We all talk about how we must innovate and change, but let's face it, change is difficult. And when you look around the office and see busy colleagues barely managing to get their work done, change seems downright impossible. But what if you must ask your colleagues to change their work habits or add something to their plate?

• Your association implemented a new AMS but staff aren't following the new business rules needed to ensure its effectiveness.
• You've asked staff to upload content and participate in online community discussions but no one's cooperating.
• You're about to launch an association blog that will only work if several staff commit to a monthly blog post.

The purpose of your new AMS, community or blog is to help your association fulfill its mission, achieve its goals and provide value to members. What could be more important? Yet, your colleagues aren't budging. What do you do to get their buy-in and cooperation?

Don't take on resisters alone. Gather a team.
New technology is often "siloed" to the department perceived as owning it: "the membership database" or "the education blog." Technology, properly implemented and used, empowers all departments to achieve association goals. You need a cross-departmental and cross-level team to help get this message across. Ask for assistance from staff who are well-liked, respected and good communicators.

Change is past due.
Not everyone is aware of our changing environment. They get caught up in work and don't understand how dramatically the marketplace, member expectations and the way members communicate, learn and build relationships has changed over the past ten years and will continue to change. Data and concrete examples can help get this point across. They need to see the urgency behind the strategic decision to fully implement new technology.

Remove obstacles.
Why aren't people adopting new practices? Habit? Stubbornness? A full plate? Associations are great at adding new initiatives, but terrible at sunsetting old ones. It could take time to shift work responsibilities or terminate programs, plan for that.

Talk to colleagues about their concerns so you can uncover the real reasons for their resistance. Once you know what you're up against, your team and leadership can find ways to overcome those obstacles.

Strategize and communicate.
Develop a plan to communicate your message and to train staff in new practices. Make sure staff leadership participates in training and understands the need to model the behavior you want to see. Provide resources to support those who are learning new ways of working. Host meetings where staff can ask questions and raise concerns. Provide food and drink -- bribery never hurts!

Paint a picture showing the impact of change.
In your communications and training, help staff understand the reasons behind the change and how it will benefit the association and its members. For example, an online community provides many benefits:

• Members have 24/7 access to a community that helps them do their jobs better by allowing them to tap into peer-to-peer discussions and resources uploaded by staff and peers.
• When many members can't or won't attend face-to-face events, a community provides an alternative way to develop relationships.
• Members answer each others' questions, saving staff time. Tom Morrison says the Metal Treating Institute's community "solves problems like crazy. A member asks a question and within two minutes, he has four to five answers shot to him by other members. We’re engaging members in a way that creates solutions. That’s a powerful benefit."
• Members make new connections through familiar social networking tools available in the community.

Celebrate early successes.
Establish a few short-term goals and let everyone know when you reach them. Look for ways your community impacts members. To combat the nay-sayers, share success stories showing how everyone's efforts are worth it. Give recognition (and perhaps rewards) to your team and early adopters.

Don't let your guard down.
Some will relapse to old ways once the initial buzz wears off. Continue to communicate and educate. Review your team's accomplishments -- what's worked, what hasn't. Ask those who use the AMS, write for the blog or participate in your community to share tips for managing the work.

Change takes time because most people don't want to change. They must see the need for change and how it will impact their world -- their job, their employer and their members. And you must remove obstacles that make it harder for them to change.

Deirdre Reid, CAE is a freelance writer who writes about change a lot, thinks she handles change well, but wonders if she handles it as well as she thinks she does.

ASAE’s landmark research study, 7 Measures of Success, is a must-read for every association executive. Avectra sponsored the Accredited AMC Forum & Retreat last weekend where the volunteer leader behind the study, Michael Gallery of OPIS Consulting, led a workshop to help AMCs apply all 7 Measures to the associations they manage. While participating in the workshop, it occurred to me that Avectra helps organizations achieve 3 of the 7 Measures. Here’s how:

Measure #1: Customer Service Culture

Increasingly, customer service is carried out on social media. You’re probably aware that companies such as Comcast and Dell pioneered this activity, and associations are now following suit. netFORUM Pro customers can now use a new product called the Avectra Social Console. It’s an Enterprise Social Media Management application, similar to Hootsuite Pro, that allows your association to listen to what your members and constituents are saying about your association and its products and services. It also allows you to interact with your members and constituents on major social media outposts by publishing to those services. Eventually, you’ll be able to track social interactions with customers in netFORUM just like you’d record a customer service call, and to build a social media dossier for your members, enabling you to understand which of them are the most influential online. The Social Console will be coming soon for netFORUM Enterprise customers.

