Please take a moment to watch our inhouse-produced promotional video for the Association of Water Technologies “Murder Mystery.”
Going Above and Beyond for Our Members
June 9, 2011Social Media Policies
April 28, 2011Interesting conversation this morning on the ASAE Executive Management Listserv about social media policies. It seems a consultant to an association said something on his personal Facebook page that the Board didn’t like one of the questions put to the list was, should the consultant be fired? Was it actually a violation of policies? Could it be objectively considered poor judgment? Interesting conversation.
And one of the follow up questions was, what is your association’s social media policy? Um, that’s assuming you have one. I posted the link to the SocialFish white paper on the subject. It’s a good read. We’re actually in the process here of developing policies, and I’ll report back on it when we’re done.
Anyone out there who’s already done policies have any insights to share?
Board Service: For-profit versus Not-for-Profit
April 6, 2011I spent yesterday afternoon at a dynamic program sponsored by Women in the Boardroom. The two-hour program focused on assisting women who are interested in preparing for board service. While the primary goal of the program is to provide attendees with the tools, resources and networks to serve on for-profit boards, the panel also talked about serving on not-for-profit boards.
The panel included four women who have all served on both for-profit and not-for-profit boards. Their experience included serving on boards of publicly held companies, privately held companies and not-for-profit boards. As they reviewed their own personal stories and the lessons learned, I was struck by the overlap between for-profit board service and not-for-profit board service.
My experience in working with, and serving on, not-for-profit boards dovetailed with all of the points the panel covered.
The discussion included the role of being a director; the differences between non-profit, private and public board service; the board selection process; being an effective board member; and positioning yourself for board service. An important point was matching your skill set and credentials to board service.
All four women talked about the time commitment involved in board service. And, all four also talked about the risks and rewards associated with board service. One panelist also provided insight into exit strategies.
After the program, there was a brief meet and greet. It provided an informative overview of the many talented women who made up the audience and were interested in board service. It left me wishing for more time and looking forward to next year’s program.
Are You Still Collecting Dues?
March 29, 2011
There was an interesting conversation today on the twitter-based Association Chat (with the snicker-laden hashtag on Twitter of #assnchat) that was putting in question the membership model for associations. There is a good article by Erin Fuller in Associations Now on the topic as well, and there was a great session at the Great Ideas conference on the topic just a few weeks ago. Of course a few months ago the association blogosphere was quite busy discussing Joe Flowers’ public declaration to not renew ASAE dues. I had a post in that flurry about “just what are we joining.”
There, that should keep you reading for a while!
But also check out the twitter stream on today’s conversation (search for assnchat on twitter and scroll down; it was an active discussion). There was a lot of back and forth, though I’d say most were supportive of the idea of dues becoming less important, and there was support for the “freemium” model where basic membership is free, but you can upgrade to get more service.
I thought it was interesting that there were questions about how the organization would “pay” for getting rid of dues. Do you raise prices on other things? How will we “fund operations” without dues? Comments like me make me raise my eyebrow a little. What do you mean how do we “fund operations” without dues? You fund operations with revenue. Dues is a kind of revenue. But that question almost sounds like you HAVE to have dues simply because you have “operations.” That implied sense of entitlement is one that that bugs me in the dues conversation. It’s circular. We have to collect dues, because if we didn’t, how could we pay people to collect the dues?
Now, I know no one literally thinks that, but I do think the comments I saw are evidence that our community needs to shake up its thinking about dues and membership. Here was my only comment in the discussion:
To be clear, I’m not anti-dues, and I do think there are plenty of places where we should charge them and members will gladly pay because they get such clear value out of belonging. But it’s not to pay for operations, because in today’s decentralized world, centralized operations don’t have as much default value as they used to. So what’s the trend out there folks (particularly my AMC brethren)? Are dues on the way out?
Awesome Blog Takeover
March 5, 2011
Check out the very cool “takeover” of ASAE’s already very cool Acronym blog by the Young Association Executives. It is a project of the YAE Committee, and in full disclosure, I did some work with them over the last year (though not about the blog takeover), so I am already a fan of this group. Thanks, Aaron Wolowiec, for the kind words about my work in your post during the takeover.
I have a couple of different reactions. First, as an expert on generational diversity, I want to point something out. Young people are smart. They know how to write. They know how to think. They understand organizations, and they have a lot to contribute. The posts on Acronym make that clear, though I did not need convincing. Unfortunately, I think too many people do need convincing. I hear it when I talk on the subject–people complaining that young people don’t know how to write or can’t articulate clearly. Honestly I find examples of that across all generations.
