Category: innovation

Reduce Barriers to Entry

Posted on | by Elizabeth Weaver Engel, CAE
P J Hayman & Company Limited - Image

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 be considered part of your association’s community? A certain degree? A license? A certification? MONEY?

Those are all barriers to entry that a young person may not be able to clear – at least not yet. What you’re telling them, in effect, is: “You are not welcome here.”

No wonder, when they can clear or have cleared those barriers, they aren’t returning. You made them feel unwelcome right when they needed you, when they were new in their careers, when they didn’t have an established network, when they needed a job. You turned them away. And for what? A few bucks?

Fundraising organizations know that if they can establish a relationship and loyalty up front, the dollars will come. Even if they don’t, those committed young fans will contribute in all sorts of valuable ways: volunteering to help with the mission-driven work of the organization, recruiting other supporters, amplifying messages and stories online and on social media.

Learn more about how fundraising organizations create alternate entry points to belonging and how associations can adapt their methods in the latest Spark whitepaper, Steal This Idea! Innovations in Cause-Oriented Fundraising for Associations freely available for download at https://bit.ly/3eu6ntm. Pay special attention to the stories of the Capital Area Food Bank and the CFA Society of Minnesota on pages 28-31.

Photo by Jumpei Mokudai on Unsplash

Your Baby Is Ugly

Posted on | by Elizabeth Weaver Engel, CAE

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 when their baby is ugly.

Well, your (campaign) baby is ugly.

But it’s not your fault!

Marketing automation makes it easy for us to “set it and forget it!”

You set up the campaign, and your AMS and automation software run in the background, sending notices out on time and to everyone who still hasn’t renewed/registered for the meeting/bought the webinar or book.

But those highly automated campaigns aren’t compelling. They don’t tell a story. They aren’t personal. They don’t make a connection. Because of that, they often don’t live up to expectations.

Fundraisers are experts at doing all of those things. They have to be. They’re not asking for people to give them money to get a direct personal benefit (a membership, a conference experience, professional development, knowledge). They’re asking people to give them money for some sort of greater good. And they do it really well.

How? Is it magic? Do you have to know the secret Association of Fundraising Professionals handshake?

You do not – you, too, can run a compelling, visually-arresting, emotionally- motivating, effective campaign. Find out how in the latest Spark whitepaper, Steal This Idea! Innovations in Cause-Oriented Fundraising for Associations freely available for download at https://bit.ly/3eu6ntm. Pay special attention to the interview with Shonali Burke on the three keys to effective campaigns on pages 8-10, the sidebar by John Haydon on using social media effectively to promote your campaigns, and to the stories of CompTIA and New Endeavors by Women on pages 19-22.

 

Treat Members Equitably Not Equally

Posted on | by Elizabeth Weaver Engel, CAE | 2 Comments on 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 don’t want your association to seem cliquish, or for any member to feel like there’s no place for her, like the association doesn’t respect or value her.

But only up to a point.

Because the fact of the matter is, some members ARE more important or more special than others. Some members only date your association casually and then move on. Some make significant, long-term commitments. Those two types of members are not equally valuable.

The challenge is to recognize ALL kinds of members and ALL levels of contribution and relationship appropriately, while still making everyone feel welcome in your community. That is, to treat people equitably rather than equally.

How do you actually do that?

Download your free copy of Steal This Idea! Innovations in Cause-Oriented Fundraising for Associations at https://bit.ly/3eu6ntm to find out, and pay special attention to the Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company case study (on pages 6 and 7) to see exactly how one organization makes EVERYONE feel like a rock star.

 

Moving From Talk to Action on Diversity and Inclusion

Posted on | by Elizabeth Weaver Engel, CAE

Does your organization have a compelling statement on diversity and inclusion that doesn’t seem to be reflected in your day to day operations? Don’t worry – lots of organizations face the same challenge.

Join Sherry Marts (S*Marts Consulting) and me for a FREE webinar (thanks to our host/sponsor Wild Apricot) Wednesday, July 12 at  2 pm ET to to learn how to move your organization from talk to action when it comes to authentic diversity and inclusion (D+I).

The webinar content will be based on our recently-released whitepaper Include Is a Verb, which is also free to download.

In the webinar, you’ll learn:

  • The barriers that stand between words and action on D+I
  • How to lead D+I change with the audiences you serve
  • Concrete steps you can take to have an immediate, positive impact on D+I in your organization

Register now. (Interested but can’t make the live event? Register anyway to be sent the recording afterwards.)

Walking Your Talk on D+I

Posted on | by Elizabeth Weaver Engel, CAE
Concentric circles of diversity and inclusion work

For those of us who are “on the bus” on the value of genuine diversity and inclusion, this is the crux of the matter: how do we effectively walk our talk on D+I? 

