropolitan area. If you are an association manager whose association does not own its own space you most probably have had to answer, or are now trying to answer the question: “Why not? ” [More]