Lessons from an Economic Crisis

It has been three weeks since the Dow sharply reminded us of the severity of the financial crisis in which the U.S. is embroiled. Unfortunately, we did not respond as a nation with the collective determination that this, too, shall pass and that, together, we will weather the storm. Instead, we responded with panic, rage, distrust, fingerpointing and outright terror that the Second Great Depression was upon us. Moreover, some of us responded with greed and scrambling to protect our share of the spoils of the war against an economy gone sour.

There is plenty of room for fingerpointing. There's more than enough opportunity for expressing concern and outright fear that, if our response is not appropriate, our economy could tank. There's ample reason for distrust of many of the players who contributed to the mess in which we find ourselves. Even the mirror can take some of the blame.

We can reasonably lay blame on the people who took out mortgages they could never hope to repay, as well as on the financial institutions that irresponsibily lent them the money. It is not inappropriate to blame previous Democratic administrations for relaxing lending guidelines under Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae. It is reasonable to hold the current administration and the Republican majority in recent years accountable for allowing the problems to fester and grow.

It is not wrong, it is reasonable, but it is useless. Blame is about the past. What we need to do is focus on the future.

The reason I write about all of this in a blog intended to address association management topics is the fact that many associations have jumped on the bandwagon of blame, while simultaneously doing all they can to look out after their members' self-interests, even while ignoring broader national interests. This is an embarrassment to the profession and a disservice to the nation. I won't name names because it won't do any good, but if you look around carefully (or not so carefully), you can find examples of the behaviors to which I am referring.

Let me reiterate a point. We, as a nation, did not put our collective wills behind finding a solution. We allowed a small group of men and women to decide that in our checkbooks and in the checkbooks of our children and their children stood a ready reserve of money to help address the underlying problems that "caused" our current economic maelstrom. We did not offer up our checkbooks, but we allowed them to be emptied. We allowed them to be emptied because we were worried that, if we didn't, we'd have to empty our bank accounts, too.

I'm not suggesting that the "bailout" was not right; I don't know whether it was or not. But many people did not and do not agree with it. Yet we abdicated our own responsibilities and let our elected representatives assume them on our behalf. We were too concerned, as a people, about avoiding a depression to get involved in conversations about what might be right.

The reason I'm so alarmed at associations that jumped into the fray to look out after their self-interest is this: associations should operate on the premise that they exist to look out after the self-interests of their members but that, and this is a given, anything that hurt society at large cannot take precedence. Associations should hold to an ethic that does not allow them to blatantly serve their members' self-interests at the expense of the common good. Nor should associations ever adopt positions that accept that the end justifies the means. Robin Hood was not an association executive.

All the bad "stuff" that is going on in our economy today gives us ample opportunity to learn how important it is for associations to inculcate ethics into their vision and mission statements and, then, into their operating principles. I intend to share that lesson with our client associations and I hope other association executives will do the same.

Seizing Opportunities vs. Embracing Burdens

The difference between success and failure sometimes can be the simple difference between seizing an opportunity and embracing a burden.

My association management company is almost always actively seeking new clients, both associations seeking full-service management and organizations looking for help managing or executing programs. The opportunities in both areas are almost boundless. I use the term opportunity loosely, though, because as often as not they would simply be burdens to our company if we chose to pursue them. So we don't.

Let me explain.

A car dealership and a shoe store both sell products, but they won't interchange their products for a very simple reason: their business models are very different. What is an opportunity for one is a burden for the other.

In the case of my company, our business model is to make the best strategic use of our staff's talents in furthering the objectives of our client associations. Many associations are not looking for the kinds of talents we bring to the table. They are not necessarily looking for strategic thinkers to form alliances with their leadership. Many associations, at some point in their evolution, are simply looking for solid clerical support. While we have solid clerical and administrative support, we're much more interested in providing those skills as a byproduct of our core service, management.

If we simply pursued any association that came along looking for help, we'd be drowning in administrative overload. Our staff, who enjoy being involved in every aspect of our client associations' deliberations and decision-making, would be bored to tears with full-time clerical tasks. We might be paid for the time and talent we bring to the table, but almost all of us would quickly tire of the routine. It just wouldn't fit our model. Don't get me wrong, we're as dedicated to good clerical and administrative support as any other company, we're just not interested in focusing solely on those areas.

We want to work with associations that offer challenges, that have significant potential for either growth or reinvigoration, and that want and need our brand of unbridled enthusiasm and broad, deep pool of talent.

When presented with opportunities that don't fit that model, we opt to decline. It's better for both of us; the association wouldn't be any happier with us than we would be with the association.

All of this is simply a prelude to my main point: it is my strong contention that associations are no different than the car dealership and the shoe store or my own company. They must be clear about what they want to be; if they try to be all things to all people, they instead become nothing to anyone. Associations should carefully determine who or what sort of businesses they want as members, what programs and projects they want to pursue, and then stay the course.

If your association is looking too much like the car dealership trying to sell shoes, neither your members nor your board will be fulfilled. Make time to articulate, clearly, your association's perfect opportunities and leave the burdens to another association to which they are better suited.

A Socio-Political Economic Rant

Before you read this, please understand: while my post may seem unrelated to associations, from the outset, it is definitely related to associations and their ability to change the world..

I find it simultaneously interesting and deeply depressing to hear both Democrats and Republicans try to blame one another for the rising prices of energy. What's even more depressing is the parties' lack of leadership in addressing the fundamental problems that have led to our current dilemma. Even worse, neither party has the backbone to acknowledge the realities of what must ultimately be done if we are ever to find a way out of this wilderness of energy dependence.

Let's go back in time just a little. When I was in high school and college, in the early 1970s, students were exposed to stark realities, realities that were presented to us as warnings and directives:

• oil won't last forever;
• conservation is both wise and required;
• alternative sources for fuels [and products that are oil-dependent (e.g., plastics)] must be sought after and perfected; and
• failure to curb humankind's materialism-gone-awry is the recipe for disaster.

Neither our politicians nor, from the looks of our society today, the rest of us "got" the message. Had we been as intelligent as we wanted to believe we were, we would have directed our energies not toward delaying the inevitable, but toward harnessing the possible...creating a new future with new sources of energy, replacements for oil-based products, and a social consciousness that did not worship at the altar of economic superiority and materialistic gain. We would have insisted on very high gas mileage standards years ago; we would have demanded a Manhattan-style project, with renewal sources of energy as its raison d'être; we would have changed our own lifestyles; and we would have begun teaching our children what we had learned.

But we did not do what was intelligent. Instead, we ignored the gas lines of the early 1970s and paid no heed to the warnings that our lifestyles of excessive consumption and environmental disdain would come back to haunt us.

The chickens inhabiting the lavish coops we built with our own arrogance have now come home to roost.

And what do our politicians say? The Republicans' new mantra on energy, is "Find more. Use Less." When I read such nonsense, I simply sigh and hope for an insurrection. Anyone with a basic understanding of economics understands that such drivel is not an energy "policy," it's a bad and dangerous slogan.

But Democrats must have the correct solution then, right? Would that it were...but, no, they are equally made of nothing but self-puffery. While the Democrats rightly oppose opening up irresponsible drilling in environmentally precarious places, they do not have the courage to complete the thought. No, they want the government to step in and cut prices, while punishing the bad energy giants. Like the Republicans, they are unwilling to acknowledge the laws of supply and demand. They, too, will not accept the reality that we're using too much energy and destroying our environment in the process. They huff and puff and demand that the poor, overburdened middle class be dragged out of the pit it helped create through its conspicuous consumption. Rather than calling on us all to accept the fact that oil will, indeed, run out, they want to delay the economic pain of change to a future generation. If future generations could come back to exact their revenge, today's generations would be rightfully trembling in fear.

