Rx for keeping members: accountability and value

Association expert urges staff, officers to work as partners.

By Rebecca A. Clay

With competition for members more intense than ever before, North America's 250,000 associations no longer have the luxury of being perceived by their members as just OK, association expert Bud Crouch told participants at APA's State Leadership Conference in March.

"Members are holding their associations far more accountable for providing value," said Crouch, president of a Langhorne, Pa., consulting firm called Innovations Plus. "If members don't like what you're doing, they don't vote you out. They vote themselves out by letting their memberships lapse."

In a presentation entitled "Partners in success," Crouch shared what he has learned in advising national associations such as the American Dental Association, American Bar Association and American Association of Equine Practitioners. He offered tips on how associations' staff and elected officials can work together to create and sustain success in a competitive environment:

* Create a strategic plan that reflects the leadership team's consensus on what success would look like over the next 30 to 60 months. Without a plan, the association loses its institutional memory every time the board rotates and has to start all over again. Once you have developed a strategic plan, be sure to implement it, said Crouch, noting that half of all plans end up in dusty binders on office shelves. Use an operational plan to move toward fulfillment of the strategic plan's goals.

* Develop a portfolio of useful member benefits, such as meetings, publications, continuing education and public policy advocacy. But don't spread yourself too thin, Crouch warned. Understand what services members want without being held hostage by the demands of the one to three percent of members who are perpetual dissidents. To be truly effective, associations must also identify needs that members don't even know they have yet.

* Enhance communication. Instead of sending out annual surveys, talk to small groups of members to find out what's on their minds, Crouch suggested. Asking members' opinions not only provides useful information but also creates a ripple of good will even among members who don't share their opinions. In addition, associations should use e-mail, web sites and other methods to allow members to access information in whatever way is most convenient for them.

* Create a system for identifying and grooming future leaders. It's no longer effective to expect members to spend years working their way up to important leadership positions. Younger members, in particular, may want to jump right into state and national positions. To get these natural leaders into the pipeline, ask your past president to chair a leadership development committee. And be sure to provide volunteers with opportunities more substantive than handing out nametags at conferences.

* Improve orientations for new board members. If all you do is hand new members the bylaws and introduce them to the staff, Crouch warned, they will sit quietly as they learn the ropes and lose their ability to ask the hard questions that need to be asked. To make the most of new blood, orientations should focus on roles, responsibilities and accountability.

* Allow an executive committee to take care of day-to-day issues; save board meetings for key decisions. Don't allow the board to waste time with informational reports, said Crouch, calling board meetings "precious time." And keep in mind that allowing board members to read material at the meeting instead of before it is "enabling behavior."

* Sit down with the executive director at the beginning of each year to discuss objectives. Use those objectives as the basis of a year-end evaluation.

Rebecca A. Clay is a writer in Washington, D.C.



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