Tag Archive for: member value

The Member Outcome Gap™ (924 Words)

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When Leadership Assumptions About Member Value Become Strategy

Several years ago, I was sitting in the audience at a National Speakers Association meeting when leadership announced that the organization would be renamed “Platform.” I was surprised and disappointed, as were many of the members around me. A few months later, I asked a friend who had been serving on the board about the decision. His explanation was simple: “We thought the membership would like the change.”

Those words have stayed with me because they describe a problem that extends far beyond one organization or one decision. The board believed it was making a positive change for the organization and its members, but the membership at large had not been consulted through focus groups before the decision. The problem was not a lack of good intentions. The problem was contained in two words: We thought.

I call the strategic consequence The Member Outcome Gap™: the distance between the outcomes association leadership believes members value and the outcomes members actually consider important to their professional and economic success.

Board Experience Is Valuable, but It Is Not Member Research

Association boards are generally populated by successful people who care deeply about their profession, industry, and organization. Their knowledge and experience are precisely why their perspectives are valuable. However, serving on a board does not automatically make someone representative of the membership at large.

Every board member arrives with individual experiences, relationships, career circumstances, organizational interests, and personal biases. During strategic planning, those perspectives can easily become generalized. “This is what I am seeing” gradually becomes “This is what our members are experiencing,” and eventually becomes “This is what our members want.”

The first statement can be valuable strategic intelligence. The last statement requires considerably more evidence.

I recently participated in another association meeting in which the CEO acknowledged that there had not been enough time to complete planned member focus groups before important strategic decisions needed to be made. The board was therefore being asked to establish direction while knowing it did not have the member perspectives leadership had intended to collect. That situation raises a question every association board should consider: What fills the information vacuum when sufficient member intelligence is missing?

Usually, it is assumption.

Good Strategy Can Be Built on the Wrong Value Assumption

The consequences become more significant as the planning process continues. An incomplete understanding of member needs can create an Evidence Gap. Board members and executives naturally fill that gap with experience and assumptions. Those assumptions influence strategic priorities, which then determine budgets, staff assignments, programs, partnerships, and other organizational investments.

Staff can subsequently execute that strategy extremely well and still create less Member ROI than leadership expected. The problem was not execution. The organization may simply have been aiming its resources toward outcomes that members did not value as highly as leadership believed.

This is why strategic planning should not begin only with questions about what the association should do. Leadership also needs credible evidence about what members are trying to accomplish and what outcomes matter sufficiently to influence their professional, business, or economic success.

Value Is Determined by the Recipient

This idea is not new to my thinking. In Developing Strategic Alliances, I introduced the Relationship Bank and later the Relationship Value Update as ways of examining the value exchanged between alliance partners. One of the underlying principles is that creating what you believe should be valuable to another person does not necessarily create value for that person.

You can believe you have made a substantial Relationship Bank Deposit, but if the recipient places little value on what you provided, the deposit exists primarily in your mind. The recipient ultimately determines the value received.

The same principle applies to associations. Boards can approve strategies, staff can build programs, volunteers can contribute expertise, and substantial resources can be invested, but leadership cannot unilaterally declare that Member Value has been created. Members have the deciding vote on whether the outcomes produced are valuable to them.

Member-Informed Does Not Mean Member-Controlled

None of this suggests that boards should simply ask members what they want and then give it to them. That would replace leadership with polling. Boards have responsibilities members do not have and may see competitive threats, technological changes, regulatory developments, financial realities, or emerging opportunities that individual members cannot reasonably be expected to understand.

The distinction is between member-controlled strategy and member-informed strategy. Boards should exercise judgment, but that judgment should be informed by credible member intelligence whenever possible. Focus groups, member interviews, Member ROI research, behavioral information, segmentation, and other evidence help leadership understand member perspectives without surrendering its responsibility to lead.

The board’s responsibility is not to give members everything they say they want. It is to understand what members value well enough to make informed strategic decisions about what the association should do next.

Close the Gap Before You Execute the Strategy

The Member Outcome Gap™ can begin long before a program is launched or a strategic initiative reaches the membership. It can begin in the boardroom when an assumption about member value becomes accepted as fact.

That makes the quality of member intelligence a strategic issue, not merely a research function. Before committing significant organizational resources, leadership should be able to distinguish between what it knows about members, what it has reasonable evidence to believe, and what it is simply assuming.

Excellent execution cannot compensate for an incorrect understanding of member value. A board can develop a thoughtful strategy, staff can execute it exceptionally well, and the organization can still discover that it successfully delivered something members never valued nearly as much as leadership believed they would.

Strategic planning therefore should not begin only with “What should our association do?” It should begin with a sufficiently informed understanding of “What outcomes matter most to the members we exist to serve?” The board can then exercise its judgment about how the association should help create those outcomes.

When leadership’s assumptions and members’ actual priorities diverge, the distance between them is The Member Outcome Gap™.

Executive Q&A:

1. How can a board know whether its understanding of member priorities is accurate?

The board needs evidence beyond the experiences of individual directors. Member focus groups, interviews, Member ROI research, segmentation, behavioral data, and other forms of member intelligence can help leadership distinguish between what it knows and what it assumes. Board experience remains valuable, but personal experience should be treated as strategic input rather than automatically generalized to the membership at large.

2. Isn’t the board elected to represent the membership and make these decisions?

Yes. The board’s responsibility is to exercise judgment and provide strategic direction, not to put every decision to a membership vote. However, being elected by members does not automatically mean individual directors know what the broader membership currently values. Effective governance combines board judgment with credible member intelligence. The objective is member-informed strategy, not member-controlled strategy.

3. How much member research is enough before the board can confidently make strategic decisions?

There is no universal number. The appropriate level depends on the importance of the decision, the diversity of the membership, and the consequences of getting it wrong. A minor program adjustment may require little additional research, while a major strategic change could justify focus groups, interviews, segmentation, surveys, or other research. The greater the consequence of the decision, the stronger the evidence leadership should want before relying on assumptions about member value.