What does all of this have to do with associations, you might wonder? Associations have the capacity to bring about change in this political stalemate borne of fear.

They don't have to be energy-related organizations. They don't have to focus on engineering solutions to energy generation. They don't have to have an obvious connection to the environment or politics or policy. All they need to do is to educate their members and encourage their members to, in turn, educate their politicians. If just ten percent of the members of associations in the United States would send a message to their political leaders that they demand real solutions and that they are willing to be led by real leaders who have real answers, things would change, quickly and for the better.

If associations would simply give their members some "talking points," that could go a long way. Here are a few:

• The supply of oil is dwindling quickly and we must find, with a great sense of urgency, alternatives;
  
• Conservation is required and it will require sacrifices by all of us;
  
• Priorities for availability of oil-based products must be assigned so that transportation of critical products (e.g., food, medicines, and the like) can be protected;
  
• As painful as high prices can be, we must make energy use a conscious and uncomfortable choice in order to protect what is now a limited supply;
  
• Give entrepreneurs, including major energy companies, who seek solutions, incentives to take risks; and
  
• Once people understand the true, critical nature of energy availability, they will be willing to sacrifice and, in the meantime, they must be made to sacrifice.

Associations, which helped build this country, can help save it. They have power, influence, and the unique capacity to help their members who share common traits, needs, and wants achieve important objectives.

There are associations, of course, whose own survival is at odds with what I have said here. Their own members are potential victims of new energy sources and conservation measures. You can be absolutely sure that those associations will do all they can to preserve the status quo, minimize the impression that an urgent need for alternative sources exists, and derail any efforts to redirect their own economic engines. To my way of thinking, a company or an association that would put its own short-term profits or even its own survival above the survival of our economy and our way of life is an organization that deserves neither our help nor our sympathy.

Finally, I hope this diversion into political and economic and social minefields will be appreciated or, at least, forgiven. For my next post, I will return to a strictly "association management" topic.

Networking...Social and Otherwise...Associations Need to Catch On

Associations once had an almost ironclad lock on opportunities to meet and communicate with like-minded professionals or with business associates from one's industry. Whether those opportunities were considered professional networking or social networking, they were the primary occasions most people could count on to find others with professional and business commonalities and to establish ties with them.

Association conventions or conferences were gold-mines for networking and they were milked for all they were worth by people who understood the value of community. Many of today's association leaders risk losing those gold-mines to other associations or even to companies and invididuals who recognize that "networking" is undergoing an enormous transition. They are risking this loss because they are either ignoring innovations or they simply do not comprehend the depth and breadth of the changes taking place before them.

It is no longer necessary to initiate networking at an association function. Instead, one may network by using Plaxo, LinkedIn, Ning or any number of other social or professional networking sites and services that are readily available on the Internet. The two former services have pre-existing platforms that enable one to easily link to others with shared personal or business interests. The latter, and many more like it, enables individuals or groups (or associations) to create their own social networking services. Now, networking can start well in advance of a live event. The live event is simply the natural extension of the network's reach. Other social networking sites have morphed from having primary objectives involving personal networking to some business-oriented sites (e.g., Facebook, MySpace).

The problem, as I see it, is that associations tend to be very slow to adopt alternatives to their traditional networking opportunities. They tend to want "tried and true" solutions to their problems, so by the time they are ready to give in to the trends that surround them, it may be too late. I'm not advocating the abandonment of traditional meetings for education, information, and networking. But I suggest that meetings should be viewed not as the beginning of the networking process as has traditionally been the case but, rather, as the culmination of the first phases of the process and the launchpad of new, more vibrant, and much more valuable networking processes. I view these more valuable networking processes as enablers all manner of transactions between participants, from information exchange to personal friendships.

While I think associations, in general, are far too rich in value to be replaced (at least not yet) by a social networking service, they are at risk unless association leaders insist on augmenting their traditional means of helping people establish connections by taking advantage of social networking opportunities.

I see signs that associations are opening up to using technologies to enable and to support social and professional networking. In fact, at least one such social network is geared toward educating association staff about the value of these technologies. But unless more associations follow the lead of forward-thinkers who recognize the need to adapt and adopt, associations at large risk becoming less relevant. And that would be a shame, because associations offer so much more than networking opportunities. Unless they offer networking opportunities in the very best and most useful ways possible, though, they do risk becoming dinosaurs. And we have a general idea about what happened to them.

The Impact of Gas Prices on Associations and Their Members

Associations, like every other type of business, are feeling the impact of rising petroleum prices. The effect of high gas prices will be felt for the forseeable future. Associations must, therefore, decide how they will deal with the inevitable impact on their members, their employees, and their vendors and business partners. Unfortunately, none of us have the luxury of time to consider how to cope. That luxury has been available to us since the oil embargo of 1973, but few of us possessed the wisdom or the will to put that time to good use. Now, it's time to react quickly to what amounts to an emergency.

What effects are we going to have to face? I suspect no one is absolutely certain, but here are just a few that I believe are very likely:

• Travel to Meetings: Members will be unwilling or unable to justify the frequency of travel we have heretofore enjoyed, thanks in part to high petroleum prices;
  
• Airline Travel: Airline travel fares, which have already begun a rapid ascent, will spiral ever higher, making flying a business luxury rather than a business byproduct;
  
• Close-in Renaissance: The exodus from cities to suburbs and exurbs will reverse course, making "close in" living a very highly sought after lifestyle for association staff (except in associations which have already fled to the suburbs) [while gentrification has already started this trend, it will accelerate];
  
• Adaptive Zoning: Zoning laws will have to re-adapt to neighborhood-based businesses, as people are apt to insist on staying closer to home.
  
• Telecommuting: Associations and their member businesses will have to institute widespread telecommuting in order to attract high quality workers.
  
• Hyper-Local Employment Markets: The advent of more neighborhood-based small businesses will make associations and their member companies face a much more highly competitive and highly localized market for employees;
  
• Long-Distance and Virtual Events: As face-to-face meetings become more and more difficult to orchestrate, thanks to high costs of travel, associations will have to invest resources toward creating educational "events" that take place long-distance, usings webinars, video conferences, social networking sites and processes, and other technological options; events may begin to take place over longer periods of time, with event components pulled together technologically as "virtual events;"
  
• Hotel Transformations: Meeting-supported hotels will be forced to transform into localized technological resources for associations that cannot, or do not want to, invest heavily in long-distance meeting technologies;
  
• Transportation Infrastructure: Public transportation systems will be much more likely to win competitions for transportation infrastructure dollars;
  
• Potential Preeminence of Associations: Despite the challenges, the financial and environmental pressures to keep people apart (at least long-distance) are apt to have a highly positive effect on associations that are able to understand and take advantage of their unique capacities to be the "binding for the social fabric" of their industries or profession;
  
• Ruinous Results of the Failure to Act: And, in spite of the potential for associations, their failure to take advantage of the opportunities presented to them could be ruinous. The ease with which social networking sites can be established by one person, by himself or herself, offers evidence of what can happen if associations fail to react quickly to the challenges facing their members and their employees (and, of course, I'm referring as well to AMCs as well as associations). The failure to act quickly could easily give other organizations or individuals the opportunity to act earlier and take advantage of the opportunities to lure away association members (and staff members).

As frightening as the rapidly-escalating price of energy is, it provides us with an opportunity to think about new ways to do business. We can work to be more resourceful and more attuned to financial and environmental realities. We can be more conscious of the fact that our business practices and personal choices as association members and association executives can affect the world around us.

