Blog
Don’t Get Lazy!!
Putting it all together, maybe the most important thing Sohini and I learned from fundraisers as we were researching Steal This Idea! (and as Sohini has worked with them over the past two decades) is: don’t…
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Reduce Barriers to Entry
Just about every association I know of is struggling to recruit younger members (aka Millennials). Part of the reason for that is that we’re erecting barriers to entry rather than removing them. What’s required to…
Read More →Your Baby Is Ugly
One of the great things about being a consultant is that we get to tell people when their baby is ugly without them getting mad at us – hey, they’re PAYING us to tell them…
Read More →Treat Members Equitably Not Equally
In the association world, we tend to want to treat all our members equally: nobody is more important or special than anyone else. That’s a noble impulse and helpful, up to point. After all, you…
Read More →Steal This Idea!
If there’s one thing I’ve learned in the past 20 years, it’s that associations don’t always have all the answers. We definitely have some major advantages, not the least of which is that we are…
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Membership 101: Data, Data, Data
If you’ve been following this series – and I hope you have! – you’ve probably noticed that I talk a lot about data. You need data to calculate LTV. You need data to construct your…
Read More →Membership 101: Life Time Value
One of the questions I get asked a lot is: “How much should I be willing to invest to recruit a member?” The answer is not obvious. For example, let’s say you invest $1000 on…
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Being a First-Time Attendee
Note: my good friend Joan Eisenstodt had asked for people to share our experiences as first-time attendees for her Fridays With Joan column for Meetings Today. I realized that some of my blog readers might…
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Membership 101: Ladders of Engagement Revisited
Once members join, the next question becomes: How do you keep them? How do you build real relationships over time that deepen your commitment to each other and lead to long-term loyalty on both sides?…
Read More →Membership 101: The Importance of Personalization
Associations are built on relationships. Sure, we have boards of directors and bylaws and committee structures and membership structures and org charts and departmental structures and hierarchies and employee manuals and policies and procedures and…
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