How is Membership Killing Association Business Models?

Anytime AENC conducts a survey on challenges being faced by association leaders, one topic always comes-up – How do we define our value proposition to our members?  And in today’s current economy, that has become even more challenging.

For many associations that were started 100 years ago, the only way to get information related to your industry was to attend the Annual Meeting. For those organizations that existed 50 years ago, they could easily boast that their organization was “The Source” for information. Today, information is being produced so rapidly, the organization can’t say that they are “The” source for information any longer.

In addition to that, Associations can’t even say they are the only place to network with peers with the creation of things like Facebook, Pinterest, or Meet-Up. To say that the focus of membership is killing the association business model is becoming more true, every day.

At this year’s AENC Annual Meeting, we will hear from Jeff De Cagna, Chief Strategist and Founder, Principled Innovation and frequent ASAE speaker. Jeff will be doing two sessions – a breakout on Business Model Thinking for Association Boards and CEOs and the closing general session – Why Membership is Killing Association Business Models. Here more about these session in a recent podcast - AENC Podcast w/ Jeff De Cagna.

The closing session will explain five critical reasons why the focus on membership is killing association business models today, and will challenge the prevailing orthodoxy that our organizations must continue to be about membership going forward.

For this and other great sessions, check out the AENC Annual Meeting, June 10-11, 2012, Greensboro, NC.

Click here for more information about this year’s Annual Meeting.

Annual Meeting is a Wrap

Since the AENC Annual Meeting was in Wilmington, the Hollywood of the east coast, nothing could be more fitting of a headline. And what a meeting it was.
We started out the meeting with the AENC Golf Classic @ Porter’s Neck Country Club and were treated to the first hole-in-one since I have been at AENC by Brent Hazelett. Sorry you didn’t earn a free car Brent, but you earned a lot of respect and I will make sure that get’s back to the VSAE folks in-time for this year’s Executive Cup.
The 56th Annual Meeting went through some changes this year as we really focused our attention on schedule and professional development. That meant free-time was included prior to the meeting, rather than right in the middle of the meeting and lots of folks, nearly 85, took advantage of that. Half of those folks came along for the Haunted Pub Crawl.
On Sunday, the official opening day of the meeting, we began with a nice lunch cruise aboard the Henrietta and then the meeting was on.
Annual Meeting attendees were treated to an awesome opening session from Ron Rosenberg. And that set the tone for the rest of the meeting. This was followed by some time with exhibitors, break-out sessions, and then the closing session was a panel on the state of the Meetings Industry.
What came next was something, I’ll admit, I wasn’t prepared for. I had seen the BEOs and I knew we had a huge amount of Silent Auction items. But the Wilmington Convention Center blew us away with the facility, the food, the decorations and the buzz. It was amazing. I felt like I had walked into another association’s meeting. I couldn’t believe this was AENC. The bar was certainly raised that night. And so was the amount of money from this year’s Silent Auction. We raised over $15,000 for the AENC Scholarship Fund and had a great time doing it as we ate Seafood Chowder, Shrimp and Grits and sipped on local beer from the Cape Fear area.
Monday, which would normally be day 2 of 3 was our last day. We started out again with education and networking and wrapped up with an awesome Awards Luncheon (and event that was two events last year). Special congrats go out to our Award Winners – Wendy W. Scott (Lowry Award), Ginny Fountain (Distinguished Service Award) and Andrew Schmidt (Patsy B. Smith Award).
Also, congrats to our outgoing committee chairs and our 2010-11 Board of Directors and our 10 and 20-Year members. A very special thank you to Tina Gordon, CAE, our 10-11 AENC President. We had a great year with her leadership and we look forward to 2011-2012 President Paul Stone. Who, by the way, said one of my favorite association quotes –  “Every man owes a part of his time and money to the business or industry in which he is engaged.  No man has a moral right to withhold his support from an organization that is trying to improve conditions within his sphere.”
And that is the business of AENC – to advance the profession and we thank so much all those who had a role in this year’s annual meeting and helped to make it so successful.
We must especially thank the Wilmington/Cape Fear CVB, the Hilton Wilmington, the Wilmington Convention Center, the AENC staff and committee volunteers. It couldn’t have been done without each of you.
For those interested in seeing some of the photos from the event check out the AENC photos here. More will be coming soon!!