We're All Human, Don't You Think?

Recently, almost all of the financial news that has come across my desk, television, or computer screen has been bleak. The dollar is weak almost to the point of collapse. The U.S. mortgage debacle continues to reverberate throughout the world's economy, wreaking havoc in industry after industry. Households are awash in debt. Businesses are cutting back. Food prices are skyrocketing worldwide and food riots are taking place all over the globe. In some places people are starving. In others they are battling one another over political issues that, in reality, can almost always be traced back to economics in one way or another. People with obscene wealth are fighting to keep what they believe is their birthright. People living in abject poverty are fighting to escape what has become punishment for being born to the wrong parents in the wrong society in the wrong era. It's a mess. It's almost enough to bring crusty old men to tears.

The way businesses and individuals and families are reacting to what has yet to be "officially" labeled a recession perplexes and concerns me, one of those crusty old men (well, 54 is not so crusty, I suppose).

Businesses are cutting back on their own engines of survival. Their marketing and advertising dollars are being dramatically restricted and their customer service measurements and expenditures for tracking brand compliance are being slashed.

Individual consumers are complaining about the cost of gasoline and food, while simultaneously griping that they can't afford the gas guzzling SUVs they so desperately want to complement their desired image.

Famlies are cutting back on food in order to pay for gas. Many are struggling to find ways to keep their children clothed in the latest fashion trends, allowing expenses for daycare and medicines to go unpaid.

These things are troublesome to many on many levels, both personally and professionally. But this blog is about associations and I'll turn my attention back to them.

What I find most troubling, professionally, is the lack of a sense of urgency among associations in general. With few exceptions, I see associations reacting, if they react at all, from a dangerously provincial and highly selfish perspective.

Too many associations are forgetting what they are good at: unifying people with common interests to pursue the common good. Rather than rallying around a need, whether that need involves the profession they serve or the industry they represent, associations today too often are either ignoring their potential role in finding broad solutions or are focused on their own survival, ignoring their own important constituents.

I do not suggest that all associations should always focus on their own social consciousnesses. Rather, I suggest that there are times when associations should understand that they are social institutions with social responsibilities.

Despite the fact that an association of flashlight manufacturers has no ongoing and fundamental obligation to provide light to those who find themselves in the dark, it does have an obligation to respond to certain crises. When the association is the only organization that has the structural capacity to provide relief to tornado victims who have lost their homes and have no power, responding to that need is, in my view, a moral imperative. Never mind that responding will be good PR. Responding will be good, period.

What I'm getting at, albeit slowly, is that I'm disappointed to see that some associations are responding badly to their own plights in this economy. Some of the same associations that would chastise businesses for cutting advertising budgets in hard times because advertising is precisely what they need are cutting expenditures for staff when what they need more than anything else is a staff that is hard at work guiding the association through the dangerous and potentially deadly thickets of economic malaise. Rather than pulling everyone together to fight a common threat, they are circling the wagons and sending the weakest out into the firestorm to fend for themselves.

Associations, like the people who belong to them, should be ashamed of themselves if they don't recognize and exercise their abilities to intervene when crises become so fierce as to endanger lives and cultures. Believe me, I'm generally not one to support associations raising funds to support the "cause" of Crohn's disease because the organization's president's son-in-law has the disease. If the president wants to support that cause, fine. If she wants to ask her friends to do the same, more power to her. But one individual's bad fortune isn't sufficient to justify an association of chemists to give one medical condition its undivided attention. But if the society in which that association of chemists finds itself is at a breaking point because of disease or hunger or some other catastrophic social ill, I'm in favor of the organization parlaying its capacity to fight that social ill into a solution. That association of chemists should not insist that it has no business solving a social ill simply because it wasn't formed to do that. That would be rather like a football player refusing to apply a tourniquet to an accident victim's wound because that's not his job.

OK, I'm temporarily off my soapbox. But I hope your association will respond to social needs when they are severe, regardless of the association's mission. We're all human, after all, or at least we should be.

Association Meetings: Dinosaurs?

We've heard it all before. The advent of video conferencing was going to be the downfall of association meetings. But it didn't happen. Then, webinars were going to cause the demise of association meetings. But that didn't happen, either. So, when someone suggests that technological advances that take advantage of the Internet are going to put a crimp on association meetings, we tend to dismiss it as another bad prediction.

But this time, we may be watching the development of the perfect storm. Airlines are hurting, with some going out of business and others stretched so thin there's concern about whether they are spending enough on maintenance. Fuel prices are climbing sky-high, making it exceptionally expensive to travel, whether by plane, car, boat, or train. The populace of the world, and especially the U.S., is finally becoming conscious of our carbon footprints...and we're rightfully embarrassed at our abuse of the environment. The U.S. Transportation Security Administration makes life unnecessarily miserable for travelers, but virtually no one feels any safer as a result of TSA efforts. And, technology is going beyond "hey, this is neat," to "hey, this is phenomenol!"

I do not think travel is a thing of the past. But I do think association meetings are going to undergo some exceptional changes in the very near future. And association executives, meeting planners, and volunteer leaders better be ready to adapt quickly or they will find that they, like the meetings they are so used to, are dinosaurs.

Here's what I think lies ahead...and not far ahead:

1. Technology companies will push, hard, to make "remote meeting technology" pervasive in every office.
   
2. If you don't have a video camera mounted on your computer, you will very, very soon. And there will be video cameras throughout your offices and even on the trade show floors of the hotels and convention centers where your meetings are held today.
   
3. Internet-enabled networkable sensors will become cheap enough that they will be almost everywhere...so it will be easy to control all sorts of devices remotely. Those cameras I mentioned...they, too, will be controllable by internet-enabled networkable sensors.
   
4. What once was, at best, clunky and unsatisfyingly jerky video and sound, will become "almost live" so that viewers with an Internet connection will be able to see and hear what's going on in a room 2,000 miles away as clearly...or more clearly...than the people in that room.
   
5. Meeting planners, association executives, and the people who have been attending their events will find themselves in a whole new world. Knowing how to negotiate for sleeping rooms and how to select food and beverage packages that will satisfy will no longer be so important.
   
6. Skills in successfully integrating multiple technologies so that event participants from around the globe can have an "almost live" experience will be required.
   
7. Physical meetings will become much smaller and much, much more expensive per "live" participant...but meetings will become far greater in their reach by drawing in participants from a huge pool that has never been terribly active in "live" meetings before.
   
8. The team that executes a meeting will no longer have to be in the same place. Ten presenters might be in ten locations...the registration group may be in another location...the trade show managers may be in four buildings on three continents.
   
9. For "live" meetings, the audience might be fifteen people sitting in front of a speaker, but the speaker might be communicating with ten thousand people who are listening and watching from afar.
   
10. The fundamental skills required of association executives and meeting planners will evolve and will involve identifying and executing the best and most appropriate teaching methods for a disparate audience.

Now is the time for those of us who plan to stay in this discipline to "re-tool" ourselves so that we remain relevant in what promises to be a completely different world than the one we've known. Time will tell whether I'm right about this...but if I were a betting man, I'd say my chances of winning some serious money are very, very good!

Mission Critical

Associations that do not pay attention to their mission statements risk losing the support that led to the drafting of those mission statements. It's important for an association to regularly remind its members about what the organization's mission is.

The energy and enthusiasm and vocal support of the association that resulted in the mission statement tends to drift and fade unless it is regularly highlighted.

Here are some samples of the mission statements of some of our client associations. They are simple, straightforward, and easy to understand.

