Associations are People

Did you know there’s an association for associations? I attended the 2014 American Society of Association Executives (ASAE) annual meeting in Nashville in August. Senior managers of associations gathered from all over the world to discuss trends that affect professional associations and trade organizations and were the topic of  conversations and sessions.

While many of these trends are positive – for example, the growth in collaborative efforts between associations in fulfilling their missions – of those still spent much time discussing the challenges membership associations face.

• Cuts to budgets affecting travel and membership dues decisions
• The speed with which technology is affecting every single industry represented by professional and trade associations
• Global, local, social and political upheaval affecting association members’ work (government shutdowns come to mind)
• The overwhelming amount of information coming at association members and the difficulty of pulling relevant information out of the clutter
• The lack of time members have to engage with, volunteer for and participate in their associations
• Members’ desire for affordable, useful educational content and the challenges to associations to provide it in a financially sustainable way
• The constant effort for all of us to collect data and connect various sets of data to make good business decisions
• Finding time to be creative, innovate and think

There’s good news and not so good news.  First the bad news, no one in attendance at the ASAE meeting – executives from large associations, small associations, domestic or international – had the silver bullet that provided answers to these and other issues. The good news is that many ideas were presented and it is easy to see how they can help MSA become an even more relevant and accessible resource for its members.

Jama Rice is the executive director and CEO of MSA.