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If I were to build an association, I would pull the most significant insights from all of the research I have conducted. Here is what I would focus on as I created my dream association. One of the core staff values would be to be intensely member-focused. We would talk with members often, conduct listening tours, and interview them. We would use all the member insights we gain to develop our member communications, set our strategy, and create an innovation plan.
Sometimes, despite your best efforts to understand your members’ most pressing problems and most important goals, and provide solutions for them, members lapse. What happens next? You should try to find out why they left. One approach membership pros often take to discover their reasons for leaving is to ask membership committee members to make calls to lapsed members.
Your annual event might be looming, or it might be a year away – wherever you are in the planning, it can feel like you’re stuck in a crazy-making cycle. The good news is, if you have an online community, you’ve got access to a tool that puts you one step closer to making your job so much easier. Are you taking advantage of the support your online community can provide?
You can now ask questions and run surveys from your Wild Apricot admin account, thanks to our new Polls feature. Find out how to start creating polls, and get some inspiration on ways to use them.
Speaker: Gareth Webb & Phil Selley, Founding Partners at Intouch Business
For many nonprofit organizations and NGOs, managing grants and monitoring projects with spreadsheets and manual processes feels familiar—but is it holding your organization back? As funding requirements become more complex and stakeholder expectations for transparency grow, relying on outdated methods can lead to inefficiencies, missed opportunities, and compliance risks.
The weekly list of free educational events and resources for the association community… You can improve your content marketing by rethinking your website user experience. Organize your content into pillar pages or topic cluster pages. They’re great for both SEO and the user experience. HubSpot walks you through seven examples of pillar pages so you can see how they work.
No one likes to admit it, but let’s face it, we’re all curious about how we stack up or rank compared to others. It’s human nature—the ego at work. Associations—a big group of human egos—are no different which is why membership benchmark survey reports are so popular. Associations want to know how their membership recruitment, retention, and marketing tactics compare to others so they can improve member growth and engagement.
No one likes to admit it, but let’s face it, we’re all curious about how we stack up or rank compared to others. It’s human nature—the ego at work. Associations—a big group of human egos—are no different which is why membership benchmark survey reports are so popular. Associations want to know how their membership recruitment, retention, and marketing tactics compare to others so they can improve member growth and engagement.
When was the last time you saw a commercial that made you cry? Maybe it was one of those gems during the Super Bowl, or maybe you’re not the crying type – either way, what’s the secret behind these stirring commercials? When you think about it, it’s odd that we’d cry over something (not you, non-cryers) that’s simply advertising a product or service for purchase.
AMR's own Emily Lane shares something new, called Human Data Visualization, that the National Association of State Chief Information Officers (NASCIO) tried at their Midyear.
Four weeks ago, in Step Four: Discussing the Strategic Implications, Part 5 , I continued a description of a Scenario Planning exercise my Board chair and I decided to conduct at our two most recently completed Board meetings. I ended the previous post with a comment that, in the process of defining the external factors that will most dramatically affect the course of our industry, and of identifying the strategies and tactics that our association should employ in order to help those things happ
Struggling to generate revenue beyond membership dues? You're not alone. Our free guide, The Ultimate Guide to Non-Dues Revenue for Associations , offers practical strategies to help your organization boost financial health. Inside, you'll explore creative ways to generate income, including: Educational offerings tailored to your audience Event-based revenue opportunities Job boards that drive engagement and income Corporate sponsorship ideas A checklist to evaluate and strengthen your current a
Who wants to attend a common, ordinary, ho-hum, everyday , I’m-just-like-all-the-others traditional conference? Even worse, who wants to pay to attend one? And who wants to plan or sell one? Your conference growth and revenue depends upon repeat paying attendees year after year. Customer loyalty is the cornerstone for your event’s success. And your customer loyalty is built upon making your common conference uncommon.
Could an Association Management Software (AMS) solution be the answer to the inefficiencies that plague your association? This article will help you evaluate ten association software options. What is Association Management Software (AMS)? In a nutshell, an AMS provides membership-based organizations an all-in-one member management system. These membership management tools – contact database, email system, billing and payment options, event platform, website builder, and other useful services – w
The majority of my early career was working for a huge and beloved brand. The company was very focused on professional development for staff. Often trainers came onsite to work with various departments on topics like communication, or managing diverse personalities, or team leadership. If I ever identified a conference, or a seminar, or a workshop I wanted to attend, money would be found and off I would go.
2018 marks the tenth anniversary of the Membership Marketing Benchmarking Report. Looking back over the past ten years, we have witnessed very stable growth in membership counts and continued the maintenance of positive membership renewal rates. However, this has not represented a changeless marketing environment. In fact, the methodology and focus of how associations have accomplished their goals has evolved and changed over the past ten years.
Traditional budgeting and forecasting methods can no longer keep pace with today’s rapidly evolving business environment. Static budgets, rigid annual forecasts, and outdated financial models limit an organization’s ability to adapt to market shifts and economic uncertainty. To stay ahead, finance leaders must leverage a future-forward approach—one that leverages real-time data, predictive analytics, and continuous planning to drive smarter financial decisions.
Content marketing has grown by leaps and bounds during the past five years. Unfortunately, too few event organizers fully embrace the long-tail, pull benefits of content marketing. Likewise, many conference professionals have no idea what embracing the long-tail, pull benefits of content marketing even means. It’s a foreign concept to them. Most marketing and communications teams agree that content marketing serves as the foundation to their conference marketing strategy.