ETA
ETA's mission is to strengthen the commercial embroidery business through member education, business support, representation, networking, research, and consumer outreach.

MSPA
The leadership goal of MSPA is to increase the value, acceptance, and use of mystery shopping, as well as to enhance overall professionalism in the industry.

TDA
Leading the Future of Dietetics

TSMSS
The mission of TSMSS is to promote certification and professional growth through networking, within the healthcare industry.

Members of these associations do not have to wonder what the organizations are all about. The mission statements are clear and concise. If your association's mission statement is weak, hidden, or confusing, the time to adjust it is now, before the energy that helped build the organization dissipates.

Hotel F&B Costs...Trust, but Verify and Watch Your Back

You've negotiated a good sleeping room rate on a very nice property for your annual meeting. Members will be delighted at the place! Everything is looking terrific and your board of directors is pleased.

They are pleased, that is, until you present a food and beverage (F&B) budget for the event that looks for all the world like you've decided on a menu of Russian Beluga caviar, top shelf vodka, and truffles laced with shards of pure gold.

Then, they begin to wonder about your sanity and your negotiating skills. All you did, though, was get a good room rate and assume the hotel would be fair to you when it comes to F&B costs. But your assumption of fairness on the hotel's part, not to mention your failure to control your expense liabilities, has put you in a very, very disturbing situation.

That's the scenario you could face if you fail to include in your contract negotiations with the hotel some very specific parameters about the costs of F&B. Without caps in cost escalation from existing menus, maximum contractual per-person stipulations, or some other means of controlling F&B costs, you are at the mercy of the property. You don't have to serve Beluga caviar and top shelf vodka; you simply have to order a sandwich and a glass of iced tea and you could find yourself in very hot water if the hotel decides it's reasonable to charge $45 for the sandwich and $7 for the tea. Without contractual limits, you have no recourse; you're stuck.

So, how does one avoid the embarrassing and potentially career-altering scenario presented above? Here are some tips that will help:

• Insist that the hotel make written commitments (written because hotel staff are notorious for disappearing before your event and their replacements cannot rely on your "word" that their predessors made them) to you that will limit your F&B outlay;
• Incorporate into your contract some very specific numbers that restrict outrageous escalations in prices, such as: Per-person prices for base-level full breakfast shall not exceed $14, inclusive; per-person prices for base-level plated luncheon shall not exceed $21, inclusive; per-person prices for base-level plated dinner shall not exceed $31, inclusive (where inclusive means inclusive of tax, service charge, and gratuity) [of course, you must define "base level"];
• Limit liability by incorporating an F&B commitment, in dollars, that you must meet, while simultaneously controlling per-meal costs, such as: group's F&B minimum commitment to the hotel shall be $17,500 (based on the aggregate expenditures on meals whose costs shall be based on an average cost per person of $13 for breakfast, $19 for lunch, and $29 for dinner) and, once achieved, group shall have no further commitment to hotel for F&B costs; and/or
• Include a contractual provision that gives you the latitude to order "off menu" so that you can present a meal and ask for an item-by-item cost (so you can adjust the per-person cost to adapt to your financial capacities).

There are many, many ways to ensure that you and your board are not unpleasantly surprised at the cost of an event. You should know, before the contract is signed, what your F&B costs (and other hotel-related costs) will be, based on your estimated attendance. It's good professional practice to develop an event budget (whether "official" or not) before beginning the process of looking for venues for meetings. Your meeting specs should, ideally, indicate an expected price range for each meal, so that hotels know what's expected of them...and to give them fair warning that you'll expect their contracts to be adjusted accordingly.

You should have a spreadsheet that presents your final expected numbers before you start selecting menus. If not, you've not finished your preparatory work.

Finally, don't expect the hotel staff to look out after your best interests. That's not their job. Their job is to look out after the hotel owners' best interests. Your job is to look out after your association's best interests. A food and beverage budget that suggests you're planning to order Beluga caviar and top shelf vodka looks like you're looking out after the wrong interests.

The Micromanaging Board and the Consolidator of Executive Power

Almost nothing is more annoying to the association executive responsible for managing the day-to-day affairs of an association than a volunteer who believes it is the volunteer's role to manage the association. And nothing is more annoying to that volunteer than for the association executive to fail to understand that the volunteer was elected for just that purpose!

When those two perspectives emerge in an association environment, it's time for everyone to step back and reflect on why they are in their roles and what those roles truly mean. More importantly, it's important for the executive and the volunteer to listen to the other...to try to learn something.

The confusion and perturbation that arises when staff and volunteer see one another as belonging to "the opposition" are destructive and disquieting. They get in the way of getting the organization's work done. They make working and volunteering for the association unhappy and distressing. When egos and misunderstandings get out of the way, though, everyone can be happier and more productive. But it takes effort.

One of the easiest ways to understand the roles of association executives and elected volunteers is to compare them to their "equivalents" in the corporate world.

The chief staff executive of an association is equivalent to the CEO of a corporation. In both cases, the board of directors hires the individual (or, quite wisely, the management firm) who, then, is given boundaries of authority and objectives to reach. The differences in the manner in which board members are compensated are where the comparisons begin to break down...but they shouldn't. Nonprofit board members are "paid" primarily in recognition and a sense of contribution to the "cause." In addition, they may have a few perquisites, but generally speaking they simply get acknowledgement and the appreciation of their peers. Corporate board members generally get paid in hard cash. They, too, may get a sense of accomplishment, but there's no question that money speaks on corporate boards.

If members of association boards were satisfied with their "pay," there might be fewer instances of micromanagement. Many association board members, though, seem to believe that the differences between them and corporate board members are monumental. They sometimes seem to believe they should be more involved in the day-to-day operation of the association than the corporate board member should be in the day-to-day operation of the corporation. That may be understandable, considering the fact that for-profit boards tend to pay rather enormous salaries to their chief executives, while association boards tend to want their executives to get the bulk of their compensation in intellectual fulfillment. (That last comment was made simply to prove that I am human.)

"If only they understood," complain association executives about their boards, "they'd realize that their micromanagement is doing more harm than good!" Association board members tend to have a counter view, saying "I was elected to oversee the operation of this organization and I must be involved to fulfill my responsibility!"

Both perspectives are flawed. The association executive fails to fully grasp the legitimacy, in concept, of the volunteer leader's attitude. From the association executive's point of view, the volunteer should simply chart the course and get out of the way. That's not true of an association environment any more than it is of a corporate environment. In fact, recent high-profile cases of boards failing to fulfill their fiduciary duties to shareholders point to the need for more oversight by corporate boards.

The volunteer does not quite understand the difference between governance and management and the distinction between oversight and meddling. From the volunteer's perspective, fiduciary duties require the volunteer's authorization for actions by staff and they require the volunteer to make the decisions which staff is then to implement. Again, that's not true in either a corporate or an association environment.

The association executive who is frustrated by someone he or she sees as an intrusive volunteer is missing something. The volunteer who is frustrated by an executive who the volunteer sees as uncooperative and unwilling to acknowledge the volunteer's primacy is missing something, too.

They are missing a complete understanding of their roles and the motives of the other person involved in the situation. An association executive's role is to implement board policy, but it is also to provide advice and counsel to the board. The executive director of an association is also required to share information with the board, to ensure that the board is fully informed. The volunteer's role is to develop policy, but also to monitor the executive's performance to ensure that the policy is being implemented. The volunteer is required to give feedback to the executive, to ensure that the executive knows how he or she is perceived. Sometimes the "issues" are simply matters of trust. Open discussions about what the issues are can go a long way toward resolving the problem.

