Category: management

Of Non Dues Revenue and Opportunity Costs

Posted on | by Elizabeth Weaver Engel, CAE
A black vacuum cleaner sucking up US dollar bills on a hardwood floor background

I recently had the opportunity to participate in an ASAE Marketing Mavens call focused on association career centers.

My question for the group was: Many of my clients are finding that their career centers are not performing as well as they used to. Anyone else experiencing this? Thoughts as to why this is happening? Anyone come up with any solutions?

Participants came up with lots of good ideas and suggestions:

  • Lots of folks reported similar experiences – declining use, declining revenue. Sometimes that was a result of competing with yourself, with members posting jobs directly in private online communities for free. Sometimes that was a result of outside competition from platforms like LinkedIn and Glassdoor. There are lots of opportunities for free posting that also reach much larger audiences.
  • Another issue people raised was: Is it even appropriate to classify a career center as a “member benefit” if everyone has access? On the other hand, it’s totally counter-productive to restrict access to the job listings, as then the site is no longer useful to employers who pay to list jobs.
  • One participant mentioned that the industry their association serves experiences regular pauses in hiring due to change of presidential administrations and resulting uncertainty. (This is kind of a separate issue, as other participants agreed that for their associations, declining participation and revenue are a longer-term trend.)
  • We talked about the importance of promoting your association’s career center effectively, with several participants recommending using a third party platform with a revenue share if at all possible. Career center vendors tend to have dedicated marketing teams and proven tools you can use, which an association trying to do this internally may lack.
  • Participants that were still experiencing success reported that their associations were more focused on providing a “career community,” of which the job board is only one component. They were adding services like career coaching, career advice content, on-site job fairs at conferences, and resume review.
  • Other suggestions included: giving members one free job listing a year (via a promo code), opening up the career center to internships as well as full time paid positions, offering display ads on the site for things other than just jobs, and reserving new postings for member-only access for the first 72 hours.

But (here’s a dated reference for you), the $64,000 question is: Is there still any value in doing this?

And it got me thinking about the concept of opportunity cost. Career centers have historically been good sources of non dues revenue for associations. And if your career center is still bringing in at least some revenue, and the investment of time and attention from your staff to create that revenue stream is minimal, then it’s probably worth continuing, at least for the time being.

But that’s a calculation you need to keep an eye on in ALL your programs, products, and services: What’s the benefit? What’s the cost? Not just direct dollars, but also staff time and attention that, if devoted to this, are not available for something else that might either produce more revenue or be more valuable to members or both?

Photo by rc.xyz NFT gallery on Unsplash

 

Associations Evolve: 2025 & Beyond

Posted on | by Elizabeth Weaver Engel, CAE
Associations Evolve 2025: Answers for Associations text over a grid of author headshots

The latest edition of Associations Evolve just dropped.

I’m honored to be included with 39 of my very smart association peers in this FREE annual publication, packed with advice designed to help associations worldwide get ready for what’s next in an environment of ever-accelerating change.

Inside, you’ll find:

  • Strategies for embracing AI without losing the human touch
  • Fresh takes on membership models that engage and inspire
  • Real stories of resilience and innovation from associations worldwide
  • Practical tools to help you adapt and thrive

Plus my piece, Innovate the Lean Way, introducing the key concepts in lean startup methodology and explaining why I think it’s an ideal approach for associations to take to evaluating new ideas for non-dues revenue programs, products, and services.

Whether you’re planning for the future, navigating technological shifts, or rethinking member engagement, this journal has been designed to spark ideas and provide practical guidance.

Download your copy at: https://bit.ly/AEJ2025.

Who’s Allowed to Make the Call?

Posted on | by Elizabeth Weaver Engel, CAE
Adult coach dressed in black on the pitch with a youth soccer team in red uniforms

Another observation that has fascinated me since my earliest years in associations is: Who’s allowed to make the call?

What do I mean by that?

Well, if you search for “stories of outstanding customer service,” all kinds of lists come up, compiled by HubSpot and Forbes and RingCentral and others, referencing all kinds of things from dentists to bicycle shops to yoga studios to rescuing a forgotten bridesmaid’s dress to creating a prayer room on the fly to implementing a great idea from a small child.

What do they all have in common?

The sentiment that provided the title of the original post I wrote on this topic in 2011: Be Human.

How does this apply to associations?

