Join
AES
Join
AES
Contact
Us
Contact
Us
I visited an allied health professional the other day. I won’t identify the profession, but the practitioner was relatively young, ran her own business and was clearly very good at what she did.
She was professional, engaging and caring, and the treatment was excellent. I will certainly be going back and would have no hesitation recommending her to others.
During the appointment, she asked me what I did for a living.
I explained that I am part of a business that provides advice and services to not-for-profit professional and industry associations, and that I have been working with associations for a long time.
That naturally led me to ask her a question.
“As a practitioner, do you belong to your professional association?”
“Yes, I do,” she replied.
“How much are your membership fees?”
“About $900 a year,” she said. “That’s one good day’s income for me.”
That comment immediately caught my attention.
I then asked:
“Are you required to be a member in order to practise?”
“No,” she said. “But I think I need to be a member just in case. Most of the other practitioners my age I know aren’t members because they think it is too expensive.”
She estimated that perhaps 95% of the practitioners she knew were not members.
That should concern any professional association.
But the conversation became even more interesting.
She told me that she had contacted the association once with a professional query, but the response she received was, in her words, fairly “lame”.
I asked whether she attended the association’s conferences.
She had attended one.
“Did you get much out of it?”
Not really.
Her main takeaway was that some of the exhibitors had interesting technology and equipment that gave her a few ideas for her own business.
Think about that for a moment: Here is a young professional, building her own practice, committed to her profession and prepared to invest in developing her business.
She is exactly the type of person a professional association should want to engage for the next 20 or 30 years.
Yet her perception of membership is:
$900 a year.
Not essential to practise.
Limited value when she asked for help.
A conference that provided little professional benefit.
And most of her peers apparently see no compelling reason to join at all.
That is a significant red flag.
Over the years I have developed a habit of asking similar questions of health professionals and other practitioners I meet:
Unfortunately, I hear variations of the same responses far too often.
After working with associations for more than 30 years, I believe one of the greatest mistakes an association can make is assuming it knows what members value.
Boards can sit around the table discussing membership strategy.
Management teams can develop new programs.
Membership committees can debate fees and benefits.
Strategic plans can contain objectives such as “grow membership” and “increase member engagement”.
But none of this replaces actually talking to members — and, importantly, talking to the people who have decided not to become members.
If 95% of the next generation of professionals in your sector are choosing not to join, the question should not simply be:
“How do we get more members?”
The better question is:
“Why don’t they believe we are worth joining?”
That can be a much more confronting question.
And it may challenge programs that have been delivered for years because “we have always done it that way”.
But these are exactly the conversations associations need to have.
Membership growth is not simply a marketing exercise. It starts with understanding whether the organisation is delivering sufficient value for someone to willingly take money out of their own pocket — in this case the equivalent of a full day’s income — and say:
“Yes, belonging to my professional association is worth it.”
If you are an association leader, Board member or membership manager, these conversations should form an important part of your strategic planning process.
Then be prepared to change what you are doing. Because the future of an association will not be determined by how much its existing
leadership values membership; It will be determined by whether the next generation does.
Nick Koerbin is Executive Director of Association
Executive Services
(AES). For more than 16 years, AES has worked with association and not-for-profit Boards and CEOs across Australia and New
Zealand, providing independent advice and support across governance, strategy, secretariat services and executive advisory.
Whether you need support with governance, operations or growing your organisation, AES provides practical expertise tailored to the needs
of associations and not-for-profits.
.jpg)
Risk management is one of those areas that every association and not-for-profit Board knows is important - but it can sometimes become
little more than a risk register reviewed once or twice a year.
Insurance can be treated in much the same way.
The organisation receives its annual insurance renewal, the premium is approved, the policy is renewed and everyone assumes the organisation
is covered.
How we help membership based, not-for-profit associations now and into the future.