4. What should we do when we need to make a strategic decision before sufficient member research can be completed?

Make the information gap explicit. Separate what leadership knows from what it believes and what it is assuming. The board may still need to act, but it should understand the level of uncertainty surrounding the decision and determine whether the strategy can be tested, staged, or adjusted as additional member evidence becomes available. An acknowledged assumption can be managed; an assumption treated as fact is considerably more dangerous.

5. What happens when members say they want something that the board believes is strategically wrong for the organization?

Member-informed strategy does not require the board to follow every member preference. Members may not see emerging competitive threats, regulatory developments, technological changes, financial constraints, or longer-term strategic consequences that the board must consider. Member intelligence should inform board judgment rather than replace it. The board still has a responsibility to lead, including making decisions members may not initially understand or support when credible strategic evidence justifies doing so.

6. How do we prevent the most vocal members from becoming our definition of what the membership wants?

Deliberately broaden the sources of member intelligence. Highly engaged members, committee volunteers, conference attendees, and long-tenured members may be easier for leadership to hear, but they may not represent other important membership segments. Leadership should seek perspectives across career stages, engagement levels, organization sizes, specialties, geographic areas, and other relevant segments. The members closest to the association are valuable sources of information, but they should not automatically become proxies for everyone else.

7. Should member focus groups become part of every strategic planning process?

They can be extremely useful, particularly when leadership needs to understand why members perceive value as they do. However, focus groups are one source of intelligence rather than a universal requirement. Depending on the strategic question, interviews, surveys, behavioral data, Member ROI research, market information, or other methods may be more appropriate. The important discipline is ensuring that major assumptions about member value are supported by credible evidence rather than simply by opinions expressed around the board table.

8. How should the CEO respond when board members repeatedly say, “Our members want…” without supporting evidence?

Ask how they know. That is not a challenge to the director’s credibility; it is an important strategic discipline. The CEO can distinguish among direct evidence, personal observation, anecdotal conversations, and assumptions. A useful boardroom practice is to ask, “What evidence do we have that this represents the broader membership?” That simple question can prevent an individual perspective from unintentionally becoming an organizational conclusion.

9. How can we determine whether our existing strategic plan contains a Member Outcome Gap™?

Review the major strategic priorities and identify the member outcome each is intended to create. Then examine the evidence supporting the assumption that members actually value that outcome. If leadership can clearly explain what should become better for members, why that outcome matters to them, and what evidence supports that conclusion, the connection is reasonably strong. If the discussion repeatedly returns to programs, activities, participation, or leadership assumptions, there may be a gap between organizational strategy and member priorities.

10. What is the most important change a board can make to reduce The Member Outcome Gap™?

Create a discipline of separating evidence from assumption during strategic discussions. Board members should bring their experience, judgment, and industry knowledge to the table, but leadership should be explicit about what it knows from members and what it merely believes about them. Before significant resources are committed, the board should understand the outcomes members value and then exercise its judgment about how the association can best help create them. Excellent execution matters, but it cannot compensate for aiming at the wrong member outcome.

Member ROI Leakage™ (895 Words)

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Where Association Resources Disappear Before They Become Member Value

Association executives frequently ask whether their organizations have enough resources. Enough revenue, staff, volunteers, sponsors, board engagement, and time. Those are reasonable concerns, but there is another question that deserves equal attention: How much of what you already have is actually being converted into meaningful member value?

An association can have talented staff, active committees, a healthy balance sheet, committed volunteers, and strong industry relationships while still losing considerable value between organizational investment and member outcomes. Money gets spent and people stay busy, but some of the potential value never reaches the member.

I call this Member ROI Leakage™: the loss of potential member value that occurs when an association’s money, time, relationships, knowledge, opportunities, volunteer energy, or leadership attention are consumed without being effectively converted into meaningful member outcomes. This is not simply about waste or efficiency. It is about how well your association converts the resources it already possesses into Member ROI.

Activity Is Not the Same as Member Value

Associations are very good at measuring activity. We count registrations, attendees, webinars, committee meetings, website visits, certifications, sponsors, volunteers, and renewals. These numbers tell us what happened inside the association. They do not necessarily tell us what happened to the member because of the association.

A webinar with 500 attendees demonstrates activity. If members use what they learned to reduce costs, improve productivity, earn a promotion, avoid a regulatory problem, or identify a business opportunity, the webinar has helped create member outcomes. That distinction matters because organizations tend to manage what they measure. When activity becomes the primary evidence of success, leadership can continue investing resources without knowing how much meaningful value members actually receive.

Leakage Can Occur Almost Anywhere

Think of your association as a value-conversion system. Money, staff time, volunteer energy, expertise, relationships, partnerships, reputation, and executive attention enter the organization. Ideally, those resources emerge as professional and economic value for members. The problem is that some potential value can disappear along the way.

Legacy leakage occurs when resources continue flowing toward programs because of institutional history rather than current member value. This does not mean old programs are bad. A 30-year-old program may remain essential while a three-year-old program may already be delivering little value. Age is not the issue; current Member ROI is.

Governance leakage occurs when CEO attention, board time, and organizational momentum are consumed by unnecessary approvals, operational interference, prolonged consensus-building, or delayed decisions. Performance leakage occurs when weak staff or volunteer performance requires others to compensate and redirects leadership attention from opportunity creation to problem management.

Relationship leakage may be less visible but equally important. Associations possess enormous relationship capital among members, volunteers, partners, and industry experts. When the organization fails to connect people who could help one another, potential value remains dormant. Strategic leakage occurs when too many priorities spread money, staff time, and leadership attention so thinly that the association cannot adequately invest in the opportunities capable of creating significantly greater Member ROI.

Potential Value Has No ROI Until It Is Realized

The Value Creation Ecosystem™ expands the traditional association model in which the association creates benefits and members consume them. Value can move from association to member, member to member, partner to member, member to association, and association to the profession. This creates an enormous reservoir of potential value, but potential value and realized value are not the same thing.

A member willing to mentor another member represents potential value. Until the connection occurs, little value has been created. A strategic partner may possess expertise members urgently need, but there is limited Member ROI if members never gain access to it. A board may contain extraordinary industry knowledge, yet some of that potential disappears when its time is consumed discussing operational minutiae.

