[column]Association executives have always had a long list of potential financial, systemic and reputational risk: member acquisition and retention; churn; non-dues revenue streams or lack thereof; governance structure and a slow-moving decision making apparatus; awareness; competition; positioning and protecting that position. Add to the things everyone else worries about—recession, two wars, legislative gridlock, H1N1, natural disasters, et al. And now add a new list of short- and long-term blow-backs from the recession.

The monster under the bed just gets bigger and bigger and, in the dead of night, it’s difficult to see that the solutions are actually bigger than the monster.

How can I get my board to see that we’re not offering enough for the members of the future?

• Educate the board with dispassionate, well-documented facts on demographic shifts.
• Create plans to build a bridge to the future that don’t compromise the current member core’s support. For instance, are you experimenting with social media in affordable ways?
• Offer self-funded programs, services and member benefits for young, entry-level members.
• Consider a small experimentation budget to try new programs and processes, then, generate actual metrics to use as evidence of the experiments’ worth.

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How can I react to my challenges in a timely fashion given that the consequences are now so much more dire?

• Set up listening posts on social networks covering not just your own members but the member ecosystem—suppliers, vendors, media, government, etc.—so that you have an early-warning system.
• Flatten your organization to add speed and flexibility.
• Develop a decision-making process that allows you to react in real time, rather than only during bi-annual board meetings. For instance, do you have a strategic committee that can make decisions with a rubber stamp from the full board?

Even though membership and attendance were both down, we kept profits up by cutting things we previously thought we couldn’t live without–and no one noticed. So who are we really trying to serve? What is our value proposition?

• Examine the value proposition and decide whether it is still relevant to the current landscape.
• If it is, examine how you deliver on that proposition. Maybe the fault lies with programs, benefits and services and not with the proposition itself.
• Examine the full member ecosystem, not just the current members. Are you providing value to the whole profession or industry or only to a narrow subset? Is that subset enough to sustain relevance and value?
• Institute an annual “closet cleaning” where you cut outdated or under-performing products and services.

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[column] Are we trying to be all things to all people? That undercuts our ability to be the expert on our industry.

• Link an examination of who you’re trying to serve to an examination of your value proposition and your membership now and in the future.
• Where does your expertise actually lie? Is your self-image justified?
• Determine what you could eliminate that no one would notice. You will gain focus and clarity about who you are and what services your members actually value.
• Find out what resonates best with your audience, and determine how you can do more of that without neglecting other less-popular, but still successful, efforts.

How do you get board members to wear their association hats rather than their individual CEO hats? They can’t see the challenges we face as a non-profit.

• What makes you think that there are challenges specific to non-profits? Assuming there are, have you explained them in a compelling, actionable way?
• Board training is a must, regardless of how well you think you know the new members, or the quality of the relationship.
• Board manuals work about as well as employee manuals, that is, great as door stops but not as useful resources. Orientation and training must be face to face and result in actionable plans.

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• Determine what you want board members to do, and consider that your approach might be part of the problem in reaching that outcome.
• Ask yourself if your problem is with individuals or with the board as a whole. If it’s the latter, look for other board structures—data-driven decision making, for instance, or competency-based rather than seniority.

The days of verticality are over. We have to come together in ways that benefit the entire member ecosystem. How do we get the board to understand that change and the necessity to move out of our narrow focus?

• Compelling revenue projections should do it: the financial danger of remaining narrow vs. the sustainable revenue potential of going broad.
• Partner with like-minded associations for programming, research, events, etc. to de-demonize outside participation.
• Propose extensions of the association that serve other audiences but do not over-tax existing resources. For instance, consider an online-only membership category for others in the ecosystem that are currently outside your membership structure: vendors, suppliers, manufacturers, etc. Give them access to what you already do and create a new revenue stream.
• Work with the board to discuss the entire supply chain and the changes that impact your members upstream and downstream.

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[column]We’re losing a generation. Our members laid people off, didn’t hire last year, won’t hire this year and possibly not next year. We’ll lose that generation of new ideas and energy, but we’ll also see a dip in membership and volunteer leadership that will hit us now as well as later.

• Offer horizontal extensions of membership to others in your industry or professional space.
• Invite outside experts, such as academics, to be on your boards and committees.
• Become a resource for internal member company training or professional development, which will increase retention.

Just as we learned to compete with for-profit competitors on meetings, publications, etc., they add networking—going after our bread-and-butter reason to exist.

• Beat them at their own game. Embrace all forms of networking in order to attract audiences with different meeting preferences.
• Face to face still appeals to many people, but you should scale the size of meetings to economic realities.
• Do a better, more hard-nosed job of negotiating meeting contracts with venues and hospitality providers.
• Use technology—social media, virtual meetings both large and small, conversation-inducing digital content—to provide ample ways for members to interact with each other and with the association.

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• Make yourself the preferred venue for net- working within your profession or industry. What is it the competition is doing that could show you what’s missing from your own offering?

Are we in the commodity business? If networking is becoming commoditized, and education, meetings and publications already are, that drives down prices. how do we differentiate ourselves and make that appeal to members?

• Services may be commodities, but high- quality content is not and never will be.
• Exercise ruthless quality control.
• Price yourself at a premium and then provide the best content available in the form of speakers, research reports, articles, standards, training, etc.
• Market yourself and what you do better than anyone else. Do not wait for people to find you or for your reputation to speak for itself. Market and market aggressively because the competition certainly will.

What uncontrollable macroeconomic factors have I not anticipated?

• Something has to continue to keep you awake at night. The only comfort is this keeps everyone awake.

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