As I wrote in that original post:

…your senior staff can always make exceptions based on member needs and doing what’s right, but that’s totally unhelpful, since they are rarely the ones dealing with the immediate need in the moment. If your line staff members aren’t empowered to make decisions and do what they need to do in the moment to make things right for a member without worrying about being punished afterward for not following the rules, any statements your organization makes about being member-focused or providing excellent member service are so much bullshit.

Thirteen years later, I still stand by that.

In my very first job in associations 27 years ago, I stepped into running a membership department staffed by dispirited people for an association with declining membership. A big reason for ALL of that was that the association had a reputation for poor customer service that was a factor of staff who were NOT “empowered to do what they needed in the moment to make things right for a member without worrying about being punished afterward for not following the rules.”

So that was one of the first things I changed as leader of that team, with the promise that any blowback from anywhere else in the association for any decisions my team members made would stop with me. They were promised – and I delivered – 100% “the buck stops with Elizabeth” immunity.

Did it work?

Yes – by the time I left the association seven years later, not only had we arrested the slide, we’d grown membership by more than 50% AND fixed the cultural issues within the team.

Empower your people to do the right thing, to be the ones to “make the call.” You won’t regret it.

Photo by Adrià Crehuet Cano on Unsplash

Who’s Allowed to Be Honest?

Posted on | by Elizabeth Weaver Engel, CAE | 1 Comment on Who’s Allowed to Be Honest?
fallen tree in a pasture

One of the observations that has fascinated me the most over my years of consulting is this question: Who’s allowed to be honest?

What do I mean by that?

Well, let’s flip it around.

Have you ever hired a consultant for your association?

The answer is probably “Yes.”

So then you’re likely familiar with the phenomenon of: In her report, the consultant includes something that you or someone else on your staff has been pushing for months, maybe years, and it’s been like the proverbial tree falling in the woods with no one around to hear. But all of a sudden, when the consultant recommends it, there are all these people standing around saying, “Hey! Did you just hear that tree fall down?”

And there are reasons that The Powers That Be in your organization are more willing to listen to the consultant. She has experience with multiple association clients. She’s done research. She’s “objective” (well, none of us is truly objective, but she at least has no vested interest in a particular outcome).

But it’s still frustrating, right?

I know, because I’ve experienced it myself as staff and even written about it previously.

As I wrote in that post:

A lot of associations complain that our volunteer leaders are disengaged or make unrealistic demands or just don’t understand the reality in which we operate. But is it our fault?

What I meant by that was: When staff does tell leadership, particularly volunteer leadership, the truth, when they give their most accurate assessment of a situation and their best recommendation for a course of action, what happens?

Who’s allowed to tell the truth? And, perhaps more importantly, who does your leadership (paid and volunteer) actually listen to? And if staff are repeatedly ignored or even punished for sharing those assessments, particularly when it’s bad news, and providing those recommendations, what happens?

Remember: Whatever behavior you reward is what you’re going to get more of.

Alternatively: Show me what you reward, and I’ll tell you what you value. 

I’m not trying to put myself out of a job here, but your staff members at ALL levels know things leadership doesn’t, see things senior leadership isn’t privy to, and have good ideas. But if you’re constantly shutting them down, don’t be surprised if they disengage or decide to take their talents elsewhere.

Photo by Andrew Yu on Unsplash

Your Meetings Suck

Posted on | by Elizabeth Weaver Engel, CAE | 3 Comments on Your Meetings Suck
bored looking blonde woman wearing glasses sitting in front of a computer

But they don’t have to.

I don’t mean your Annual Meeting, of course. If that sucks, you have MUCH bigger problems. I mean those 2 hour snooze-fests where 50% of your staff sits there on Zoom/Teams/WebEx “multitasking” with their cameras off, while one person blathers on and the other 50% thank The Powers That Be that they were spared attendance.

And this problem has gotten MUCH worse since the pandemic, with the ease of scheduling virtual meetings and everyone’s increasing comfort with video conferencing tech.

A few of my favorite tips to help your meetings ROCK!