This suggests a useful way to think about the issue: Potential Member Value − Realized Member Value = Member ROI Leakage™. I am not suggesting this become a literal accounting formula. Rather, it should cause leadership to examine where valuable organizational capacity stops moving toward member outcomes.

Cost Alone Does Not Tell You Enough

When programs are reviewed, the discussion frequently centers on cost. How much staff time does the program require? What revenue does it generate? How many members participate? These are legitimate questions, but they do not tell us enough about value.

The more important question is: What meaningful member outcome does this investment produce? A $100,000 initiative producing substantial member value may be an excellent investment, while a $20,000 program producing almost no meaningful member outcome may be expensive at any price. Cost tells you what the association invested. It does not tell you what members received.

This is why Member ROI Leakage™ is not a cost-cutting strategy. Cutting expenses can actually increase leakage if leadership eliminates something that produces disproportionate member value. The objective is not simply to spend less. The objective is to convert better.

Conduct a Member ROI Leakage Audit

A practical starting point is to examine several of your association’s largest commitments of money, staff time, volunteer energy, relationships, and executive attention. For each, ask three questions: What resources are we investing? What meaningful member outcome is being created? Could these same resources create substantially greater member value somewhere else?

That third question is where the discussion becomes useful because it introduces opportunity cost. A program can be successful and still represent leakage if another use of the same resources could create substantially greater Member ROI. Members may enjoy a program, volunteers may feel attached to it, and staff may have invested years building it. Those considerations matter, but they should not automatically determine future resource allocation.

Better Conversion May Matter More Than More Resources

Association strategy frequently begins with scarcity: we need more revenue, staff, volunteers, sponsors, or capacity. Sometimes that is absolutely true. However, adding resources to an organization with substantial Member ROI Leakage™ can simply give it more resources to convert poorly.

Before asking for more, examine what you already have. Where is executive attention disappearing? Where is volunteer expertise sitting dormant? Which relationships are not being activated? Which partnerships contain capabilities members rarely experience? Which programs consume resources disproportionate to the member value they create?

Every association will have some Member ROI Leakage™. The leadership challenge is to identify the consequential leaks and redirect that capacity toward greater member outcomes. The strongest associations may not be those with the most resources, but rather those that become exceptionally good at converting the resources already within their reach into value their members would meaningfully miss if it disappeared.

The better question is not simply whether your association is creating member value. It is how much of the potential value already within your reach is actually becoming Member ROI.

Executive Q&A

1. How do we know whether we have Member ROI Leakage™ if our membership and revenue numbers are healthy?

Healthy membership and revenue tell you something important about organizational performance, but they do not reveal how efficiently your available capacity is being converted into member value. Leakage can exist inside a financially successful association. Look beyond organizational outputs and examine the connection between major investments and meaningful member outcomes. The question is not simply whether a program is successful, but whether the resources committed to it could create substantially greater Member ROI elsewhere.

2. Where should we look first for Member ROI Leakage™?

Start with your largest commitments of money, staff time, volunteer energy, and executive attention. Large commitments create the greatest opportunity for both value creation and leakage. Then look for resources that are difficult to see on a financial statement, particularly relationships, expertise, partnerships, leadership attention, and volunteer knowledge. Some of the largest leaks may involve valuable assets the association already possesses but has never fully activated.

3. How do we measure member outcomes when many association benefits do not produce an obvious financial return?

Member ROI should not be limited to dollars returned to the member. Outcomes can include time saved, problems avoided, knowledge gained and applied, professional opportunities created, relationships developed, influence increased, career advancement, improved business performance, or access that would otherwise be difficult to obtain. The important shift is from measuring whether members participated to understanding what changed for them because they participated.

4. How do we distinguish Member ROI Leakage™ from ordinary organizational inefficiency?

Efficiency asks whether the organization is using resources economically. Member ROI Leakage™ asks whether those resources are becoming meaningful member value. An efficiently delivered program can still represent leakage if it produces limited member outcomes. Conversely, an expensive program may represent an excellent investment if it creates substantial Member ROI. Efficiency matters, but value conversion is the larger strategic question.

5. Could a popular program still represent Member ROI Leakage™?

Absolutely. Popularity demonstrates that members like or use something; it does not automatically establish the value they receive from it. A program can have strong attendance, positive evaluations, and considerable organizational support while producing relatively modest outcomes. The appropriate question is not whether members like the program enough to keep it. Leadership should ask whether the resources invested are producing sufficient Member ROI compared with other opportunities available to the association.

6. How do we raise this issue with a board without making the discussion sound like a cost-cutting exercise?

Frame the conversation around value creation and resource allocation rather than elimination. Begin with the resources being invested, identify the member outcomes those resources are intended to create, and then ask whether greater value could be created through a different allocation. The objective is not to find programs to cut. It is to increase the amount of organizational capacity that ultimately becomes meaningful member value.

7. What should we do when a legacy program has strong emotional support but questionable Member ROI?

Separate respect for the program’s history from the decision about its future. Determine what members currently value about the program, what outcomes it produces, what it truly costs to deliver, and what other opportunities those resources could support. A long-standing program may remain essential and deserve continued investment. The problem occurs when history becomes the primary justification for resources that could create greater value elsewhere.

8. How can we identify relationship leakage when relationships are difficult to measure?

Begin by identifying valuable connections the association is uniquely positioned to facilitate. Look at mentoring, peer problem-solving, professional introductions, referrals, access to experts, partner expertise, and connections between experienced and emerging professionals. Then examine whether those connections are actually occurring. You do not need to assign a dollar value to every relationship. You do need to determine whether valuable relationship capital is being activated or simply sitting inside the membership community.

9. How often should we conduct a Member ROI Leakage Audit?

The larger review should be incorporated into the association’s strategic planning and resource-allocation process rather than treated as a one-time exercise. However, leadership teams can use the three questions from the article whenever significant programs, investments, or commitments are reviewed: What are we investing? What meaningful member outcome is being created? Could these resources create substantially greater member value elsewhere? Used consistently, those questions can change how resource decisions are made.