1. The key in both corporate and association environments is that both require:
   clear definitions of boundaries within which the executive has latitude to act;
2. clear definitions of the types of actions/decisions that must have board review and approval;
3. clear understanding by the board and the executive of what reporting is needed, how frequently, and to whom; and
4. regular performance assessments, in both directions, discussed openly between the board and the executive.

Whenever there are concerns about micromanagement by the board or unnecessary consolidation of power by the executive, the time is immediately right for a candid conversation. Both groups must make it a point to try to learn what is bothering the other and both must make a commitment to correct the problem.

Finally, such situations are never comfortable, but there's no reason to hide them under the rug, either. It happens in the best of associations. In the really good associations, these situations get resolved quickly and completely.

The Power of Associations, for Good or Bad

At heart, I'm an optimist. I believe that humanity can come together to achieve things that are beyond any individual's power.

In my view, associations represent the ultimate potential of the human experience. They represent the possibilities that humanity brings to the planet; the promises that, as a species, we can collectively fulfill. Associations embody opportunities for people who share common interests to achieve common goals. At their very highest level, associations can enable the efforts of groups to coalesce into exceptionally powerful forces for the advancement of virtually every aspect of our existence. That's pretty heady stuff. It's the sort of thing that makes it easy to understand why working with and through associations can get in one's blood and can become a powerful motivator in one's own life.

But, I'm no pollyanna, either.

Just as they can give legs to the best visions and ideas and motives among us, associations can epitomize the worst characteristics of humanity. When the members and leaders of associations permit it to happen, association structures and processes can trample over the "right" thing to financially and/or politically enrich individuals and groups in ways that cause untold damage to others.

Laws in the United States that work to prevent collusion, restraint of trade, price-fixing, and any number of other breaches of trust and good will by associations were not passed in anticipation of bad deeds. They were passed because legislators and regulators and the public learned, first hand, because they are instruments of humanity, that associations can be tools of greed, abuse of power, and all manner of other crimes and moral failings.

It is because I recognize that associations, like governments, can be instruments of abuse, neglect, blackmail, economic conniving, and social injustice, among other things, that I am a believer in every association taking steps to ensure that its good name and resources are not hijacked for malevolent purposes.

The first defense against abuse is simple: leaders and members alike need to understand and accept the organization's reason for being and its values. Let's take, for example, the Mid-Texas Association of Cattle Prod Manufacturers (a fictitious organization...I hope). Its purposes, as outlined in its bylaws, are "to advance the safe and appropriate use of cattle prods and to protect the industry's economic interests." By itself, that would allow the Association to try to drive competing products out of business by any means possible. Let's say, though, that the Association had expressed its values as: 1) fair competition, 2) honesty in all business dealings, 3) adherence to the law, and 4) creativity. Those values would preclude firebombing competitors' worksites, "dumping" products below costs, and lying about the number of people who had been injured in cattle prod accidents.

The bottom line is this: like most human endeavors, associations are generally honest, law-abiding, endeavors that engage in activities that have value. But it's very important for members and leaders alike to be "watchdogs" to ensure that the beneficent roots of the organization are maintained over time.

A simple code of ethics which lays out the values of the organization and specifically precludes certain self-serving behaviors can go a long way toward preventing problems. Of course, that code of ethics cannot simply be created and left to gather dust on the shelf It must be regularly reviewed and broadcast to the membership as a guiding principle of the association.

Nurture the best in associations and the best is what you'll get. Never allow an association's capacity to nurture the wrong leaders take hold, though, lest all the good deeds an organization might do go undone.

A Good Concept for all Associations: Operating Surveys

Operating ratio surveys and reports tend to be considered only for trade associations. That makes sense, because Quick Ratio, Current Ratio, Average Debt Collection Period, Debt to Asset Ratio, and various liquidity ratios, etc. typically have little or no relevance to individuals in professional societies.

But, operating practice surveys, or something like them, can be extremely valuable to members of professional societies, as well, when couched in terms and reported in ways that are relevant to members' enviroments. Let's look at some hypothetical examples.

The members of the hypoethetical Global Association for Vertebrate Pest Elimination (GAVPE), an association of vertebrate pest control specialists (people who help control rats and possums and squirrels in the attic, etc.) might find it extremely valuable to know the average number of attic pests found after a homeowner reports an infestation. The same people might find it extremely helpful to know the average number of days from first efforts at control until control is achieved. The most expedient and the most efficient way for them to know these numbers is for large numbers of other professionals to share them in such as way that they can be aggregated and expressed in some meaningful form. GAVPE is the ideal vehicle to orchestrate the collection and reporting of those numbers. Members of GAVPE can then look to the Association for information, such as (remember, this is hypothetical):

• The average number of days from control initiation to control achievement is 10.2
• The average number of rats in a typical infestation is 3.2

That information is not just "nice to know" stuff...it's the sort of thing a homeowner who's confronted with a rat infestation would want the GAVPE member to tell him. It's information that helps convey upon the GAVPE member a sense of professionalism and gives the homeowner a reason to put his faith in the member.

Another hypothetical example may help further express the value of operating practice surveys. The Association of Freelance Administrative Support Professionals (AFASP) might serve its members' needs very well by conducting a survey asking, among other things, the length of time of the average "first contact" freelance assignment. The average time of that assignment can help the freelancer establish a base service commitment. So, for example, if the average from the AFASP study reveals that the average assignment is 16 hours, the member who has not yet established a contract minimum might decide to set a minimum at 75% of the average "first contact" assignment, or 12 hours. Again, this in not just "nice to know" information, it's information that the member can use in a practical way in his or her role as a professional.

The previous sentence, ultimately, is the value of associations. They can give members, whether businesses or individuals, practical tools to be better at what they do. Operating ratios for businesses and operating practices for businesses or individuals are features of membership that can deliver tangible benefits.

Branding Your Association

The topic of branding is one of those that, for awhile, seemed like it would be another flash-in-the-pan idea that, like many marketing concepts, would be destined for the ash bin of distant memories. Branding, though, is a concept that equates with survival. Whether you consider your association's marketing initiatives to be components of your branding efforts or not, the fact is that is exactly what they are.

That having been said, here are some ideas you can use to help ensure that your association's brand is maintained, nurtured, and made to thrive.

Excel in at least one area: Even if your association is small and poor, devote your limited resources to an area of performance at which you can excel. Your objective is to be better in this area than any of your competitors. If your association is a state professional society of healthcare administrators, for example, you might excel at getting the best and the brightest of your members to write "best practices" articles on healthcare administration in your state's regulatory environment. Work to get your members "pumped up" about writing for you. That area of excellence can then be transferred to other areas. In our example, the area in which the association excels is not its "best practices" articles; it's the ability to get members on board as working contributors. That can be used exceptionally well in many, many areas.

Be realistic about your goals: The state professional society I mentioned above has no realistic chance of becoming the nation's premier society of healthcare administrators, so it should not waste its energy trying. Set stretch goals...goals that are difficult, but attainable...but don't set yourself up for failure. The state society's goals might better focus on something more achievable...like becoming a primary resource to state regulators and legislators for expertise in healthcare administration.

Stay the course: Once you decide how you will present your organization to its audiences, stay with it. Stick with your plan. This principle says something important about your marketing plan: don't be too quick to adopt it. Spend plenty of time making your plan, testing your plan, and executing your plan, because it's going to be with you for awhile. Make minor adjustments when necessary, but don't make the mistake of "marketing makeover" on a routine basis. That torpedoes your brand. This is a particularly dangerous zone for associations, with their constantly changing boards and committees. As a staff member, you must make it your mission to keep volunteer leaders on track. As a volunteer leader, you must help and you must avoid the temptation to "make your mark" by leaving a new logo.

