How Trade Associations Can Serve Members

Reduce focus on ancillary activities.

Feel good activities generally serve only a few members yet much of an association's valuable resources tend to be squandered in this area. Generally association members, frequently senior within the organization, with too much time on their hands will drive activities that matter to them while only serving a small constituency of members.

Let go of trying to control the small issues, which is common in associations. Association leadership is a turnstile and as such each set of leaders wants to make their mark and "resolve" small issues that do not need to be resolved. They do this because these small issues are really low hanging fruit, easily accessible. Rather, leadership needs to focus on the issues that really matter to the majority of members and these issues take real work, the kind of work that few leaders are willing to tackle.

Work on what matters to members.

Here is the challenge. I cannot tell you how many associations I have worked with that the leadership's approach was something like: "It doesn't matter what the members want, they need..."

There are two basic kinds of association leaders, first there is the person that truly desires to serve their industry and there is the second that desires to serve themselves. Over time there have been fewer of these that truly desire to serve and more that want to control or gain personal value. This is where the association paid staff must exert strength to minimize the damage that the glory and power seeking leader can cause.

What do most association members want?

In a nutshell most of the folks that join an association do so with the hope of minimizing the learning curve in growing their business. Secondarily, is to join in with masses in their industry to affect legislation that might have a positive or negative effect on their business.

While many association members site networking as a primary reason, networking is merely a conduit for the above value they seek. Networking in itself is an activity, not a benefit. However, proper intelligent networking will generally deliver the business growth and legislative benefits that members seek.

Recommendations:

1. Yearly, offer an open ended survey to membership. Too many surveys that I've seen associations send to their members only ask the kind of questions that support the erroneous assumptions of its leaders.

2. Leave the low hanging fruit for the paid staff. Volunteer leadership should be involved in helping to set the strategy rather than be obsessed with the daily operational activities of their association.

3. Focus on the big (and difficult) issues that will truly deliver value to members in their most important areas of business growth and legislation oversight. Leave the petty and small stuff to the paid staff.

4. Do not fear the diversity of membership but rather embrace it. When I mention diversity, I am talking about more than just racial, ethnic, nationality, and gender-I am talking about diversity of thought. In my experience, too many association leaders needlessly feel threatened by diversity of thought and unfortunately squander resources attempting to control that which should not be controlled; diversity of ideas.

Most folks join their industry's trade association to grow their business through new and innovative methods, learned through a collaborative community-the trade association. It is not a religion or benevolent society. Both paid and volunteer leaders would bode well to keep this at the fore of their thinking and decision making during their leadership tenure.