Building a Fit-For-Purpose Association Board in the Turbulent Twenties

As part of the Association Insights series, in Old Town, this webinar discussed the title of this blog post.

The following are my notes from Jeff De Cagna's, Executive Advisor, Foresight First, LLC presentation.

He started with the comment of “we must do something different with our organizations and boards.  Association boards must become more!”

 

He asked a series of questions:

• What will our successors say about us?
• What will the next generation of leaders think of the work you did as a board and organization?
• Why is it critical to build a fit-for-purpose board?

He talked about how this decade is going to get worse and the four forces we face:

• The impact of AI/automation technologies on human beings;
• The worsening climate crisis;
• The surge in human inequality; and
• The rise of ideological extremism.

He discussed what is normal.  And his answer, “nothing is normal.”  He states this as the most acute short-term threat organizations face.  He made the following statement, “boards must adapt to operating in the discontinuous next.”

He went on to talk about boards being risk adverse.  Where are we headed?  Boards need to think towards the future and don’t debate current events.  That’s tough to do!

What are the foundational beliefs of a fit-for-purpose association board?

• Focus on where you are going and not where you have been;
• Think about your successors and stand up for the future;
• Let go of historical expectations;
• Get away from orthodoxy assumptions; and
• Embrace the responsibility of stewardship with other organizations on collaboration.

How can your organizations board become fit-for-purpose?  Being a board vs. becoming a board?  Think long-term and our boards must be more and not just checking the boxes of being a board (i.e. 990 review, annual budget review, etc.).

He suggested asking your board the following three questions:

1. What positive-sum transformation can your board pursue?
2. What sacrifices will your board make to benefit our successors?
3. How will the directors and officers help each other to become a fit-for-purpose board?

He ended with circling back to “what will our successors say about us?” and a quote from Barbara Jordan, “For all of its uncertainty, we cannot flee the future.”

For more information on Jeff De Cagna and his work go to his website HERE.

Think you Can’t Make Money With Social Media? Think Again.

Jason Ebey, IOM, YGM Total Resource Campaign, gave a great presentation on the title of this blog post!

His opening statement - "You came looking for money!"

We are membership-based organizations.
 
What is your target audience?  Members or nonmembers.  It’s about connecting either of those groups that can provide value to your members.

How businesses got out their message in the past, they went to different platforms but we’re going to focus on Facebook today.  He suggested our demographic is on Facebook and number two YouTube.  Shotgun vs focused approach is the theme.

It’s all about the reach.  How do you reach your members?

Start by cleaning your Facebook page.  Don’t lose your identify by putting too much junk on your page.  It’s about getting your members or prospective members to engage on your page.

Now it’s time to put value on your page.  Talk about your program of work:

Ribbon Cuttings – picture (free), live, interview (charge for both of those options).  Monetize what you can.  Transaction or it’s part of a top tier of your membership.

Flashback Friday – a year later highlight that ribbon cutting with pics from the event.  Nice touch when they are getting ready to renew.  Also, you could find a sponsor for your Flashback Friday.

Member Spotlights – what a great way to highlight a member by telling their story.  Members will pay you to tell their story on Facebook.  Think about delivering real content on the business and how they are interacting with the community.  Don’t over play this on your page.  Maybe sell one a month or one a week.

Holiday Campaigns – shop local with a coupon.  He talked about a company that can embed your logo within a QR code.  Remember QR codes, Covid brought that dead industry back!  Everyone is using QR codes again to highlight a sponsor and their company.

He went on to talk about Facebook pages vs groups for your organization.  The groups are  market segmentation of your total membership (think of it as folks who rally around an issue like workforce, healthcare, etc.).  And think of it that way!  It’s all about engagement and he stated that Facebook groups have a higher level of engagement than pages.