So, you want to make money (a.k.a, sell memberships) maximizing your organization’s social media and digital marketing efforts. Imagine that, right? You have done the groundwork… your organization is online in all the right places, ensuring your target market is aware of its existence. You have also engaged with people, going beyond mere awareness of your organization to the point of building relationships and building up the ‘know, like, and trust’ factors.
Social media has changed the pace of work and the world. Can associations keep up? Social media has changed the game. When I started in social media about ten years ago, associations were asking: Do we really need to worry about this? and Is social media just a fad? A decade later, that ship has sailed, but as an industry, we still do not understand the ways that social media impacts every part of an association, from leadership to membership.
Written by Sabeha Mohamed, Head of Demand Generation, Eventbrite UK. If you’ve run a free-to-attend event before, you’ll probably understand the disappointment that comes when half of the people who said they’d come simply don’t turn up. Without the financial commitment, it’s far easier for attendees to give your event a miss than if they’d forked out some cash.
Speaker: Tim Sarrantonio, Director of Corporate Brand
Do you really know your donors? Not just what they give, but who they are? 👥 In this interactive session, we’ll break down how nonprofits can use behavioral indicators (affinity, recency, frequency, and monetary value) to build prospecting segments that go beyond wealth screening and actually align with donor identity. You’ll walk away with practical strategies to move beyond basic demographics and cultivate supporters based on how they already engage with you!
She's no longer at the right place. She's no longer in the right profession. And so she's looking for what's next. That is what I learned in a colleague's email. And she asked for advice. You could amass quite the collection of books on finding purpose in your life, career planning, and the like. I've read many of them, and many are quite good. Rather than a book, I offered these three fundamental questions for her to consider and answer on her own, hoping they wold help her clarify her own inte
With advancements in technology, and an increased desire of employers to provide work-life balance, remote working has become more and more common. To successfully implement a remote work program, employers must set guidelines that allow remote employees to seamlessly conduct business. This can encompass anything from the ability to access and disseminate data and intellectual property, to communication tools and support and even tips for safety and well-being.
A look behind the scenes of our two-tiered innovation process. Our interest at AssociationSuccess.org in harnessing collective knowledge has two levels: we are excited both by the insights generated through collaboration, and by the innovative potential of experimenting with ways of harnessing them. Our mission, as we see it, is both to source cutting-edge ideas, and to spark them.
Crewsaders the crewing and staffing company that provides services to the corporate events and meetings industry is celebrating 10 years in business. From its small beginnings in Birmingham in 2008, the company has grown into a national company with offices in Birmingham, Bristol, Leeds, London Manchester and Scotland employing over 400 permanent staff and freelancers.
GrowthZone’s 11th annual survey highlights trends, challenges, and strategies shaping the membership industry through insights from U.S. and Canadian association professionals. Get your copy of the 2025 Association Survey Results Report to see how your organization measures up: The biggest challenges associations are facing Membership retention trends and non-renewal insights Strategies for automatic renewals and reinstatements Shifts in member engagement tactics Why members are joining (and sta
Don’t you just love it when you spend a meeting coming up with ideas, and then NONE of them go anywhere? Brainstorming is seriously over-rated — when you do it wrong, which is most of the time! Beth Kanter shares her tips here on how to do brainstorming right. As Beth points out, asking the right question or framing the problem that you are brainstorming about is essential to your success.
The shift to digital in nearly every facet of daily life has majorly impacted the ways in which we interact on a daily basis. Think about it- we shop, stream TV, send countless texts and emails, take classes and telecommute – all online. Now it’s just part of our day-to-day. Twenty-first century business culture no longer supports the idea that once you earn your degree your learning career is complete.
A step-by-step guide to a successful rebranding process. Your association’s brand is your image, or the perception of the association by your target audiences. In short, it’s your association’s personality. Often we think of a rebrand as changing your association’s logo—but it’s more complicated than that. Rebranding also involves your color scheme, tagline, and messaging.
Cashless expert, tappit has announced a three-year strategic partnership with Bestival and Camp Bestival. Rolling out this July, festival-goers at Bestival and Camp Bestival will use tappit’s contactless payment wristbands for the first time. This means less time spent queuing, and more time with family and friends at two of the UK’s best-loved festivals.
Is messy, outdated, or duplicate data making it harder to track engagement, revenue, and performance? Poor data quality can slow your organization down and prevent you from making informed decisions. With The Dirty Data Guide , you'll discover: Practical steps to clean your data and maintain accuracy over time. A checklist to help your team implement data hygiene best practices.
Conference and meeting professionals like action when planning their events. They are accustomed to juggling multiple demands. They have long to-do lists that require their attention and often exceed their available time. So, they have the tendency to want to hurry up and check-off items on their to-do list–yesterday. Herein likes one of their challenges when starting a conference improvement process.
Optimizing your association’s online career center to make it one of your most valuable assets is simpler than it looks. Especially now that you’re reading this easy-to-follow, step-by-step guide from the leading provider of association career centers. Associations want to provide a useful online hub for active and passive job seekers. Employers want to be visible on these hubs so they can find the best talent for their open positions.
Mobile phones and 24/7 connectivity blur the lines between personal and work time, especially during summer break or vacation. And according to recent poll s, some 62% of people check their work email while on vacation. And that can ruin your time at the beach and more importantly prevent you from reaping the full benefits of taking break. In the Happy Healthy Nonprofit: Strategies for Impact without Burnout , Aliza Sherman and I did a deep dive into the research literature about the proven lin
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