We have to work from the inside out, starting with our own selves, taking steps to uncover and combat our implicit biases, understanding where we do – and do not – have privilege, and answering the question “Now that I know, what will I do?”

To quote Include Is a Verb:

That is, how will you move from unconscious reaction to conscious responsibility? How will you use your privileges to help others and, at the same time, let them use theirs to help you in areas where you lack privilege?

Only then can we begin to move outward, to working on our associations as workplaces, then to our boards of directors and other volunteer leaders, then to our members, then to the professions and industries we serve.

I’d like to conclude this week’s focus on Include Is a Verb: Moving from Talk to Action on Diversity and Inclusion with another quote from the whitepaper:

There’s a poem that begins, “When I was a young man, I wanted to change the world.” As the man relating the parable lives his life, he realizes that was too grand a goal. He scales back to changing his nation, only to recognize that, too, as too grand a project. So he decides to focus on his town, and then his family. By the time he’s an old man, he realizes that the only thing he can change, the only thing he can control, is himself, but that when you change yourself, that impacts the people around you, and the people around them, and through that, you can change your nation and the world.

Start there. Pick one thing to change in yourself. Then think about one thing you can work on in your workplace with your colleagues. Then identify one program your association o ers that you can enlist your volunteers and members to help you transform. Small steps will add up to big shifts over time.

My co-author Sherry Marts and whitepaper contributors Joe Gerstandt and Jess Pettitt will be joining KiKi L’Italien for an Association Chat focused on Include Is a Verb on Tuesday, July 11 at 2 pm. You can register here.

And, of course, don’t forget to download the whitepaper itself at http://bit.ly/2peWwP0. It includes interviews with a DELP mentor/scholar team (Shawn Boynes and Desirée Knight) and with Cie Armtead, the current chair of ASAE’s D+I committee; sidebars from noted D+I experts Jessica Pettitt, Joan Eisenstodt, and Joe Gerstandt; and case studies of three associations that are doing outstanding D+I work for the audiences they serve (the Association for Women in Science, the Entomological Society of America, and the Geological Society of America).

Why Do Our D+I Efforts Fall Short?

Posted on | by Elizabeth Weaver Engel, CAE

Our D+I efforts fail for a number of reasons:

  • Beautiful statements and a handful of ghettoized programs don’t fundamentally change behavior.
  • We create “goals” that are not actionable and have no measures attached.
  • Every single person has implicit biases – sometimes against things that they themselves are – and we don’t do enough to combat them.
  • Mandatory training tends to bring out our inner misanthropic teenager: “You’re not the boss of me!”

Fortunately, there are proven strategies to combat all of these problems, one of which is consciously training yourself to be an ally.

What is an ally? To quote Jessica Pettitt’s sidebar on allyship:

An ally supports the struggles of a historically underrepresented group even though she is not personally a member of that group.

Becoming one involves doing work on oneself and then reaching out to engage in advocacy and agency, and her sidebar includes details of how to go about all those things.

To learn more, download your free copy of  Include Is a Verb: Moving from Talk to Action on Diversity and Inclusion, at http://bit.ly/2peWwP0, no divulging of information about yourself required.

 

What Makes the Association D+I Environment Unique?

Posted on | by Elizabeth Weaver Engel, CAE

In short, relationships.

Most of the focus on diversity and inclusion in the for-profit world is on staff and, to a lesser degree, boards of directors (which, of course, only some for-profit companies have).

The association operating environment is much more multi-layered.

Of course, we also have staff teams and boards of directors. But associations have very different relationships with our boards than for-profit companies do. Although our members are also our customers, the membership relationship is vastly more complex than the consumer relationship. We also have relationships with – and responsibilities to – the professions and industries we serve for which there is no parallel in the for-profit world.

The case studies in Include Is a Verb: Moving from Talk to Action on Diversity and Inclusion clearly illustrate the challenges inherent in and opportunities granted by our unique operating environment:

  • The Association for Women in Science has successfully navigated the transition from a largely homogenous board of directors to one that is truly inclusive, while also avoiding the trap of tokenism.
  • The Entomological Society of America has created a strong code of conduct for their events that not only aims to reduce instances of harassment at events but also provides a concrete action plan for dealing with them appropriately when they do occur.
  • The Geological Society of America has responded creatively to the dual imperatives to recruit more people into the field and to increase the diversity of those recruits.

To download your free copy of  Include Is a Verb: Moving from Talk to Action on Diversity and Inclusion, visit http://bit.ly/2peWwP0, no divulging of information about yourself required.

Key Concepts in Diversity and Inclusion

Posted on | by Elizabeth Weaver Engel, CAE

As Joe Gerstandt points out in his sidebar in Include Is a Verb: Moving from Talk to Action on Diversity and Inclusion, clarity is key. We need a shared and widely understood vocabulary of “concise, clear, actionable language” in order to make progress on D+I.