Hire people who reflect your brand: The Enabled Youth Association's brand might be impacted in an unexpected way if the receptionist were an elderly man with a lisp, just as a teenager with a nose ring serving as executive director would look odd for Geezers for a United Nation. I'm not suggesting that associations must always hire their demographic, but they should pay attention to how their audiences will react to their representatives and whether their representatives convey the right image. Now, whoever you hire, be sure to train them to present your brand the way you want and expect it to be presented.

Hold title to one really big idea: Wal-Mart rolls back prices; we know that because they tell us every time we see a commercial or an ad. Your association should own an idea that says something impressive about the organization. "The Association of Art Restorers ensures that the history of the world will always be clear in its art."

Put resources behind your big idea: If you've chosen your "big idea" well, you'll be willing to invest time, money, and manpower to it. This is one area in which your brand takes flight; it begins to create an image of the organization in the minds of your audience.

Promote your association and its brand. All. The. Time. Include your logo and, if you have one, your tag line, on everthing. Your literature. Your website. Your business cards. Your collateral material. Your Email. Give your staff shirts with your logo embroidered on them. Encourage your members to put your logo on their websites, letterhead, etc. (Yes, give them guidance on how to use it and how not to use it.)



Obviously, there's much more to branding your association than these few paragraphs can present. One thing is clear, though, and that is that you must pay careful attention to your brand. Don't let your brand emerge out of neglect, because that's a brand over which you have no control.

Fiduciary Responsibilities of Members of Boards of Directors

Almost anyone who has been elected or appointed to an association's board of directors has been told that they have "fiduciary responsibilities" to the organization and its members. Too often, that phrase is misunderstood and is interpreted solely as a responsibility to protect the organization's money.

Fiduciary responsibilities are much broader than simply protecting an organization's money. Instead, they span two fundamental duties of a director: the duty of loyalty and the duty of care. First, it is important to understand the role of a fiduciary. A fiduciary, also known as a trustee, is a person or entity with a responsibility to another person or entity, the latter known as the principal or beneficiary. A fiduciary is expected to be utterly loyal to the person or entity to whom they owe the duty. The fiduciary must subordinate personal interests before the duty, and must not profit from the position as fiduciary, without the consent of the principal.

In the case of associations, the members of the Board of Directors are the fiduciaries and the members of the association are the principals or beneficiaries. A summary of the duties of a fiduciary are as follows:

Duty of Loyalty
Under a fiduciary's duty of loyalty, the association's interests must be treated as paramount. The fiduciary's business and personal interests must be subordinate to those of the association and its members.

In associations, it is common for conflicts of interest to be present among members, including board members. Fiduciaries are not necessarily precluded from having conflicts of interest, but when they exist, they must be properly handled. For example, fiduciaries must disclose any conflicts of interest and must, when necessary, recuse themselves both from discussing issues and from voting on or influencing decisions with respect to that conflict.

Fiduciaries are expect to exercise “good faith” in their dealings and decision-making on behalf of the principal and must operate with honesty and integrity, keep confidences, and support board actions publicly.

Duty of Care
Under a fiduciary's duty of care, he or she must be diligent in the performance of fiduciary functions and must, therefore, attend and participate in Board meetings, receive and read reports, and make informed decisions. The duty of care carries with it a responsibility for the fiduciary to understand the association’s activities. That includes having a familiarity with the association's business/financial status. To have the proper familiarity, the fiduciary must review financial statements and must approve an annual budget.

Simply ensuring that there is money in the bank is not fulfilling one's fiduciary responsibilities as a director on an association board. The director must be an active participant in looking out after the affairs of the organization and must represent the interests of the organization's members. He or she must be able and willing to sacrifice his or her own interests to assure that the interests of the members at large are protected.

In a sense, a director's fiduciary responsibilities are akin to those of a parent: protecting the organizational "child" by knowing what and how it is doing and by putting the needs of the "child" first.

Association Directors and Officers Liability Insurance

First, let me say that, with this post, I'm not offering legal advice, nor am I holding myself out as an expert in insurance. I'm simply sharing my opinions and the information I have gained during my career in association management. Now that we've gotten that out of the way, here's the heart of the matter.

Virtually anyone in the business world understands that general liability insurance is an absolute necessity for almost any organization, even those that do not have a physical plant. Associations and other not-for-profit organizations, though, sometimes wonder whether directors & officers (D&O) liability coverage is necessary, particularly when it is expensive. What follows is my perspective, and my advice to the officers and directors of almost any not-for-profit organization or association.

The moment a person assumes a position as a board member of a not-for-profit organization, he or she assumes a level of responsibility for the organization ("duty of care") and becomes exposed to claims that he or she is not running and managing it properly. While the decision to buy or not to buy D&O coverage depends, in part, on the likelihood is that one of the organization's board members will be the target of such a claim, it should also be based on the premise that an uncovered claim could decimate the organization.

Claims against an organization generally would fall into two categories: bodily injury (physical harm) and non-bodily injury (non-physical harm, such discrimination, termination, collusion, or restraint of trade). The majority of claims are for bodily injury. An association's general liability insurance typically would cover board members, subject to the terms and conditions of the policy, for claims arising out of bodily injury and property damage.

D&O liability insurance only covers non-bodily injury claims. As suggested above, non-bodily claims include employment-related claims, mismanagement of funds, collusion, restraint of trade, libel, and other such claims (it's important to note that libel and other such claims would not be covered, under a typical policy, if it were intentional or done with malice).

Concerns about non-bodily injury lawsuits would be one argument to have D&O insurance. Although there are relatively few reported cases of D&O claims, it is sufficiently common to justify, in my opinion, having coverage. Even claims that have been filed and then either settled out of court or dropped can be expensive, so D&O coverage can offer a level of protection that can ease directors' minds.
Fundamentally, there are two types of lawsuits in which a claim might be brought against member of a board of directors: derivative lawsuits and direct or third-party lawsuits.

Derivative lawsuits are claims against a board member on behalf of the corporation. A typical claim here would be mismanagement of assets. In many states, only a few people have "standing" or the right to bring such claims. They are: 1) board member(s) suing other board member(s) 2) members of an organization suing a board, and 3) the state Attorney General.

Because of these restrictive rules, derivative claims are relatively uncommon. Claims of these types are not made for awards to an individual, but rather to make the corporation "whole."

Direct or third-party lawsuits are brought by an employee or by a person not connected with the corporation who asserts a claim against it or its board on account of some non-bodily injury. These might include restraint of trade for preventing a company from getting access to association benefits, or a claim of defamation

Employment practices such as termination and discrimination are the largest exposure in these types of claims. If you have a small, friendly staff, and feel unlikely to have employment claims resulting in a lawsuit, you might not think it necessary to carry D&O insurance. However, when employees feel they have been wronged and are angry, they may file a claim even if it is baseless. At that point, you would need to hire lawyers. Your D&O then becomes a legal defense policy.

D&O insurance is essentially legal defense insurance in most cases. The vast majority of the cases brought against a board are thrown out, but the organization must pay legal fees if a claim is filed.

According to some people, the "deep pocket" theory is relevant in this context. This theory asserts that only people with money are likely to be sued and that lawyers may file a suit based on an artificial claim against "deep pocket" board members with the hope of securing a settlement for their client. Organizations that have a board made up of "ordinary" people who aren't known to have vast amounts of money may then be comfortable without D&O insurance. I wouldn't advise it, but that's what some organizations decide to do.