10. What is the most important leadership shift required to reduce Member ROI Leakage™?

Stop assuming that more organizational activity automatically creates more member value. Leadership should increasingly manage the association as a value-conversion system. That means understanding the resources already available, identifying where potential value is being lost or left dormant, and deliberately reallocating capacity toward better member outcomes. The goal is not maximum activity or minimum cost. It is maximum meaningful Member ROI from the resources already within your reach.

The Value Creation Ecosystem™ (970 Words)

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Why the Most Valuable Associations Don’t Just Deliver Benefits, They Multiply Value

For decades, associations have largely operated from a straightforward value proposition: we provide education, advocacy, certification, research, publications, conferences, networking, and other benefits; members pay dues and receive access to that value. There is nothing inherently wrong with this model, but it carries an important limitation. It positions the association as the producer of value and the member primarily as its consumer.

That assumption puts enormous pressure on associations to continually produce more programs, content, events, resources, and benefits. Yet every association operates with finite staff, money, expertise, and organizational capacity. The opportunity is to recognize that the association’s greatest value may not be everything it produces, but everything it makes possible among the people and organizations within its reach.

Value Creation Is Larger Than Value Delivery

Traditional value delivery generally moves in one direction. The association creates something, delivers it, and the member consumes it. A Value Creation Ecosystem™ works differently because valuable knowledge, relationships, expertise, access, and opportunities exist throughout the membership community.

The association remains an important value creator through education, advocacy, information, certification, and access. Members create value for other members through mentoring, referrals, knowledge sharing, relationships, and professional opportunities. Partners contribute expertise, technology, resources, and solutions. Members return value to the association through volunteer leadership, content, credibility, advocacy, and community participation. The association then extends value beyond its membership through standards, workforce development, research, advocacy, and credibility for the profession or industry.

These are not independent transactions. A relationship can produce knowledge. Knowledge can create an opportunity. An opportunity can generate an outcome that increases the value of membership and encourages further participation. The power of an ecosystem emerges when one value exchange creates the conditions for another.

The Association Becomes the Architect

This changes the executive responsibility. The association can evolve from provider to convener to connector to catalyst to ecosystem architect. Providing benefits remains important, but leadership begins looking beyond what staff can directly produce toward what the entire community can make possible.

A staff of 20 can produce only so many programs, publications, meetings, and services. An association with 5,000 members, industry partners, subject-matter experts, volunteers, and relationships with complementary organizations possesses a much larger reservoir of knowledge, capability, access, and relationships. Much of that potential value may already exist but remain dormant because the connections necessary to activate it have not been created.

The executive question therefore changes from “What additional benefits can we provide?” to “What additional value can we enable others to create?” The association’s role is to identify Value Sources, create Value Connections, encourage Value Exchanges, enable Value Multiplication, and ultimately produce meaningful Member Outcomes. It does not need to own every capability. It needs to become skilled at orchestrating them.

Value Must Circulate

There is an important requirement to this model. An ecosystem cannot thrive when participants primarily arrive to extract value. Experienced professionals who never share expertise leave valuable knowledge dormant. Suppliers who see the association solely as access to prospects contribute less potential value than partners willing to bring expertise and solutions into the community. Members who remain entirely passive limit the value they could help create for others.

The answer is not participation for participation’s sake. Associations need to create meaningful opportunities for members, volunteers, and partners to contribute what they are uniquely positioned to offer. Reciprocity then becomes more than a desirable cultural characteristic; it becomes part of the economics of membership.

Value that only flows in one direction is a benefit. Value that continually circulates becomes an ecosystem.

This also expands how we think about Member ROI. A referral, mentoring relationship, professional introduction, or solution discovered through another participant may create substantial value even though association staff did not directly produce it. The association created the environment in which the exchange became possible.

Relationships Make the Ecosystem Harder to Replace

Members may initially join for education, certification, advocacy, information, or another identifiable benefit. Over time, however, they can accumulate relationships, visibility, professional opportunities, mentors, reputation, access, friendships, and social capital within the community.

These forms of value behave differently from traditional benefits. Benefits can be copied more easily than relationships can be reconstructed. Another organization can offer a webinar. An online platform can distribute information. A commercial provider can develop training. Recreating years of trusted relationships, accumulated credibility, and access to the right people is considerably more difficult.

This is where the Value Creation Ecosystem™ strengthens Community Gravity and Member ROI. The association becomes harder to replace because its value resides not only in what it produces, but also in the network of exchanges, opportunities, and relationships it enables.

Expand the Ecosystem Beyond Your Boundaries

The same principle applies to strategic partners. Universities, corporations, complementary associations, technology providers, and subject-matter experts may possess capabilities members need that the association could never economically develop internally.

Instead of asking, “Can we afford to provide this?” leadership can ask, “Who already possesses the capability our members need, and how might we bring that capability into our ecosystem?” The objective is not accumulating partnerships. It is expanding meaningful Member ROI by connecting members with capabilities that already exist.

Measure What You Make Possible

Association executives should look beyond their inventory of benefits and examine how value actually moves through the organization. Who creates value besides staff? How much member-to-member value is deliberately enabled? Which partner capabilities remain untapped? What member knowledge and expertise remain dormant? Where are potentially valuable connections being missed?

Then consider the harder resource-allocation question: could the association create greater Member ROI by producing one less benefit and enabling more valuable connections, exchanges, and outcomes?

The strongest association does not necessarily provide the most benefits. It creates an environment in which members, partners, volunteers, staff, and the profession continually create value for one another. If an association believes it must personally produce all the value its members receive, its value model may already be too small.

The future belongs to associations that expand the question from “What value can we deliver?” to “How much value can we cause to exist?” That is the difference between delivering member benefits and building a Value Creation Ecosystem™.

Executive Q&A

1. How do we know whether we are actually creating an ecosystem rather than simply offering a large collection of benefits?