He ended with suggesting you keep a balance on your Facebook page.  Don’t go all sponsorship, but do focus on how you can monetize Facebook.  Do make sure you have quality content on your platform, page/s or group/s.  He quoted the President and CEO of the Robins Chamber that said, "this has also increased their engagement, recruitment and retention."

Make sure you pick the right platform for your organization and more importantly that you can support with your organizations resources.

For more information on Jason Ebey go HERE.

To Inspire and Empower Curiosity – Disruptors Get Curious Not Furious

This post is based on a general session I attended at a recent membership and marketing conference in DC.

Mike Maddock, the author of Free the Idea Monkey, made some interesting comments based on his book.

In a nutshell, the:

• Idea Monkey - is the person who can come up with hundreds of concepts before lunch; and the
• Ringleader - is the person who manages the idea monkey’s.

He went on to state they are rarely the same person.  A number of idea monkey’s and ringleaders are profiled in the book.  I’m sure these names sound familiar.

• Walt and Roy Disney
• Orville and Wilbur Wright
• Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak
• Paul Allen and Bill Gates

He challenged the audience to identify the idea monkey’s on your staff?

He then went on to pose some interesting questions and statements for the audience to consider:

• Who’s your soul mate at work?  Get outside the jar.
• Insights first, ideas second and most importantly keep looking for treasure!
• Can I see opportunity?
• Am I and innovator or inventor?
• You can’t read the label when you are sitting in the jar – expertise trap!
• What business are we in?
• What business could we be in?
• Insight, Idea and Experience – where the three meet is where you need to be.
• Invention or innovation?
• Ringleaders need to drive the train – empathy.

For more information on Mike Maddock go HERE.

More Than a Membership: Create Belonging Through Sound Brand Strategy

This post is based on a recent seminar I attended a couple of months ago in Washington, DC.

The following are my notes based on the conversation led by Jennie Winton of Mission Minded.

What is your Brand?  Your logo (visual identity) is not your brand nor are the programs you produce are your brand.  Your brand is your reputation.  It’s what people think about you when they see your name.

Benefits of a Strong Brand – it creates a relationship with your key stakeholders.  It also minimizes competitive threats.  In other words, they think of you first instead of your competition.

She went on to talk about how it can defend you against negative news.  A strong brand will make it easier for your sales team to bring on new members and retain the ones you have.  A strong brand is built on benefits not features (we generally talk about our “features” not the “benefits,” something that might solve their problems.

I’ve talked about that in a past post that can be found HERE.

Here are Jennie's 6 Steps to Rebranding:

1. Assess the brand you have now – survey your members and non-members to find out what your known for or not known for.  Look for patterns.

2. Identify your audience – those that are most likely to join.  That’s another way of saying you can’t be all things to all people.  Who are our core members that allow us to fulfill our mission?

3. Examine the competition – I’ve said this before, look to the next town or community and that chamber is your competition.  What makes you different?  Create a brand that differentiates you from the competition.

4. Find the open opportunity – how are you different?  What are we offering to our members that they can’t get elsewhere?  Do they feel good by joining your organization?

5. Distill that difference into its purest essence, your brand positioning – think Volvo/Safety, Apple/Innovation, Nike/Celebrate Athletes and Athletics.

6. Intentionally begin to send signals that reinforce the band you want to have – what we do, how we sound, how we look, and how we act.

She ended with “Brand is everyone’s responsibility.”

For more information on branding from One Marketing Limited go HERE.

A great resource on How To Craft Your Belief Message can be found HERE by Mission Minded.

Hyper Personalize to “Market of One”

This post is based on a recent seminar I attended a couple of months ago in Washington, DC.

The following are my notes based on the conversation led by Dave Will, PropFuel, CoFounder and CEO, and Jemilah Senter, VP of Marketing and Communications, Special Libraries Association.

 
They started out talking about marketing and how that is really broadcasting to your general audience.  And how you need to think about marketing to one.  There is a difference in membership needs vs an individual member’s needs.
 