Assuming an organization decides to pursue D&O coverage, it should look carefully at the policies offered. Questions should be asked and answered about who, specifically, is covered, what exclusions are in place and under what conditions, etc. If employment-related claims are excluded, for example, an association that has its own staff may well decide the coverage is insufficient. An association that engages an association management company would not have the same concerns, of course, because the liabilities for employment-related issues fall to the management company, in most cases.

Insurance Underwriter
When selecting an underwriter, I suggest the association find out what the rating of the company is and that the association never sign on with a company whose rating is less than "A.". A.M. Best & Co. and Standard & Poor are two of the larger companies who provide underwriter ratings. I suggest you also determine whether the company has a reasonable record of claims payments; ask your broker or agent to show you how it is viewed by the rating organizations.

The New Age of Association Education

The era of talking heads is over, at least for a little while. Associations are beginning to understand that adults do not learn as quickly nor as well from listening to speeches, no matter how articulate or intelligent the speaker. While I am convinced that no one has the "right" answer about what constitutes the best learning environment, I think it's safe to say that a mix of the following will be more effective, more enjoyable, and more successful than simply presenting a talking head to the audience:

• Group conversations, in which the audience breaks into small groups during which they discuss the issues, answer questions posed to them about the topic at hand, and are rewarded for contributing to the dialogue;
• Audience members as teachers, in which all or several (depending on the size of the group) members of the audience are asked to take on the "talking head" role, but with a twist--they can engage the group in conversation, as well;
• Experiential learning, in which the participants actually do what they are expected to learn, following guidance either of an instructor or a teaching team;
• Multi-media exposure to concepts, wherein the concepts being taught are delivered verbally, visually, and through other senses such as touch, taste, and smell;
• Online learning, incorporating a variety of teaching and learning techniques, delivered via computer, typically over the Internet;
• Self-instruction, whereby the individual learner is given specific objectives, clear metrics to measure progress, a timeline, and a variety of information resources and then told to come back to report on progress at various intervals; and
• Peer feedback, whereby knowledgeable and trained peers give feedback to the learner about the material to be learned.

Several of these processes go by other names. Several of them have evolved into hybrids that purport to be more effective than any of the processes from which they sprang. Regardless, the important thing is that associations that continue to depend on the "talking head" mode of delivery for education will find that, at least for now, their members likely will be dissatisfied with it, if that is the exclusive mode of delivery.

My best advice is this: use a mix of modes of delivering your educational content. Surprise your members with new ideas, new formats, and jarring concepts! Get them excited as much about how they will learn as what they will learn!

Small Associations Can Perform "Big"

Small associations often lament the fact that they do not have the resources to perform as well as their larger brethren. While it is indeed true that larger associations with big budgets and large numbers of dedicated staff members may have an easier time of "performing" than smaller, leaner organizations, small associations can behave like the big guys. It's a matter of how they use their resources. Let's consider some areas in which effective resource allocation can pay huge dividends for associations:

• Create and use free blogs (examples: www.blogger.com/; www.wordpress.com/)
  
• Use cheap web hosting companies with templates (examples: www.hostcentric.com/; www.networksolutions.com/;
  
• Use inexpensive online membership services instead of expensive ones like iMIS, (example: www.memberclicks.com/)
  
• Create and use free wikis (example: www.pbwiki.com/)
  
• Get staff/volunteers excited about learning new skills so they can do things to make the association "look big" (e.g., do an online "webinar" by simply creating a PowerPoint, saving it as a web page, then uploading to your website...and give "trainees" the URL so you can walk through it with them, while chatting with them on a pay-it-yourself conference call [for example, http://www.freeconferencecall.com/])
  
• Invest in inexpensive resources (or pursue free resources) to enable you to create audio and video podcasts (e.g., www.garageband.com/podcast
  
• Invest in inexpensive resources to enable you to have CAN-SPAM compliant opt-in blast email capabilities and avoid overloading Outlook (e.g., listbox.com)

It's important to understand that each of these (and hundreds of other) prospective solutions to "looking small" require regular investments of time, whether volunteer or staff or both. Before jumping too deep into looking like a "big association," you must look at what, realistically, you can expect your volunteers or staff to do. Even something that only takes 30 minutes a week is going to start wearing thin on volunteers who work 10-12 hour days, six days a week! Spread the load, and be careful to ensure that you document the processes as you go, in case you need to quickly shift to another volunteer.

Similarly, be careful about what you ask your staff to do, whether a full-time staff dedicated to your association (a "captive" staff) or an Association Management Company (AMC). A captive staff for a small association wears many, many, many hats and one more new project from the Board may send them over the edge! Ask for their input before launching on a new set of initiatives.

AMCs typically have several clients and must, for the sake of efficiency and good resource management, limit the number of solutions used for any given challenge. So, it may not be reasonable to expect your AMC to learn yet another software product that does the same thing as another one they're using...you need to let your AMC give you some guidance on how it can address your needs. By all means, though, insist that it addresses them, one way or another, and with a sharp eye on your budget!

Whether you use only volunteers, your own staff, an AMC, or a combination thereof, think of and explore ways to deliver real value to your members without draining your resources. Your association can look big, no matter its size!

Volunteer-Managed Associations: Avoiding Traps

I see one of the most visible results of associations being completely volunteer-managed almost every time I encounter such an association: the organization has, either in the past or at present, lost its standing to do business in the state in which it is incorporated (and, therefore, in other states). Oftentimes, the problem is due to the organization's registered agent being a volunteer who has moved or died or is no longer in the business or profession of the Association. In some states, the registered agent must be an attorney and/or must be a resident of the state in wihch the organization is incorporated. Notices to the registered agent that to unanswered can cause all manner of trouble.

Those pesky annual report requirements tend to get lost or misplaced or simply overlooked by volunteers, many of whom do not have any experience in dealing with state reporting requirements. It is understandable that unpaid volunteers with no previous experience may overlook reporting requirements, but that makes it no less important. While it's usually not the end of the world to lose status, failure to maintain currency of standing can be enormously problematic. For example, directors and officers liability policies may become invalid upon dissolution of corporate status caused by failure to file reports. The IRS can get testy if an organization fails to file annual returns. All sorts of state officials tend to bristle at unauthorized conduct of business within state borders.

This is NOT an argument that all volunteer-managed associations need to immediately seek the services of an association management company. I'll readily admit that many of them simply do not have the financial resources to engage a management company, particularly on an ongoing basis. What I will argue, though, is that volunteer-managed associations need to take steps to ensure that they maintain their good standing with state comptrollers and secretaries of state. Here is a simple and relatively painless way to do that:

• At a predetermined time each year (the beginning of the year often is a good time to start), the Boards of Directors should set aside time to review what filings have been made, what filings are required, and who has responsibility for making filings and reporting back to the Board;
• If the Board is not organized in such a way as to be sure that such an activity will absolutely, certainly take place each year, a "reminder service" of some sort should be paid for (see below);
• If the Board does not know what filings are required, a member of the Board should be assigned the task of exploring state requirements. A couple of good places to start looking: 1) the secretary of state's website and the 2) comptroller of public accounts' website. If the information is not readily available or cannot be found there, a call to a CPA should provide a quick answer at little or no cost.
• Whenever possible, the Board should engage a professional to ensure that appropriate reports are filed, or at least that the Board is notified of the need for filing them. An association management company can be engaged for that purpose at a very low annual fee, as can a CPA or an attorney; for a very basic "reminder" service, the cost should be negligible.