  1. Informational meetings. DO NOT have them. I mean it! If you don’t have questions to ask that require the active participation of  multiple people to answer, send a memo. Send an email. Start a Slack thread. Send a gorilla-gram. But DO NOT send a meeting invitation! “This meeting could’ve been an email”? DO NOT PASS GO, DO NOT COLLECT $200.
  2. Participants. Have the right people – and ONLY the right people – in the Zoom room. Do you have more than one representative per department involved? Unless there’s something truly unique about their individual perspectives, maybe don’t invite both of them. Don’t invite people just to cover your ass, or so their feelings won’t be hurt. Their feelings will be MORE hurt by spending 30+ hours a week in meetings they didn’t need to attend in the first place.
  3. Agenda. Have one. Even if it’s a regularly scheduled meeting. Especially if it’s a regularly scheduled meeting, which tend to quickly devolve into informational meetings. In fact, if it’s a regularly scheduled meeting and you have no agenda, CANCEL IT. And if your agenda has more than about three items per hour of scheduled meeting, you need to cut back, because you will NOT get through everything. And think twice before scheduling a meeting that’s more than an hour. People can’t concentrate for that long.
  4. Questions. Remember the no informational meetings rule? You should walk into any meeting with a list of questions you need the group you’ve gathered to discuss and, perhaps, answer. After all, if you’re just conveying information, you sent a memo, right? And if you just need one person’s thoughts, you went to that person and talked to her directly, right?
  5. Listening. Who should do the majority of the talking? If you say, “Me Me Me! It’s all about me!”, review the above point. You’re there to ask questions and facilitate discussion. That means less talking, more listening. And make sure you’ve asked someone you trust to take notes, because it’s really hard to facilitate a discussion AND take good notes at the same time.
  6. Action Items. Gathering a bunch of people for an hour or two is expensive. Next time you’re sitting there online with your Brady Bunch squares, do a quick back-of-the-envelope calculation of the salaries+benefits (which are generally about 1/3 of salary) of yourself and all the other squares. Then ponder the opportunity costs for a moment – what ELSE could those people have been doing? You better make damn sure that when you leave, everyone knows what her marching orders are and when they’re supposed to be fulfilled. Sending a follow up email to all the meeting participants with “this is what we all agreed we’d do, this is who agreed to do each thing, and this is when we agreed it would be done by” earns you a gold star.

Got any favorite tips to convene like a rockstar? Share ’em in the comments.

Photo by Magnet.me on Unsplash

Dump the Performance Review!

Posted on | by Elizabeth Weaver Engel, CAE | 2 Comments on Dump the Performance Review!
five yellow stars on a pink and blue background

We all know that one of the top reasons people voluntarily leave their jobs is bad management. Bad management can express itself in a variety of ways: the infamous “one person screwed up/took advantage of the organization so let me send out a cranky email to everyone setting up a Draconian new policy,” the capricious boss who takes out bad moods on staff, the micro-manager, the boss who never, ever backs staff members in confrontations with volunteers or members, the boss who plays favorites, the boss who doesn’t give enough direction or support, the boss who only knows how to give negative feedback, the narcissist, the boss who’s terrified of making a bad decision and so makes none, the boss who’s totally impulsive, etc.

We can add the boss who uses performance reviews as an opportunity to bludgeon staff to that list. Why do annual reviews have to be like this?

I like the idea UCLA’s Samuel Culbert proposes as a solution: If someone has a behavior, attitude, or productivity problem, don’t wait until review time to address it. Address it right away!

I’d add: If performance isn’t a determinant of pay in your organization (i.e., everyone’s getting a standard 3.7% raise or whatever), don’t pretend like it is.

What if annual reviews were viewed, first and foremost, as an opportunity to formally recognize all the good work each staff member has done in the past year and thank them for it? Not that you don’t want to thank them along the way, but what if this were the time to pile up the loot, so to speak, and acknowledge it?

What if reviews were used as a time to look back at the goals each person set for the year and assess what happened? Which ones were met? Exceeded? Which ones weren’t met, and why? Many times, there are very good reasons why goals weren’t met – they were discovered partway through the year to be no longer relevant, other more pressing things that weren’t anticipated came to the fore, some critical prerequisite wasn’t met, they weren’t realistic in the first place, they just got delayed/deferred, etc.

What if, in talking about any behavior/attitude/productivity issues that need addressing, the focus was on coming up with a plan to address them together (staff person, manager, team, organization)?

What if staffers had a chance to tell managers what they need from the managers or from the organization to be successful? What if staffers had a chance to, without fear of repurcussions, offer positive and negative feedback about their managers? To their faces?

What if reviews focused on setting goals for the coming year, and what each player (staff, manager, team and organization) needs to do to make them happen?

