Advice to Someone New to Association Management

This is a response I posted on an ASAE listserv in answer to the question:

If you had a new staff person coming on board who has never worked for an association, what tips would you offer them?

 

 

1. Association management is a service industry. You are here to serve the needs of the members; if you think you are above serving others, then choose a different career.

2. Association staff members are caretakers for the industry or profession they are serving. You help nurture and protect the members' dreams and goals.

 

3. Association management is about managing relationships rather than product development (as in a for profit company).

 

4. You do not go into association management because you want to make a lot of money. You go into it because you thrive on the energy generated by many individuals working towards the same goal.

5. If you consider yourself a specialist (such as a marketer or a magazine article writer) you need to learn how to be an association executive. The worst mistake you can make in that situation is to think you are separate -- or even worse, above -- "all that association stuff."

Comments

[Michele Packard-Milam, CAE]

Like several of you, I have worked many years in both profit and nonprofit.

Years ago, I was working in licensing and corporate development for a very large medical association. We were doing a national promotional program centered around country music and one of the lesser sponsors proposed a series of benefits for themselves that was completely out of the question. When I advised our contact that it was simply not compatible with our business objectives, she sneered, "How can you have business objectives? You're not a business!".

It was an eye-opening experience. It was so rude it kind of took my breath away, but it taught me a great lesson in how uneducated many people are about nonprofits.

Of course, I explained to her that we were a $350 million business (and actually larger than they were) and that the only difference in how our businesses were run was in what was DONE with the profits.

The converse in that situation was that many people inside the association regarded the for-profit world as inherently evil, a similarly erroneous view. I had memorable comments made along the lines of "why can't they just write us a check and leave us alone?" more than once. Again, breathtakingly ignorant.

On the association side, we get to choose, at least sometimes, to do the 'right' thing over the profitable thing, as long as enough divisions are delivering enough profits to make that possible. I love that aspect of association life more than anything.

Michele

Michele Packard-Milam, CAE
PPAI - Promotional Products Association International Director of Member and Regional Relations Office 972-258-3206
Fax 972-258-3007
michelepm@ppai.org

[Ellen]

Cecilia -- Your list is concise and could be incorporated into any new-hire interview or orientation for associations of every stripe.

I would argue that with #3 and #5 a certain amount of "other thinking" can make the difference between a successful organization (or project) and one that fails.

You're right; associations are primarily about relationships. But we do offer products and services to our members, and that means it's necessary that we recognize what being in that business requires. And the most successful for-profits will tell you that -- for them -- it's all about relationships, too. There are closer synergies between for-profits and non-profits than most association execs would like to admit.

I'm not really clear about #5. Yes, it's important to embrace the association world and its inherent culture differences from most for-profit businesses, but -- as someone who spent many more years in for-profits than associations -- there's much an association can gain from hearing "the other side" on occasion. Otherwise an organization risks getting mired in the "same old same old" "this is how we need to do it" because we're an association mindset.

For example, I crunched numbers very differently than my exec dir when I started. I was used to managing on a margin basis (revenue - cost = margin) becuase I had to return a certain level of profit to my CFO in the past. My ED was more focused on "revenue." I kept thinking, "What's the difference our revenue can make if we're not making our margin?" Of course, I eventually realized he was focused on the big picture -- in the end, total revenue needed to meet our expenditures -- but my focus on margin helped continue to make our educational programs viable.

Thanks for provoking deep thoughts on this question, Cecilia!