The drudgery of annual reports, tax filings, and the like can cause some people to just ignore them in the hope they will go away. They won't. They will come back to bite the Association, and can do it with a vengenance. Simply ensuring that someone looks into the issue on a regular basis can save the Board from headaches and, in some cases, much worse.

Tough Topics

Politics and religion can be dangerous topics in mixed company. It's hard to know who believes what and what comments might offend people. So, the safest and best route for association executives is to stay away from those topics, right? No. Emphatically, no!

Granted, there are some situations in which it is best to avoid both subject areas, but generally speaking, association executives should be leaders in conversations about areas that are sensitive. Indeed, any leader should feel compelled to talk about, and to encourage discussion about, politics and religion and any other topics that tend to create more heat than light. Why? Because dispassionate discourse can lead to understanding and acceptance or, at the very least, tolerance. And tolerance of divergent views is the cornerstone of any truly successful association and any truly successful association executive. The key is the way in which 'tough' topics are handled.

Association executives should, in my view, set the stage for any tough topics by laying the cards on the table, e.g.,

"We're going to discuss TOPIC A. I know this can be an emotional issue with many people, but I'm counting on everyone to be respectful of every comment, every opinion, and every perspective. It's especially important for those of us with very strong opinions to not only listen to opposing viewpoints, but to try to truly understand and embrace those points of view. Our objective here is not to demonize the opposition but, rather, to reach concensus on compromise."

In my opinion, truly capable association executives are those who actively seek out people with divergent opinions so they can better understand all perspectives. And by leading by example, association executives can, bit by bit, change an organization's culture from one of exclusionary distrust to inclusiveness and philosophical tolerance.

In my own company, I make it a point to tell applicants for employment that this company's philosophy is one of inclusion and tolerance and that we value diversity. We don't just tolerate diversity, it is actively sought out; we value it.

People who cannot be comfortable with diversity in gender, religion, race, sexual orientation, etc. are unlikely to be comfortable in an association environment. After all, associations bring people together from all walks of life, all sort of backgrounds, and all manner of personal experiences. While association members have some common interest or interests, that one commonality is likely to be dwarfed by the vast sea of differences between members.

Association executives have the opportunity to be leaders in promoting tolerance and in promoting the value of diversity. Tough topics are, in fact, tools of leadership that can be used by skilled association executives to make a lasting impact on the organizations with which they are associated.

Imminent Danger

Organizations that do not take seriously the different preferences of their various constituencies are at risk of becoming irrelevant.

When Netflix emerged in 1998, Blockbuster was the king of home video. There was no match, no comparison, no threat. But Netflix changed that. And for quite some time after Netflix introduced its new model of video delivery, Blockbuster behaved as if Netflix posed no danger. That hesitation very nearly cost Blockbuster its existence. Some say it will, yet. But Blockbuster finally recognized that some of its customers really liked home delivery of videos and it began t0 emulate Netflix' business model. Thus far, it has survived. Time will tell whether it acted quickly enough, early enough, to salvage its business.

The Blockbuster experience, regardless of ultimate outcome, is a less for associations: listen to your constituents and know their preferences. If your members want hard copy newsletters, give them hard copy. Sure, it's expensive, but if your members want them badly enough, they will be willing to pay for them. If your members want podcasts and wikis and personalized education, you'd better give them that, too.

In today's business environment, speed is king. Listen fast, act fast. There may come a time when your members will give you time to deliberately assess their needs. There may be a time when you will again have the luxury of testing new products and new modes of delivery to be sure they're right before you launch them. But, for now, you'd better be prepared to act fast, take risks, and pay close attention to your members' rapidly-changing preferences or you're apt to find yourself staggering in the gutter, wondering where the good life went.

Crisis Preparedness is a Business Imperative

The principal difference between most associations and most "normal" businesses is the organizational imperative: make a profit for most "normal businesses" versus advance the interests of the industry/profession for most associations. But, at their hearts, the management of associations and the management of "normal businesses" are virtually the same. They are businesses. And every business needs to have a plan for crisis management.

Some executives scoff at the idea that they, personally, should be involved in planning for crises..."I have people whose responsibility it is to do that for me," they say. I say, nonsense! If the buck stops with you, you had better understand the nature of potential crises and how your organization would respond. Maybe a member of your staff is given operational responsibility for responding, but the chief executive had better know that a plan exists, that it has been tested, and that it is logical, meaningful, and sufficient.

Crises can take literally hundreds of forms, including:

• Weather-related damage/destruction
• Theft of materials or equipment
• Sabotage of business relationships
• Unwelcome media coverage
• Loss of important membership data
• Hacking into organizational websites
• Compromise of member personal/financial data
• Allegations of sexual misconduct by Board or staff
• Embezzlement of association funds
• Death, injury, incapacitation of key volunteer or staff
• Workplace violence, either in association office or in members' environments
• Public revelations of criminal wrongdoings by volunteers or staff
• Natural disaster impacting meetings or other association operations
• Acts of terrorism
• Destruction of physical property by fire

Obviously, the list could go on for pages.

Like every other business, associations must be prepared to respond when crises occur. That is not to say that a crisis response plan must anticipate every potential crisis, but a plan should be malleable enough to provide a roadmap to association staff and volunteers when a crisis does occur.

A crisis response plan should address:

• Who should be notified
• Who will be in charge
• Alternates in the event primary contacts are inaccessible
• Ways to get in touch with all appropriate people to be notified
• How to reach the authorities and which authorities should be contacted
• How to sustain business operations, if relevant
• How to establish alternative operations centers, if appropriate
• Locations of backup data
• Alternate means of communications in the event of power or infrastructure outage
• Etc., etc., etc.

Just consider what you would do if you walked into your office on a Monday morning to discover that a fire has destroyed your office...your network server is gone, all local computers have melted, your telephone system will not work, all your paper files have burned, and to make matters worse, your pyschological counseling association client has a local meeting scheduled for noon that day. What do you do? How do you recover? What if all this happened after another catastrophe the previous Friday, when the association's chief elected volunteer leader was arrested for groping a client?

If you're an association executive who faced such a dreadfully unfortunate scenario, you would be expected to have a plan to recover quickly. Not create a place. Have a plan.

If you're an association volunteer or elected leader, it would behoove you to ask your chief paid staff executive whether such a plan exists. If not, your CEO should be directed to produce one, quickly.

Successful Associations Require Staff Intensity

That's right, successful associations require intensity. There must be intensity in the underlying purpose of the association and in its mission and vision and objectives. There must be intensity in its volunteer leadership. And, most important to my message today, there must be intensity in its staff.

One of the things I've felt passionate about during my career in association management is that staff members must develop an intensity, a firey passion, about the business or profession of the associations with which they work. It's simply not enough to do the work. The work must be done with feeling. It has to matter. When that happens, things begin to happen. Possibilities that were never even considered begin to emerge. Volunteers who had a hard time finding the spare moments to devote to the association start to make time for the association.

Intensity in association staff (and, of course, that includes association management company staff) is an important component of the "fire in the belly" that causes great things to happen. It's not sufficient, but it is necessary. Great things also require committed volunteer leaders and other volunteers who are willing to work...without that, staff intensity will ultimately wither. But when staff intensity is combined with volunteer intensity...watch out!

I'm the first to admit that, for the most part, associations are not institutions that form the bedrock of society, so we mustn't take ourselves too seriously. But we must all understand that our little parts of the world do matter, and that by focusing our intensity on things that make our little parts of the world better, we're making an important difference!

I'll close this first post in our new blog with some comments from some very wise people:

"Never underestimate the power of a few committed people to change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has." - Margaret Mead

"We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them." - Albert Einstein