What if salary was a minor part of the discussion? What if some of the rewards offered were non-monetary?

In other words, what if reviews were a positive, open, friendly, useful process, in which BOTH sides got to give and receive positive and negative feedback, and the focus was on working together to set and achieve good goals and address any obstacles that might get in the way?

If your association were to throw out how you review people and start from scratch, what would that look like?

What really constitutes effective feedback at work, both positive and negative? What would your ideal performance assessment system be? What rewards, financial and non-financial, are most meaningful to each of your staff members? How do you know? 

Photo by Towfiqu barbhuiya on Unsplash

2: Strategic Planning v. Strategic Thinking

Posted on | by Elizabeth Weaver Engel, CAE
silhouette of a person wearing a hiking backpack hiking in the mountains at sunrise

We’re almost at the end of the revisiting of the top ten all-time Spark blog posts in honor of Spark’s tenth anniversary!

Coming in at the #2 spot: Strategic Planning v. Strategic Thinking.

In the original post, I highlighted Henry Mintzberg’s well-known Harvard Business Review piece “The Fall and Rise of Strategic Planning,” in which he encourages us to focus on creating dynamic, flexible visions of the future that accommodate disruption and allow us to rapidly respond to emergent trends.

In other words, do 100% the opposite of what we usually do in strategic planning.

Now, I mostly do *membership* strategy for clients. But every once in a while, I have an organizational strategy project. When I do organizational strategy, I use Appreciative Inquiry methods to try to help my clients switch from a strategic planning (static, rigid, episodic, fixed) perspective to a strategic thinking approach. And it is generally a HARD mental and organizational transition for them to make, because we’re all so accustomed to the “traditional” way.

But as so many of us saw during the pandemic, the traditional way of planning fails us, and it fails us SPECTACULARLY when a crisis hits.

One of the things we learned is that we CAN rapidly gather information from our members and other stakeholders and use that to create minimum viable product style tests, then take what we learn from those tests and use it to create the next iteration of that MVP, or to change directions entirely. And the world doesn’t end if the original thing isn’t perfect, or if we do have a make a small – or big – change in the next round.

Now this mostly happened in the context of events and professional development, where all of a sudden, our traditional way of going about the business of associations was unavailable to us. But we can apply those lessons we learned, about focusing on the journey, about becoming deeply curious about our members’ and other audiences’ daily challenges, about being inventive and responsive in providing solutions those challenges, both outside event planning and outside a global pandemic.

If we’re willing to change “the way we’ve always done it.”

Are we?

Photo by Mukuko Studio on Unsplash

Being Responsible About Research

Posted on | by Elizabeth Weaver Engel, CAE

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 as consumers and sponsors? Why do you need to have at least some familiarity with research terms? Why do you need to understand the benefits and drawbacks of various types of research methods?

Quoting from the monograph:

It’s important for associations to get this right, both so that association executives have the best possible chance of making good decisions about how to invest limited association resources to generate the best return for members, and because associations are viewed as trusted, unbiased sources of information for the members and other audiences we serve. It’s incumbent on us to provide quality research products so we remain worthy of that trust.

As a reminder, the whitepaper also includes:

  • An interview with Dr. Sharon E. Moss, co-editor (with Sarah C. Slater) of The Informed Association: A Practical Guide to Using Research for Results, on ethical practices in research.
  • An interview with Dr. Joyce E. A. Russell, The Helen and William O’Toole Dean at Villanova School of Business, on developing discernment in assessing research.
  • An interview with Jeff Tenenbaum, Managing Partner at Tenenbaum Law Group PLLC, on avoiding antitrust liability.
  • Case studies with the American Association of Colleges of Pharmacy, the Association of American Medical Colleges, the Casualty Actuarial Society, and IEEE.
  • A plain English review of key research terms, and a brief explanation of the rules of formal logic (and how they affect research work).
  • Recommendations for books, articles, websites, podcasts, and courses you can use to improve your research skills.
  • A series of thought questions for you to use to spark discussion with your team.
  • An extensive list of resources in case you want to dig deeper on any of the topics addressed.

My co-author Polly Karpowicz and I are in the process of arranging additional opportunities to learn more, including a webinar with Association Insights in Old Town in April of 2023 – more information to follow.

In the meantime, get your free copy at https://bit.ly/3SYJiAO, no divulging of information about yourself required.

