Good Resource for Industry News/Articles/Discussion

I’m a big fan of Reddit (www.reddit.com). I’ve been lurking around their nonprofit subreddit reading and trying to answer questions/help where I can. But, I was sad to see there wasn’t a subreddit for Association Management. While there is a good amount of overlap between associations and nonprofits in general, there wasn’t anything about associations that I could find.

What do you do when something you want doesn’t exist yet? Why, you build it yourself! So I did – www.reddit.com/r/associationmgt

Update Your Style #FixItFriday

Check out this post I wrote for my company’s blog, Partners Preceptors. I discuss ways we’ve increased membership retention by updating our membership and marketing materials!

A Blog by Partners in Association Management

By: William Lessley 

A small state trade association celebrated their 50^th anniversary last year. Many associations, upon reaching such a milestone, will blow out their anniversary year and then retreat the following year. Often, they are recovering from the amount of money they spent celebrating. This is a mistake! You spent an entire year building momentum for your association and then just stop? Did the association cease to exist after this magical milestone was passed? Then, why would you go backwards?

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Come Back!

In a previous post, Nothin’ Good About Good-Bye, I mentioned you should give your dropped members some space and time to realize  how much they really love you and then try to bring them back into the association. Now is that time for one of my clients. But, what to offer to get these members to come back to the association? Let’s take a look.

Last year we offered a crazy special of 50% off membership for 2013 PLUS 50% off every meeting the new member attended during the year – from the annual conference to the local regional meetings – 50% off. I think it’s telling that very few new members took us up on the meeting registration reduction, but I digress. We did see quite a few new members come into the association last year, though.

When you run a crazy special like this, it’s a good idea to contact your new members prior to the first round of invoices that go out to remind them their dues for the following year will be higher than what they paid this year. Otherwise, they will probably forget and then have sticker shock when that invoice reaches their desk. Sticker shock is bad – it makes them think you pulled a fast one or it immediately turns them off and they decide right then to not renew. We called all the new members last year in late September to let them know their invoices would be mailed to them soon and reminded them of what their dues would be for 2014.

Cube Farm Health Tips

Those of us who work in an office environment can find it challenging to stay healthy – both mentally and physically. Our job roles often call for us to sit in the same chair for hours on end, staring into a computer monitor. When we get lunch (sometimes “if” we get lunch) it is often a frozen meal microwaved in the break room and eaten at our desk, in that same chair, checking e-mails on that same computer monitor. We live for the weekend when we will be free to run and play outside – or so we tell ourselves. More often we are so frazzled by the end of the workday or work week that we sit around in our bathrobe staring at the TV and mindlessly eat dry cereal from the box. We wake up Monday morning more tired than we were when we left work on Friday afternoon.