Lately, I’ve been thinking “are member associations worth it anymore?”
This question came about from a small sideline project I’m working on – it’s my own initiative so I’m free to write about it here.
It was a kernel of an idea that planted itself in my head one day that had to be explored. It may germinate to something valuable for me or it may shrivel up and die, however, I thought I’d best work the idea out loud here.
So humour me if you will.
As you may know, for the last year I have been networking and attending conferences, and events with people in professions outside my field of learning and development.
The reason is that I wanted to understand the real challenges professions, organisations and businesses face. I wanted to hear from the people at the coalface. I didn’t want to theorise, ponder or pontificate. I wanted to talk to the people who are in those jobs about what challenges and pressures they face to keep up with constant change and volatility.
By understanding their concerns on how to improve their performance in a changing world, I would be in a better position as a learning professional, to help them with solutions that could be customised to suit their particular needs.
Also, I wanted to explore and find new clients in different fields in addition to corporate learning and development market.
So what did I find?
My assumption was confirmed. When it comes to performance improvement at work, one size most certainly never fit all. There are simply too many variables.
Although much of the networking involved getting out and speaking to people in person, some of it was online inside social networks. I sought membership into online communities and using new social networks (such as Snapchat) to talk to people in jobs such as microbiologists, volcanologists, astronauts, scientists, psychologists, doctors, growth hackers, engineers, teachers and marketers – jobs I would never have otherwise come across in my normal everyday life.
Also while watching interns at companies use Snapchat as a marketing and broadcasting tool to recruit other young people into their organisations, I had a question formulate in my head…
Even though we are living in an age where we have extraordinary resources at our fingertips, if you don’t have the knowledge or skills to find what you need offline, how can you be expected to know how to do this online ?
Let’s face it, no one teaches the skills of learning how to learn.
What Happened Next?
So that’s when I started thinking about Associations in particularly, member and professional associations and asked myself…
“How are these professional associations getting their members prepared for the future? Are the associations even prepared for this themselves?”
Over the last few months, I had the opportunity to present at a couple of networking events at two different associations. I spoke with both their staff and members and the conversations were enlightening because it made me think of my own experience with associations.
In the past, I have been a member of various associations and they’ve helped me greatly when I was starting out my career over 24 years ago. At times, I also volunteered in their committees organising the annual calendar of professional development and networking events, however, in the last years of my corporate life, I have let all memberships lapse simply because they don’t provide any value to me anymore.
Paying an annual membership fee to receive shop discounts, access to member resources online or a quarterly trade journal or periodical doesn’t match the extraordinary richness of the conversations, collaborations, and resources I’ve found online which are suited to my own personal learning needs and for most of them – entirely free.
So in the last few weeks, I sat down and scoured the internet to create a small list of Professional Member Associations and Professional Student Member Associations to call – and called them up one by one.
I had nothing to lose by cold calling to find people who can answer my questions as to whether Associations needed some help in helping their members learn.
I spoke to some people who were kind enough to talk with me and share their thoughts and here’s some of the feedback and concerns they had which surprisingly are similar to concerns that learning and development teams may have with their own businesses.
- Decreasing membership rates and the need to build their member database
- The need to deliver a unique and distinctive service proposition unlike other providers in the market
- Every other vendor seems to be offering the same services such as training, content or networking events usually cheaper than what they’re offering
- Their technology does not ‘plug in’ to their customer’s learning systems so that they can provide data that their customers want around the learning habits of their employees
- Providing their members with more interactive and flexible options when it comes to professional development or graduate programs that can be provided through a blend of delivery options and channels
- The association staff need to upskill in new technologies and find new products and services to generate revenue
- Their members prefer to use social networks such as Facebook or LinkedIn Groups more so than their own community platform (and as such don’t have visibility of the conversations)
Can you see how many of the questions and pain points are similar to what many industries, businesses and organisations are experiencing for their own employees or with their own customers?