 

Formality Is Not Always Good

Posted on | by Elizabeth Weaver Engel, CAE | 1 Comment on Formality Is Not Always Good
Formality Is Not Always Good

Associations tend to default to a formal tone in communications. It feels safe. It can be hard to nail being appropriately funny, and no one ever got in trouble for being excessively formal, right?

Well, no.

A colleague recently shared some “tips” that had been sent to presenters for an association virtual event by the virtual event provider. The goal appears to have been to help the presenters look and sound good, and at least some of the points they made were useful ones about lighting and keeping your energy up and reducing distractions. All valid.

The problem was the tone. In an effort to sound “professional,” the vendor sounded condescending.

Further, as any Black woman can tell you, “look professional” has often been weaponized in racist ways to criticize hairstyles that are protective for natural hair and to “other” anyone who isn’t a cis white man. Also, “ladies, wear makeup.” C’mon, man!

The backlash caused a large problem in a small organization, with at least one board member resigning, people pulling papers from the event, and calls to stage a competing crowd-sourced event on Zoom.

What if they’d made the same points with a little lightness of tone?

For example: “Unless you’re going for an ‘I’m in the witness protection program’ vibe, make sure your lighting is coming from in front of you (not overhead or behind).”

Or: “It can be hard to keep your energy up in an empty room. Maybe invite your pet to be your audience?”

Or even just a simple: “We’ve all been in the situation of thinking something was out of camera range when it wasn’t. Remember to do a visual check before presenting to make sure all appears as you’d like it to.”

Or, even better: “We know a lot of you now have a lot of experience with presenting in a virtual environment. Share your tips to help your fellow presenters have a good experience at….”

In short (something I write and talk about a lot): be a real person with your members, not Business Writing 101 Bot.

Photo by Scott Webb on Unsplash

On Resolutions

Posted on | by Elizabeth Weaver Engel, CAE
Writing goals planning worksheet

It’s that time of year, when we all think about what happened last year and what we’d like to do differently in the next.

Two observations:

First, 17 years ago, I realized that “lose 10 pounds and become a better person” was a terrible resolution to make, which is why I never kept it.

So I resolved to resolve differently, choosing resolutions that are fun and about something I want to learn or try. I even wrote and performed an IGNITE session about it.

Since then, I’ve always kept my resolution, and I’ve added a bunch of fun things to my life and repertoire. I’ve seen and done a bunch of cool things. I have my motorcycle license. I know how to mix a damn fine cocktail and bake a damn fine loaf of bread. I can play poker, and I know how to box (and am starting to train to spar).

This year, I’ll be learning Spanish. Not necessarily “reading Gabriel Garcia Marquez in the original” Spanish, but I’m hoping to get to “conversing at a second-grade level” Spanish. Classes start in a month.

Second, taking time out to assess is critical for your career and your association, too.

Every January, even though it’s just me running Spark, I leave town for a formal business review and planning retreat. I look back at the previous year and how the business performed against the goals I set for it and for myself, thinking about and measuring what went well, what didn’t, and what I need to do differently in the coming year. I then set the goals against which I will measure myself the following year.

Organizationally, associations are perpetually short-staffed and under-resourced. Because of that, we’re bad about setting aside time to debrief, to review our efforts after a project or campaign concludes, to see where we succeeded and where we failed, think about why that happened, and document what we want to do differently next time.

(This is why, even when clients don’t opt to keep me on retainer for campaign implementation, I always include a post-campaign debrief meeting in client projects. Just call me your accountability buddy. Even if you opt to run it yourself, we are going to sit down at the end of the campaign and talk about – and document – what you learned, so you can improve the next time around.)

This “short-staffed and under-resourced” situation affects our careers, too.

Busy association execs can get so caught up in running from one fire to the next that we never stop to think about our own career goals and path. It’s important to have goals for yourself, for your own career, whether they are short term (“I’m going to attend at least one conference just for my own professional development this year – no speaking, no presenting, no committee work, just learning”), medium-term (“This year, I’m FINALLY going to earn my CAE/PMP/CMP/etc.”), or long-term (“I want to be an association CEO, so I’m going to find a current association CEO who is willing to be a sponsor for me to help me move closer to achieving that goal”).

January might not be the right time for you to do this, either personally or organizationally. But you need to find the time that works and make this a regular practice. You won’t regret it.

Photo by Isaac Smith on Unsplash