Second, I love this tactic for a blog. One truism for blogs is that it is good to mix things up. If you write the exact same kind of post, with the same tone, and the same structure, day after day, you’ll likely lose some readers. I am a regular reader of Acronym, but I loved this sudden flurry of new voices. It brought me back to the blog.
Oooh. Shiny. Quora
January 31, 2011
The shiny new social media tool these days is Quora. It is basically a question and answer site. Questions are posted anonymously and answered based on people who have profiles. You can then rate the answers as helpful or not and follow specific people, topics, or individual questions. I signed up and I’ve followed a bunch of people (mostly the people I follow on Twitter), and I’ve browsed some of the topic areas, and even posted one answer. Honestly, I haven’t gotten over the hump yet. Mostly my experience of Quora is in deleting the emails that tell me one of my friends is following me on Quora.
But I think it has serious potential. Maddie said it is awesome over on the SocialFish blog. My gut reaction is that it could eventually be a listserv killer. We in AMCs often set up listservs for clients. For very small organizations, an active listserv where you can post questions to trusted fellow members and get answers is considered really valuable. Except, of course, that you have to deal with all the people who don’t get the digest version and send in ther “me too” posts or accidentally reveal some inconvenient truth to the whole list because they hit reply all…
Quora could give you all the questions and answers, but without the annoyances. And it would be searchable via google, not the ineffective archive search that comes with the listserv. And the value of smarter answers would be demonstrated through the crowd-sourced rating system, rather than the person who has the most time on their hands to post to the listserv all the time.
A lot will need to happen before Quora really kills off association listservs, but I think it’s a service to keep an eye on.
Welcome Julie Hill!
January 11, 2011
We’ve hired a new staff person here at MSP. Julie Hill has joined the team as Marketing Manager. She has many years of experience doing a broad range of marketing and communications functions in the association world, and we are THRILLED to have her here helping MSP and our client associations. A more detailed bio for Julie is on our website.
We’re giving her a bit of time to get settled, but I’m sure you will eventually see her her as a blogger!
The Hard Work of Perspective
November 22, 2010This week we had a technology crisis with one of our clients. It was resolved fairly quickly, but it inconvenienced quite a few people, and some of them were , shall we say, not restrained in their expression of frustration to the staff and to one of our Board members.
The day it happened I got a draft email from the aforementioned Board member which he asked to be sent out to the membership. Unfortunately, in my opinion, it was an over-reaction. It over-emphasized the problem and went into great detail about the lengths we would go to in order to prevent anything like this from happening again. I had the fun job of telling him we weren’t going to send it out. The next day I sent out a simpler apology email explaining what had happened and what we were doing about it.
The problem here was that this Board member was taking heat. He had a handful of upset people directing their comments to him, so from his perspective, this looked like a big crisis. When we have people in our faces, it is hard to keep perspective on what’s going on. The same is true when staff is answering a slew of phone calls from unhappy people.
So while we definitely need to respond to the people who are in our face, we also simultaneously need to be quickly scanning the rest of the environment to ensure we have some perspective about what’s going on before we take our next big steps. In our case, the number of unhappy people was a very small percentage of the people affected. While each one of them warranted a careful reply and some extra attention, it wasn’t indicative of a huge crisis, so my next step to that larger group was calm and measured and fairly understated. In fact, after that next email, I got a few responses of thanks and people wondering why others were over-reacting.
Keeping perspective means looking at the small picture and the big picture simultaneously. Keeping perspective means being aware of what data you have at your disposal and processing it quickly. Keeping perspective requires the emotional intelligence to not let your brain get “hijacked” in response to highly charged individuals. It’s hard work.
Use Your Software Properly
November 18, 2010When discussing Microsoft Word or PowerPoint, the root of the problem is the software itself and it’s poorly designed interface. But we the user are partly to blame. We are so busy that we never take the time to sit down and figure out how to properly use the software. In the end, time spent learning how to use your software will save you countless ours and reduce frustration and anxiety in the future.
For Microsoft Word it is Style Sheets, for PowerPoint it is Master pages. Use these tools and you life in the office will dramatically improve!
I am no expert on PowerPoint, but I whipped together this handout to introduce new employees to a few basics. I hope it will benefit you as well.
Design Homework: Watch the Documentary Helvetica
November 10, 2010I always knew Helvetica was the most beautiful and versatile typeface of all time—this documentary proves it. My advise: use Helvetica.
Jamie Notter
Beth W. Palys, CAE, FASAE
Heidi Zimmerman
Jon Benjamin
Angela Pike
juliesuehill
nancycopen
Shannon Sperati, Member Services Manager