It’s evident that there’s change in the air – and it’s affecting every business. Associations aren’t excluded. If they can somehow help their members (or even non-members for that matter) tap into each other so they don’t feel isolated as more jobs become contracts or freelance, and in return offer supportive relationships of a trusted community, will this be their new raison d’etre?
So where am I going with all this?
At the moment, it was just a discovery phase for me and as yet, I’m unsure how this will relate to the work I’m doing but it’s making me think that there is an opportunity to be able to provide services to this new group.
Perhaps there’s another perspective to membership of associations to be considered – for example, what I can contribute to the professional development of the industry or field of practice? Associations have typically included an aspect of lobbying to provide a voice to industry changes, an authority that represents the practitioners.
So – perhaps membership needs to include an aspect of what I can contribute to my field of practice and not just what can they provide me?
(It’s referred to as an external horizon in social networking analysis terms – references available if required 😉 )
Thanks for the comment Anne, I wasn’t aware of the ‘external horizon’ concept and will look further into it. I’d love it if you can steer me in the right direction here if you have good references to read? It certainly makes sense to reconsider the perspective of what they provide me to how I can support my field or practice. Actually, it’s a great angle to consider it this way because it focusses less on the derivation of benefit to self and instead, benefit to the whole. (Hey, that’s the future of work and society!) I know that there are heaps of people doing great work in associations and some members put in extraordinary hours (most of it voluntary) to plan and co-ordinate different events and the like. By encouraging people to offer their own experiences and contributions in whatever format may be an alternative approach. I certainly don’t have the answers at all, this was just an idea that popped into my head and then I got onto the blower and started calling people and associations to get some feedback.
A very valid question, Helen, and one that piqued my interest as only this month I’ve joined the NSW Divisional Council of the Australian Institute of Training and Development (AITD).
My short answer is that I truly believe that member associations offer value to the L&D professional (I believed this as a member before my council gig)… HOWEVER, such associations must continue to transform and adapt with the times to remain relevant.
I will continue to think about this and write up something more substantial.
Thanks for the comment Ryan. I agree that they need to be continually transforming themselves and adapting to the changing needs of their market. Over the last year, I have been talking with different associations and they’re all asking the same questions and exploring ways to do this. It’s also a good indication if the members themselves can contribute and participate – or bring in different industries who are somehow linked, connected or aligned for new ideas?
Learning from other industries is a great idea.
By the way, I have written up something more substantial as promised:
https://elearningindustry.com/top-6-benefits-membership-organizations
Thanks for provoking my thinking!
This is a two-part comment. Part One pertains to participation levels in associations serving professions that are not licensed.
In the days before the Internet, the Association of Association Executives found that the majority of members joined professional associations for their members-only publications, especially journals and newsletters. (Between 50 and 60%.) Other than pass-throughs (that is, a member sharing their exclusive publications with non-member friends and colleagues) or libraries, people had no other way of getting this information. So for professional associations in whom membership is voluntary, the Internet was a huge disrupter because the type of information that was available exclusively available through them was now available for free through private sites–like your blog–or from organizations willing to give away professional material as a loss leader. The challenge doesn’t face just membership organizations in L&D; it also affects associations in communications, information technology, and similar fields. Furthermore, it’s also affected academic organizations serving thee fields, because many of their members have easy access to the publications through libraries and most do not require a membership to publish.
In those days, too, less than half of members were active in any way (active defined as attending one event) and an even smaller percentage (usually well below 20%) were very active (taking a leadership role). Although many of our online sites are trying to engage people, the offline history doesn’t suggest that people will have high rates of participation. Although it is technically easier to participate online, I wonder what percentage are actually participating.
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This is a two-part comment. Part Two pertains to participation levels in associations serving professions that are licensed.
The situation is entirely different in licensed professions, like medicine, law, and accounting.
The associations serving these professions are called Orders or Colleges in many Commonwealth countries.