The “Market of One” Philosophy
 
Personalization vs Individualization Personas – first name and other demographics is what personalization is all about.  Individualization is about just in time information on what your members need.
 
One to one conversation = market of one.  If you were face to face with a new member, what would you ask them?
 
Conversational engagement is about asking questions any time you are communicating with your members and getting that information in your database.
 
Segmentation is the key word they used over and over and the importance of starting there and then drilling down on what the individual wants from the membership.  That’s hyper-personalization.

For more information on the subject visit PropFuel's website HERE.

The Seven Deadly Sins of Marketing

Tony Rossell, SVP, Marketing General Inc., has been in the association sector for 30 years and the following post is based on his presentation at a recent conference I attended in DC.

1. Undefined Value Proposition – how compelling is your value prop?  It’s important to be clear in your communications on how you are helping your members grow their business, comply with a new regulation or gain access to capital to name a few.  Members renew from received value.  Members join for perceived value.  Do your research (i.e. survey your members etc.) and find out what they want.

2. Excessive Planning – some associations are suffering from “paralysis from analysis.”  His point is just get out there!  Set a plan, launch a campaign, study the results and act on your results.  Continue to test, track and adjust as needed.

3. Abandonment of Membership Recruitment – you can’t just rely on renewing your members.  Even if you have high retention rates, in order to grow your chamber, you need to continue to recruit new members.  Keep potential new members in your sales funnel.

4. Overreliance on a Single Channel – don’t just rely on one communication tool (i.e. email).  You need to create an omnichannel marketing campaign (i.e. email, mail, annual meeting, social media, digital ads, texting, video, content marketing, etc.).

5. Insufficient Frequency of Contact – 5 email, 3 online, 1 mail, 1 phone call is the average number of touches based on their research.  It’s not enough! 

6. Inadequate Special Offers – the speaker is an advocate of special offers.  They could come in the form of a gift card, logo shirt or additional months of membership.  I personally am not a fan of discounting membership rates.  I view that as your not worth the price of dues.  I am fine with sending a shirt with your logo.

7. Lack of testing and Analysis – he finished with the key point of folks not testing what’s working for you.  It’s imperative that you test everything (i.e. subject lines, sender, format, message, call to action to name)

He finished with the statement that associations showing growth are seen as innovative.

For a free copy of Marketing General's annual membership and marketing benchmarking report go HERE.

Tune Up and Rev Up: Improving Your Membership Recruitment

The following post is based on a session at the MMCC recently held in Washington, DC, by members of ASAE's Membership Council.

It was a great discussion on utilizing 8 tools in tuning up and revving up your membership recruitment.

Here are the 8 highlighted tools:

Target Audiences – who do you want to join your chamber?  Define those that are most likely to join (i.e., your lapsed members are at the top of that list).

Value propositions – why should your members join?  It’s about that radio station, WIIFM, what’s in it for me?  Talk about the benefits that your members will get by being a member – knowledge, business, etc. not about features – newsletter, monthly luncheon, etc.  Meet their needs.

Offer – why should your members join now?  Special offers (i.e. 25% off, please note I’m not a fan of discounts)?  Just be clear in the value of joining your chamber.

Multi-channel, multi-touch – ask your prospects to join via multiple channels on a regular basis.

The ASK – is it clear that you want them to join?  Make it front and center and make it easy to join.

Testing – you should be do some A/B testing to see what message or offer is working best in converting your prospects into members.

Results evaluation – analyze your different campaigns and figure out which campaign generated the most money for your chamber.

Budget – fuel up!  Get your list updated, and start sending your marketing campaigns, whether mail or email, and send them on a regular basis.

They left us with three final takeaways:

• Evaluate your membership recruitment campaigns.
• Measure your performance, what’s working and what’s not working.
• Make changes to improve your response rates.  And remember, these changes can be very simple.

For a great resource from Aptify on membership recruitment for associations go HERE.