So that’s where Sherry Marts and I start: by defining terms, some of which may be familiar to you and some of which may be new.

  • What do we actually mean when we use the term diversity? What about inclusion?
  • What “counts” as diversity, and why does it matter?
  • What is intersectionality? How does it affect us?
  • What is “covering,” and why is it a problem?
  • What is tokenism, and how can we move past it?

Or as Joe put it:

Powerful statements of commitment to diversity and inclusion matter. But without a clear understanding of what we mean when we say “diversity” or “inclusion,” widespread agreement on how that will affect our daily actions, and a shared sense of responsibility for taking those actions, such statements are ultimately meaningless.

So that’s where we start, with creating the shared understanding necessary for meaningful action. To download your free copy of  Include Is a Verb: Moving from Talk to Action on Diversity and Inclusion, visit http://bit.ly/2peWwP0, no divulging of information about yourself required.

Include Is a Verb

Posted on | by Elizabeth Weaver Engel, CAE

Associations know the research that the Millennial generation that is rapidly becoming the Cover image Include is a Verb whitepapermajority of our workforce and membership base is the most diverse generation we’ve ever had in the US – and that the yet-to-be-named generation coming up behind them is even more so.

We know that increased diversity and real inclusion produce increased innovation, better decision-making, faster and more creative problem-solving, better outcomes, and an improved bottom line.

We know that D+I is the right thing to do.

And we tend to have strong statements that reflect all that.

The place we often struggle is with turning our beautifully crafted D+I statements into real change in our staff teams, our volunteer leadership, our memberships, and the professions and industries we serve.

In Include is a Verb: Moving from Talk to Action on Diversity and Inclusion, Sherry Marts, PhD (S*Marts Consulting) and I tackle the challenge of turning associations’ powerful talk into equally impactful walk. We share some key concepts in D+I, discuss what makes the association D+I environment unique and the pros and cons that come with that, and provide concrete steps you can take for yourself, your staff, your volunteers, and your members to become a truly diverse and inclusive organization.

The whitepaper also includes interviews with a DELP mentor/scholar team (Shawn Boynes, CAE and Desirée Knight, CMP) and with Cie Armtead, the current chair of ASAE’s D+I committee; sidebars from noted D+I experts Jessica Pettitt, Joan Eisenstodt, and Joe Gerstandt; and case studies of three associations that are doing outstanding D+I work for the audiences they serve (the Association for Women in Science, the Entomological Society of America, and the Geological Society of America).

I’ll be blogging about the whitepaper for the rest of the week, highlighting some key findings and action steps you can take, but in the meantime, I invite you to download your free copy at http://bit.ly/2peWwP0 – we don’t collect any data on you to get it, and you won’t end up on some mailing list you didn’t ask for. We just use the bit.ly as an easy mechanism to count the number of times it’s been downloaded.

And don’t forget to check out the other FREE Spark whitepapers, too:

What Really Worked in 2016?

Posted on | by Elizabeth Weaver Engel, CAE

Beth Brodovsky, who hosts the Driving Participation podcast (and if you haven’t checked it out yet, what are you waiting for?) recently asked a bunch of her former guests this insightful question for a year-end episode.

Here’s my answer:

One thing that really worked for my clients was talking to their members. I know that sounds obvious, but associations tend to – in my opinion – over-focus on surveying people to the detriment of other methods of learning about our audiences. I’m not saying that surveys aren’t important or a necessary part of our data gathering efforts. But they aren’t the whole picture.

Surveys can be particularly useful as an early warning system for identifying problem areas in your value proposition, if they’re properly designed and administered, and if you ask the right questions.

They’re not great at “blue ocean” situations, though. If you’re trying to learn about future goals and desired outcomes, new challenges, or emerging trends in the profession or industry your association serves, surveys are not effective. You learn about those sorts of things much more effectively and efficiently through open, honest conversation.

Association professionals can sometimes be nervous about talking directly to members in an unstructured way. What if they’re angry about something, or have complaints, or ask questions we can’t answer, or have requests we can’t meet? Those are all reasonable fears. I would argue, though, that it’s better to invite the momentary discomfort that comes from finding out something negative than it is to ignore it. When you know, you can do something. When you choose not to know, members walk away and you have no idea why.

In 2017, I would encourage your readers and listeners to start a formal program of regular audience conversations. There are lots of ways this can be accomplished: regular in-person or virtual focus groups, town hall style meetings or calls, tasking staff members or volunteers with calling one or more members a week, working with your chapters, setting up regular member visits, an emailed or online open-ended question of the week, doing Appreciative Inquiry style peer interviewing, hiring a consultant to conduct interviews, a mix of the above, etc. But regularly gathering and widely sharing this sort of information is vital for the long-term health of your organization and your relationships with your constituents.