In addition to requiring a license to practice, the laws governing licensed professions also require that practicing professionals maintain a membership in the Order or College serving the profession. The government grants the Order or College the right to regulate the profession, including the right to control entry into the profession by establishing licensing standards, the right to control all education for the profession—including preparatory education (that’s why medical schools and law schools are separately accredited by their professional orders or colleges) and continuing education (which explains why trainers rarely take an active role in work-related training for licensed professions, unless the subject is unrelated to the specialty, like systems training for lawyers and regulation training for medical personnel). These orders and colleges also have the responsibility to ensure that all of those who have licenses are practicing responsibly—and must rescind the license of professionals who are guilty of misconduct.
My guess is that these professional associations continue to thrive because of some of these structural differences.
Furthermore, many professional associations have tried to duplicate the structures of associations for licensed professions (using voluntary certifications for licensing exams, establishing codes of ethics, and even trying to align with academic programs), but all of these activities are voluntary. Some people in these professions like L&D hope for licensing. But the general trend is away from that (there are commissions in the US looking at over-licensing of professions and over-qualifications required to earn licenses for those professions that have them), creating further pressures on voluntary associations.
Hello Saul and many thanks for your comment on this blog. I appreciate the time it took for you to respond to the post and provide comments and the distinction between the licensed and other associations. I should have clarified that my post was geared towards the associations where membership is voluntary – ie not licenced professionals – as that is where I have had experience with over the years as a member, a committee member and also recently, working as a consultant for them where they also mentioned the disruptions that you mention. In the recent past, I have had work with two other particular licensed professional associations and their focus was on ensuring providing more value to their members and streamlining the submission and assessment of the CPD requirements for their members. So they gave me another perspective entirely.
Speaking to graduates of the profession of these licenced associations, it was generally accepted that they would have to pay their annual membership fees and submit their CPD requirements in order to practice however their focus was more on meeting their basic CPD requirement OR finding work that met all their CPD requirements in the format that the association required it.
For example, if graduates are working for consulting firms (that is, providing the service not the actual operation such as a young engineer working as a consultant to a civil engineering company as opposed to managing a civil project in that company itself) or in roles that are fixed term contracts, they may not be able to meet all of their CPD requirements simply because the job itself does not provide the opportunity to demonstrate the competency in those areas and they have to seek out new roles; or delay the submission of their CPD until such a task comes up. So they have different challenges entirely.
I agree, associations aren’t the ones going through change and they will need to show value to their members to be effective as they were in the past. Ryan Tracey in his post https://elearningindustry.com/top-6-benefits-membership-organizations mentions one aspect of ‘local networking’ – of providing access to people and resources within location – which is something that had been confirmed with many people I spoke to. In Australia, with vast distances between towns, professionals want to connect and network with others in their field closer to the area where they live and work. This may be one benefit of associations – to provide that access to members as opposed to adding more unnecessary assessments and qualifications.
Hi Helen, great article as always. And very relevant.
In reading this and Ryan’s post I’ve decided to get involved again in at least one association (AHRI or AITD, probably the latter) and contribute a bit more. I’ve had mixed value from attending events and reading articles in the past but the quality is generally relative to what you put into it.
I also think it was Seth Godin who defined “world” as those we interact with so, trying to be the best in the “world” is not necessarily a truly global thing but more a “hyper-local” thing as Ryan mentioned. And then we can provide real value – to people we see and meet face to face. And associations can be the catalyst to these meetings, as well as meet ups and other opportunities facilitated by this Internet thing.
I’m also still trying to get my head around there future of work and where associations may fit in to this, but no resolution on that by any means.
Love reading the blog, no matter the focus ….
Hi Bill, thanks for the feedback as it’s always appreciated. I’m glad you read both mine and Ryan’s perspective for a balanced view and like you, thinking of ways of whether membership to associations provide me value. However, I think back to the time when I volunteered in the committee for a Management Association years ago and the benefits back then were the face to face networking and the events which were great. After having spoken to some people in licenced member associations and in regional Victoria, they too mentioned that they wanted more localised events so that they could meet people in similar industries in the regions. I think in that way, associations have a part to play.