60 Ideas in 60 Minutes

Thank you to Denise Ryan and the attendees at this year’s 60 Ideas in 60 Minutes session. Came up with some great ideas in the areas of raising revenue, increasing member engagement, member recruitment and social media.
Here are the Ideas:

Innovative Funding/Savings

1. Provide flash drive, but offer to sell printed binders
2. Develop an annual sponsorship fee/packaged sponsorships
3. Thursday Newsletter, sale the banner ad for $1,000/month
4. Stopped printing a syllabus instead, using a flash drive
5. Outsourced advertising for magazine, electronic advertising
6. Offered two free tickets to Biltmore for registering for meeting in advance
7. Sign-up at meetings and provide giveaway at the event for immediate gratification, branded with the association name
8. Selling the space on the walls in the office, subtle advertising
9. Provide a tangible item and get sponsorship, besides just a discount
10. Don’t be afraid to ask for donations
11. Ask sponsors what you would pay and then create a sponsorship to match it.
12. Sponsorships on black screens during webinar
13. Savings using iContact
14. Take pictures of members and sell the framed picture to member at an event
15. Golf ball drop at golf event

 Membership Engagement/Involvement

1. Creative ways to introduce first-timers and make them feel comfortable
2. Member briefing on how to network and take advantage of the association networking
3. Special peer groups for certain segments of the membership (Young CPA, Women’s Groups, etc.)
4. Have a conference buddy for your meetings and match – first with previous attendees
5. Have a specific seat at meetings for young members at meetings
6. Customized involvement plan to get members engaged
7. Have one-on-one session with new member to introduce them to association
8. Try and learn the name of all members and one key fact about that member
9. Speed networking event to get to know the different areas/levels of the profession
10. For members not involved, had board members to call and ask for involvement or find out why they haven’t been involved
11. Develop a tiered method for students to join association. Lower the barrier for dues to make it easy to join
12. Making personal visits and asking people to renew, sales blitz
13. Put the amount of savings on the invoice so the accounting folks see the savings for renewing
14. Track the number of referrals members receive to show the value of their membership
15. Personalized to notes to random members on the magazine
16. Send all new members a personalized thank-you note.

 Recruiting Members

1. Got to sell the value of the membership to potential members
2. Figuring out your target market and how do you want to reach them
3. Peer-to-Peer to bring new people in
4. Sister associations that you might could piggy-back off of for membership
5. Trail membership, but you better show the value
6. Money-Back Guarantee for joining
7. Carry membership for those who are serving in the armed services
8. Get-a-member campaigns, if done effectively and provide incentive
9. Member-only pricing or include membership in cost of major event
10. Group membership or bulk membership pricing
11. Looking to the colleges and universities
12. Going after members who used to be members, especially if you h
13. ad made changes
14. Create chapter bucks as incentive to recruit members
15. Making personal visits and asking people to join, sales blitz
16. Create “what have you done for me lately” material to provide potential members

 Social Media

1. Red Cross social media policy.
2. What are your expectations with social media and what does success look like
3. Because its “free”, there is still time associated with it
4. You don’t want to be “extreme” in your postings, but it must captivate
5. Educating your membership about the social media outlets
6. Get access to people you might not normally reach because of social media
7. Once you start it, you CAN’T STOP!
8. Ghost social media users who can post at certain times to feed the discussion
9. Help feed members information that has value beyond NC
10. Way to inform members about lobbying efforts and get speakers to promote meeting
11. Don’t lock out people from the conversation
12. Linked In discussion groups are great way to engage and post questions and gather data. Use it to recruit members and find connections.
13. Showing the Twitter feeds on your website
14. Track your click through rates and open rates
15. Put a hidden link for a free item on your electronic communications
16. Tip of the day in email to draw in readers
17. iContact is now offering free basic membership for their electronic newsletter