Look at how value moves. If most value originates with staff, is packaged into programs or services, and is then consumed by members, you still have primarily a value-delivery model. A Value Creation Ecosystem™ becomes visible when members, partners, volunteers, experts, and the association routinely create value for one another. The test is not how many benefits you offer. It is how many meaningful value exchanges your association enables.

2. How can we measure value that the association enables but does not directly provide?

Start by identifying outcomes rather than counting activities. A member introduction that produces a business opportunity, a mentoring relationship that accelerates someone’s career, or an expert connection that solves an expensive problem may create substantial Member ROI even though staff did not produce the value directly. Associations should increasingly document these enabled outcomes alongside traditional measures such as registrations, downloads, attendance, and utilization.

3. Does this mean associations should produce fewer programs and benefits?

Not necessarily. The objective is not fewer benefits; it is greater Member ROI. Some association-produced benefits may be highly valuable or essential and deserve continued investment. Others may consume resources that could create greater value if redirected toward connections, partnerships, communities, or other exchanges. The strategic question is whether the association is allocating resources to the activities that create the greatest meaningful value for members.

4. How do we encourage members to contribute value without making participation feel like another obligation?

Create opportunities for contribution that are useful, specific, and appropriate to the member. Not everyone wants to chair a committee or make a major volunteer commitment. A member might answer a peer’s question, mentor an emerging professional, provide expertise, make an introduction, contribute content, or participate in advocacy. The objective is not maximum participation. It is making valuable contribution easier and more relevant.

5. What role should industry suppliers and sponsors play in a Value Creation Ecosystem™?

They should be viewed as potential sources of capability, not simply revenue. Many suppliers possess expertise, technology, research, market knowledge, and solutions that can create meaningful member value. The association should determine where supplier capabilities align with legitimate member needs and create appropriate opportunities for exchange. Sponsorship dollars have value, but a partner capable of contributing expertise and solutions may create value far beyond the sponsorship check.

6. How does a Value Creation Ecosystem™ improve retention?

It can make the association progressively harder to replace. Programs and information may be available elsewhere, but trusted relationships, professional reputation, accumulated social capital, access to peers, and recurring opportunities are much harder to reconstruct. As members become more deeply connected to valuable people and opportunities within the ecosystem, the membership relationship can become increasingly important to their professional success. That is stronger than simply giving members more reasons to renew.

7. How should the board’s role change if we adopt this approach?

The board should focus less on evaluating the association by the volume of activity and more on whether organizational resources are creating meaningful member outcomes. That means asking whether the association is activating its available knowledge, relationships, partnerships, and community capacity. Governance should help management establish strategic priorities and resource-allocation criteria without attempting to manage every individual program or value exchange.

8. What is the greatest implementation risk in moving toward an ecosystem model?

Treating it as another program. A Value Creation Ecosystem™ is not a new membership benefit, technology platform, networking event, or committee. It is a different way of understanding how the association creates value. If leadership simply adds several “ecosystem initiatives” without reconsidering resource allocation, partnerships, member contribution, community design, and success measures, it will add complexity without fundamentally changing the value model.

9. Where should an association begin if it wants to build a stronger Value Creation Ecosystem™?

Map the value that already exists. Identify your Value Sources: members, staff, volunteers, partners, experts, institutions, and other organizations possessing knowledge, relationships, access, or capabilities members value. Then examine the Value Connections and Value Exchanges currently occurring between them. Look especially for valuable resources that are present but poorly connected. Frequently, the first opportunity is not creating something new. It is activating value that already exists.

10. What should ultimately determine whether our Value Creation Ecosystem™ is working?

Member outcomes. Connections, engagement, participation, partnerships, and community activity are useful indicators, but they are not the final objective. Leadership should eventually be able to demonstrate that the ecosystem helps members solve problems, create opportunities, build valuable relationships, improve professional performance, gain access, reduce costs, increase revenue, strengthen their careers or businesses, or achieve other outcomes they consider important. The ultimate measure is not how active the ecosystem appears. It is how much meaningful Member ROI the ecosystem causes to exist.

The Member Value Multiplier (840 Words)

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Strategic Alliances Have Become a Leadership Imperative for Associations

Association leaders are being asked to deliver more value than ever before while working within the same financial and staffing constraints. Members expect timely education, stronger advocacy, meaningful networking, practical business resources, and immediate access to expertise. Boards expect growth in membership, increased non-dues revenue, and measurable organizational performance. Yet most associations cannot continue expanding programs, hiring staff, or investing in new technology every time a need emerges. The challenge is no longer identifying opportunities to serve members; it is increasing an organization’s capacity to deliver greater value without proportionally increasing its complexity.

For many associations, the instinctive response has been to build internally. Every new initiative becomes another committee, another program, another platform, or another staff responsibility. While each decision may be justified on its own merits, together they create an organization increasingly occupied with maintaining what it has already built. Eventually, growth slows—not because leadership lacks vision, but because the organization has reached its practical capacity.

Capacity, Not Size, Determines Member Value

Years of helping organizations develop strategic alliances taught me an important lesson: the associations delivering the greatest member value were rarely those with the largest budgets or staffs. Their advantage came from understanding that they didn’t have to own every capability. Instead, they intentionally connected members with expertise, resources, and opportunities that existed beyond the organization’s walls. Their success was measured not by what they controlled, but by what they made possible.

That realization became what I now call The Member Value Multiplier™. Associations create greater Member ROI when they multiply organizational capacity rather than simply expanding organizational structure. Strategic alliances allow an organization to offer capabilities that would otherwise require significant investments in people, technology, or infrastructure. Instead of becoming larger, the association becomes more valuable.

Strategic Alliances Are About Mission, Not Transactions

Every association works with vendors, sponsors, consultants, and service providers. Those relationships are important, but they are transactional by design. A strategic alliance is fundamentally different because both organizations invest in achieving outcomes that neither could accomplish alone. The objective is not simply exchanging services or generating revenue; it is advancing a shared mission while creating greater value for members.

