3: Getting the Most Out of Your Consulting Partnerships

Coming in at Number Three in the all-time Top 10 Spark blog posts: Getting the Most Out of Your Consulting Partnerships. (And it garnered a lot of pingbacks, which is probably one of the reasons…

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Association Meetings in a Post-Roe World

On Tuesday, October 11, Shelly Alcorn hosted Joan Eisenstodt and me on The Phoenix Cast for an important conversation about association meetings in a post-Roe world. Just as meetings are starting to recover from pandemic shutdowns, new (and…

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4: Five Ways NOT to Brainstorm

The 4th most popular blog post on the all-time top ten list is an unexpected entry: Five Ways NOT to Brainstorm. Written almost exactly eight years ago, it was intended to be funny and a…

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Being Responsible About Research

In this final post celebrating the launch of Caveat Emptor: Becoming a Responsible Consumer of Research, I want to talk about why this matters. Why do association execs need to develop discernment about research, both…

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Curiosity with a Purpose

As Zora Neale Hurston described it: Research is formalized curiosity. It is poking and prying with a purpose. When you’re sponsoring a research study, one of the biggest decisions you’ll have to make is what…

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“P-Value”? What’s a “P-Value”?

And why should you care? Associations generate a lot of original research, but association execs also use a lot of research created by other entities both to assess the internal operations of the association as…

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Lies, Damn Lies & Statistics?

Association execs consume – and produce – a lot of research in our day-to-day work, but most of us don’t have formal training in research. A lot of the language of research programs– p-values and…

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5: 10 Tips for Creating an Effective Marketing Piece

We’re at the midpoint of the Top 10 All-Time Spark blog posts, with #5: 10 Tips for Creating an Effective Marketing Piece. The original piece was written in response to a conference presentation I’ve given…

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6: Explaining Marketing to a Kid

Coming in at number 6 in the all-time list of top ten Spark blog posts: Explaining Marketing to a Kid. The original post was inspired by a fun activity the association I was working for…

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7: Membership 101: Exit Surveys

In position number 7 of the top ten all time Spark blog posts: Membership 101: Exit Surveys. (I told you the Membership 101 series would be back!) Once again, the advice in the initial post…

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