Evaluating alliances through the lens of Member ROI also changes how leadership measures success. Revenue matters, but it should not be the only benchmark. The strongest alliances expand educational opportunities, improve access to specialized expertise, strengthen professional networks, create operational efficiencies, or enhance member services in ways that reinforce the association’s long-term relevance. Financial return becomes one benefit of a relationship whose primary purpose is delivering greater member value.

Relationships Create the Capacity to Grow

Nearly three decades past, in Developing Strategic Alliances, I introduced the concept of the Relationship Bank—the idea that trust, credibility, and mutual benefit accumulate through consistent investment. Time has only reinforced that principle. Successful alliances are built long before contracts are signed because organizations that consistently invest in relationships develop opportunities unavailable to those who focus only on transactions. Trust cannot be negotiated into existence; it must be earned over time.

Equally important, and also introduced in Developing Strategic Alliances, is conducting a regular Relationship Value Update (RVU). Associations routinely evaluate programs, budgets, and membership trends, yet many rarely assess whether their strategic relationships continue to advance the mission or improve Member ROI. Every alliance should periodically answer a simple question: Does this relationship create more value for our members today than it did yesterday? If the answer is no, leadership has an obligation to strengthen the relationship—or replace it.

Leadership’s Greatest Responsibility Is to Multiply Value

The most successful associations of the coming decade will not necessarily offer the most programs or employ the largest staffs. They will distinguish themselves by making disciplined decisions about which capabilities must be developed internally and which can be multiplied through carefully selected strategic alliances. Their competitive advantage will come from extending organizational capacity rather than expanding organizational complexity.

That is the essence of The Member Value Multiplier. It is not a partnership strategy; it is a leadership philosophy. Associations exist to improve the professional success of their members, not to own every resource required to do so. Leaders who embrace strategic alliances as a means of multiplying organizational capacity will deliver greater Member ROI, strengthen non-dues revenue, and position their organizations to thrive in an environment where expectations continue to rise while resources remain finite. That is leadership focused not on doing more, but on creating more value.

Executive Q&A

1. How do we determine whether a strategic alliance is the right solution instead of developing a new program internally?

Begin with your mission rather than your capabilities. If another organization can help you deliver greater member value faster, at lower cost, and without compromising your brand or member experience, an alliance deserves serious consideration. Build internally only when the capability is truly strategic to your long-term identity.

2. How can we ensure that a strategic alliance strengthens rather than dilutes our association’s brand?

Members should always experience the alliance as an extension of your association’s commitment to serving them. Select partners whose values, reputation, and standards reinforce your own, and maintain clear oversight of the member experience.

3. What criteria should boards use when evaluating potential alliance partners?

Look beyond financial return. Assess mission alignment, complementary strengths, organizational culture, leadership credibility, member impact, and the partner’s commitment to long-term collaboration. The best alliances create value for both organizations while producing even greater value for members.

4. How do strategic alliances contribute to non-dues revenue?

Effective alliances often generate revenue through joint educational programs, certifications, sponsorships, affinity programs, research initiatives, and shared events. The most successful partnerships create sustainable value that benefits members first and revenue second.

5. What risks should association executives consider before entering an alliance?

Poorly aligned missions, unclear governance, uneven expectations, and inadequate communication create the greatest risk. A successful alliance requires shared objectives, defined responsibilities, measurable outcomes, and periodic evaluation.

6. How frequently should an association evaluate its strategic alliances?

At least annually. Conduct a Relationship Value Update (RVU) to determine whether each alliance continues to advance your mission, improve Member ROI, and justify the investment of organizational time and resources.

7. Can smaller associations benefit from strategic alliances as much as larger organizations?

Often more so. Smaller associations can significantly expand their capabilities by leveraging complementary expertise and resources without incurring the costs of additional staff or infrastructure.

8. How should staff and volunteer leaders be involved in alliance development?

Leadership establishes strategic direction, while staff manage implementation and relationship stewardship. Volunteers provide valuable perspective on member needs and can often identify partnership opportunities that strengthen the association’s value proposition.

9. What is the greatest misconception about strategic alliances?

Many leaders view alliances primarily as revenue opportunities. Their greatest value lies in expanding organizational capacity and improving Member ROI. Financial benefits are often the result—not the purpose—of a well-designed alliance.

10. How does The Member Value Multiplier™ change an executive’s approach to leadership?

It shifts leadership from asking, “How do we build this ourselves?” to asking, “Who already does this exceptionally well, and how can we work together to create greater value for our members?” That perspective encourages strategic thinking, resource stewardship, and sustained organizational growth.

Member Growth through Value

Improve Your Member Value Proposition for Total Organizational Growth (788 words)

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Ed Rigsbee, top speaker on Membership Growth

Improve Your Member Value Proposition

Member value proposition is what most new and current members want. Your member value proposition is determined by the beliefs, perspectives and emotional connection of members to the organization, its staff and volunteer leaders. The other side of that coin is how the industry, in general, perceives your organization. If operatives in your industry thought membership in your organization was a great deal, then they would already be members.

 

Member Communication: inform or influence

This is an area where every organization can improve. The vast majority of stories in your Member Communication fall short of influencing members as the stories mostly inform. The difference is in how a story is written, most of the stories are not written through the window of “what’s in it for the member” and therein we find the rub—this angle is what can cause a member’s perception of value to change for the positive—or the negative.

 

How to Write Benefit Copy

Just offering a superior member value proposition is not enough. Your organization must clearly communicate your member value proposition in order to attract new members.

  1. First determine what is being sold. It should be one of 4 things for your Communication: product, event, member recruitment or member retention
  2. Then determine which feature of membership (from your member benefits web page) the thing being sold is.
  3. Next determine which buying motive is at play: profit/gain, fear of loss, avoidance of pain, love/affection, comfort/pleasure or pride/prestige. Many times there can be more than one buying motive but pick one for simplicity.
  4. Now write copy explaining the “what’s in it for the reader,” why they should care and include a call to action statement.
  5. Last, write the title of the story or promotional copy using one of the following perspectives: shocking, ask a question, offer data, create a value statement or reveal a secret.

 

Qualitative Focus Group Research

To find out what your current members believe is the member value proposition that they receive in actual dollar numbers you will want to conduct a series of Member ROI Valuation focus group sessions utilizing qualitative research methodology. This is an excellent starting point for boosting your value proposition.

 

Strategy Mapping Exercise

The strategy mapping exercise is your next step of discovery as you want to compare your organization’s member value proposition to that of competing organizations. This exercise allows leaders to compare with the various competing organizations—those that also compete for membership dollars, mindshare and value perception of people in your industry. Ideally, in contrast to the below example, the lines would not track but rather demonstrate vast differences.

Non-Profit Strategy Mapping Visual Example

Non-Profit Strategy Mapping Visual Example

Features Framework Exercise

The third step is to conduct the features of membership framework exercise—first with staff—then with volunteer leaders and overlay the three pieces. This will create visual impact for staff and volunteer leaders as to what is helping and hurting your organization’s member value proposition. The step-by-step “how to” can be found starting on page 88 of The ROI of Membership.

 

Getting all the Departments in Alignment

Every department at your organization must use new decision filters. The important filter to add is the “decision filter” of how the actions considered will affect positively or negatively the organization’s member value proposition, return on investment, member retention and recruitment. Each department has to align toward making your organization more member-ROI-centric.

 

The Hard Truth

Accepting change and shifting your organization’s culture is something that will be difficult. Sure, the volunteer leaders and paid staff give the member value proposition idea lip-service and “embrace” the new but when push comes to shove, they fall back into their “non-productive” comfort zones and eschew the necessary change. This is the fulcrum point where you might be currently failing. This is where all the above work becomes mute, meaningless, and a waste of time as the players in your organization thinks they are changing but in reality is only getting ready to get ready. What most people in this situation are really saying is that they agree that others should change but they themselves want to hold on to control because they know better than the others.

 

Embrace Change Management

If you truly desire to push past the current “failure point” and move into a new era of high-level member value proposition, everyone from the executive director and president to the newest section leader needs to be on-board because membership is everyone’s business. Now here’s the difficult part of the equation, if there are volunteer leaders and or staff pushing back—there is no longer a place for them in the organizational chart. Yes, a staff member that is not willing to play the new game must leave the organization and for the volunteer leaders—they must give up their positions. Are you willing to go to these lengths to grow? Think hard before you answer as you will be held accountable—not by Ed Rigsbee—but by your conscience, integrity and morality.

The key to safeguarding your organization’s future…is to research, embrace, and maximize…your member ROI.

Can You? Will You? An Association’s Journey (908 words)

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Ed Rigsbee, top speaker on Membership Growth

Association Success through Member ROI

It’s hard to watch something die a slow agonizing death, including an association. Over the last decade I have presented at the meetings of scores of associations. Because I highly customize my presentations, I have had the opportunity to interview hundreds of association board members as well as rank-and-file members. My observations—as in any industry, some do well some plow along and some disappear.

One association, for which I presented three years in a row, I also found myself working with four different executive directors in that same time period. Consistent leadership is one of the critical success factors in any business, and an association—while perhaps a non-profit—an association is still a business.

This same association found its conference attendance dropping to the point that there were almost two associate (vendor) members for every (buying) member in attendance. The suppliers had been threatening for several years to discontinue their support if the trend did not turn around. The regular members didn’t listen. They just continued to see their conference as a subsidized vacation and social gathering. The vendors finally pulled the plug—early last year, this association planned not to hold a meeting this year.

What’s the lesson we can take from this example? I believe there are several.

Lesson Number 1: Free lunch…where?

Lunch is not free forever. Sure, your industry vendors will support and subsidize meetings for their customers, but only if there is something in it for them. Exposure does not put meat on the table. When the associate members of an association no longer believe they are receiving a reasonable return for their investment of time and money, they will discontinue their support.

Lesson Number 2: Do you know what’s really going on?

If you make like an ostrich and always keep your head in the sand, you will surely lose your rear end. Both the governing board and regular members are equally responsible for the success of an association. If you are a regular member, you cannot maintain the attitude of, the board will handle it. The governing board cannot perform magic; make a silk purse from a sow’s ear. They can only offer leadership and direction. If the membership at large is too lazy, comfortable or complacent, the board can only do so much.

Lesson Number 3: Fish or cut bait.

Associate, or supplier, members must either fish or cut bait. If a supplier member company is not receiving value from participation, they must first ask about their own responsibility. Ask, “How can we better work the show?” How can we better capitalize on the opportunities?” and “How can we help this association to improve?” After this has been done and the results are still unacceptable, shut up or cut bait. Too often suppliers will complain year after year about the quality of a conference but do nothing. It is like crying wolf, after enough complaining, nobody listens. Actions speak more loudly than words.

Lesson Number 4: Create value for members.

An organization must create enough value for those involved in it for the organization to sustain itself, let alone thrive. Everyone’s afraid to ask, “Does this association still serve?” If not, fix it or kill it. Penetrating deeper into the idea, the realization that an association is nothing more than its members must be brought to the surface. As such, how often does the governing board query its individual members as to the value they are currently receiving from their membership?

Lesson Number 5: Old Farts R Us is not the formula for success.

Every association must accept that there is a turnstile of membership. Some become disenchanted and leave, some go out of business and some die. This is the reality of any association. Additionally, industry players that have reached their golden years generally have already made it, become successful, want to spend time with their grandchildren or perhaps sipping a margarita in Cancun rather than building an industry. What are you doing each year, month, week and day to persuade non-member industry players to come and play in your sandbox?

Lesson Number 6: It’s all about the people.

Association members can do wonderful things in building their association if given the proper tools. Build outrageously successful relationships wherever you can. For governing board members: First, find the best executive director and staff possible, pay them well and develop incentives that will motivate them to stay put. Then develop tools to help your members at large to share with their industry colleagues the value in belonging to your association and keep asking questions in the form of member surveys. More association value articles. For the members at large, if you catch yourself whining—quit it! You have the power and opportunity to ask, “What can I do to help grow my association, and industry?” You also have the power and opportunity to ask yourself, “What will I do to help my association and industry grow?”

Trade and professional associations in America, when run well, deliver to its membership huge synergies. This is done through economies of scale and other mechanisms. At an association conference roundtable session that I recently facilitated, we discovered that the association asked approximately $1,600 in cash and two semi-annual trips in time of its members. In return, that association delivered just under $5,000 in documented value for the member’s investment. What’s your association’s value proposition?

The key to safeguarding your organization’s future…is to research, embrace, and maximize…your member ROI.

Project Association Member Value (581 words)

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Ed Rigsbee, top speaker on Membership Growth

The ROI of Membership

Does a professional or trade association exist to serve its members? How about to serve the profession or industry? Or, perhaps the association exists to perpetuate itself?

Sure, your answer is based on your personal experiences. Unfortunately though, I have come to believe that there are simply too many people involved in association leadership today that believe in self-survival. Many of these leaders do not consciously realize they believe that the reason for an association is to perpetuate itself. Yet, their actions in this area speak so loudly that few listen to their words.

I recently visited the web site of ASAE & the Center for Association Leadership and searched “member value” but what I found was more directed to the organizational side. My lack of finding information specific to “member value” strengthens my assertion. Sure I found great information on subjects like: Identifying program goals and setting realistic expectations, identifying and defining the needs of the target audience, developing program structure, building a budget and cross-selling and up-selling additional programs and services.

While these topics are all great tactics, what about the overarching strategy for an association? What about quantifying the real dollar value a member receives from holding membership in an association? This is an area that I have discovered many association leaders are missing the point. There are a few people left that join their trade or professional association because it is the right thing to do in supporting their industry. But, at corporate belt tightening continues, many are re-evaluating the value of such memberships.

Call me crazy, but I believe that a professional or trade association exists exclusively for the betterment of its members. Associations like these are really industry-wide strategic alliances. And, for strategic alliances to succeed, all involved must receive reasonable value for resource (time and money) commitment to the alliance. In associations, staff members receive value—it’s called a paycheck. Volunteer leaders receive value through exposure and having the ability to forward their particular agendas. But, what about the “rank and file” members—where’s their value?

If you are interested in this topic of member value, you’re in luck.

I have conducted my Association Member Value Process for a number of trade associations and societies of association executives over the years. The results might be helpful to you in benchmarking the value your association delivers to its members.

In visiting seven societies of association executives from October 2003 through May 2004 and conducting the process: On the average, association executives received 19X return on investment dollar from their membership. Average yearly membership and meeting participation cost—$914. The average yearly real-dollar value received—$17,390.

In visiting the national conventions of four trade associations from February through May 2004 and conducting the member value process, the average yearly member return on investment was 12 X. The average yearly membership and meeting participation cost—$2,250. The average yearly real-dollar value received—$27,800.

A huge study I conducted for the American Society for Quality (finished in 2007) revealed that their members get $50 dollars in value for every dollar they invest in their membership.

Association paid staff and volunteer leaders must continually question the yearly sustainable real-dollar value their members are receiving rather than just see members as an ATM (automatic teller machine). Without the members, there is no association.

The key to safeguarding your organization’s future…is to research, embrace, and maximize…your member ROI.

Member Value Verses Industry Value—What You Need to Know (562 words)

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Ed Rigsbee, top speaker on Membership Growth

Deliver High-Level Member Value-All They Hear is, “What’s in it for me?”

In member recruitment, member value is the primary driver that you must completely understand is “member-only” value. Trying to convince a person to pay money to join your organization to get what they are already getting is just nonsense.

Not to Get Lost in the Weeds

For over a decade, I have been talking to association executives about the idea of Member Value through the window of “member-only” value and I must say that it frequently seems like I’m talking to a brick wall. Here is the rub…most associations and societies are pretty darn good at their advocacy work. These organizations work hard to affect legislation in a way that delivers a positive result to their members. And, that positive result is also enjoyed by non-members operating in the industry as well. Unfortunately, most current membership surveys reveal that at most, 20% join for advocacy and legislative influence reasons. What about the other 80%?

Is this advocacy work important? You bet it is. Does it deliver perceived value to members? It sure does. The problem is that everyone, regardless of membership receives the benefits. Since everyone in the industry receives the benefits; is this advocacy result a “member-only” benefit? Absolutely not, and that’s the challenge facing today’s associations and societies.

Industry Value

Every activity your membership organization does that delivers value to all the stakeholders in your industry is simply put—industry value. This might include advocacy, Web Site content access, Social Media Group access, and weekly/monthly publications…just to name a few. Generally these value propositions are not sell-able; meaning that these value items will be a no-go in convincing non-members to join your organization. They are already enjoying these value benefits without holding membership in your organization. The tired and ineffective “support your industry” argument will most likely not work with these groups or individuals.

Member-Only Value

Member value just for the members and not the industry. The products, services, benefits, and discounts that your members receive by virtue of paying for their membership are the true “member-only” benefits that your organization delivers. These “member-only” benefits are going to be your organization’s unique selling proposition tools. While non-members do enjoy the industry value that your organization delivers, it is the “member-only” benefit package that will potentially motivate the non-member in your industry to cut a check to your organization. Sell the “member-only” benefits.

What Member Value Story Does Your Website Tell?

In developing your Website strategy, you must determine if your “member benefits” page is positioned primarily for member retention or for member recruitment. If it is primarily for member retention, then simply listing the features of membership and leading with your advocacy work…might be enough. However, if you want your “member benefits” page to help you in selling membership you must list the “industry benefit” last and lead with the “member-only” benefits your organization offers. To make your page more dynamic, learn the difference between features and benefits. Features are built into a product or service and the benefit is how a feature makes a person’s life better.

Promote the Member-Only Benefits

In order to help your members and staff to do a better job of member recruitment, help them to understand the differentiation of the above elements. Their efforts will be far more successful if they focus on what is available only through membership and de-emphasize the industry value. If you really want the see their efforts successful, also give them the most powerful tool of all—knowing what the member-only, member-determined, yearly-sustainable, real-dollar return on investment (ROI) number is. That magic number will be their number one member recruitment tool.