Measure #4: Dialogue & Engagement

While the Social Console lets you engage your members on major social media outposts, MemberFuse engages your members on a site managed by your association, instead of out on Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, etc. In many ways, when your association implements MemberFuse, you get your own social network. Why would you want to manage your own social network? First, your association can exercise more control over the member experience, rather than allowing Facebook, Linkedin or the other social networks to dictate it. Second, you gain the ability to sell sponsorships and advertising within the community. Finally, you can gain insight into member activity and preferences by having access to the data and web analytics – the secret ingredient that Linkedin, Facebook and all the other social networks will never let you see.

Measure #3: Data Driven Strategies

This is an obvious one, right? As your association’s member database, netFORUM helps your staff and board make data driven decisions. A recent development in this area for Avectra is our proprietary A-Score™ feature for Enterprise customers. This groundbreaking feature lets your association to build its own engagement score that, among many other things, can forecast a member’s likelihood to renew or drop their membership. The A-Score™ lets you objectively measure member engagement and display it as a score so that your staff can understand a given member’s engagement at a glance, report on members with high or low scores, determine who your advocates are, and who’s at risk to drop out. And to track this part of the post back to previous points, activity from MemberFuse can be factored into the A-Score™, and eventually, data from the Social Console will be available for factoring into the A-Score™.

Avectra helps your association achieve 3 of the 7 Measures of Success, freeing your staff to focus on the other 4.

• Make sure your staff is getting your vendor’s e-Mail – Every time I’ve sent out an e-mail to all client contacts with important news or updates, I’m surprised how many people unsubscribe.  The problem is that once they have done that, we can’t send you important updates or training announcements. Make sure your staff has opted in or at least forward these updates to your staff.
• Take advantage of the free training – Avectra offers weekly free training webinars. Encourage staff attendance so your team can learn the deep functionality within the system.
• Cross-Train – One staff member can’t be expected to know every aspect of the system. Identify specific experts to learn the ins and outs of a specific function and others can go to for help.
• Participate in User Groups – In addition to the Avectra Users Group, there is the TeamProCommunity.com with users who use just netFORUM Team and Pro.  Both groups have power users who can answer questions with real-world experience (and possibly some workarounds)
• Attend User Conferences – User conferences are your prime opportunity to be face to face with the people who write the code for the software you like bash.  Be there and learn firsthand from the developers and power users. (By the way, check out the upcoming Avectra Users Conference)
• Document. Document. Document. – In addition to the documentation that is built into the system, make sure to document your own processes and how you have modified the membership system or your processes.  Make it accessible and easy to find so your staff can quickly turn to it.

Now.  Pay close attention to Todd Carpenter’s comment at the bottom.  The most important words in the entire blog are the last two sentences:

 

“We’re institutionalizing its use. Everyone will be using these platforms when appropriate.”

Now, I know that they are talking about social media and in particular interacting with members through these tools but it’s a good point and is symptomatic of other issues - particularly when it comes to working with the membership system. 

Once upon a time only a few staff had e-mail access – remember the ubiquitous info@myassociation.org or membership@myassociation.org email address that went to one group that would review and respond?  (Was that lack of technology or lack of trust? An issue for another day.) Now, those e-mail addresses are distribution lists and every staff member has access and responds.  Todd hints at a great point that in the near future the same will be true for social media outlets.

But what about the rest of the association software and technology?  There are plenty of times I’ve heard “Oh that’s the membership department’s database” or “That is used only by communications” or "I don't like to use the association management software."  

Why are these critical systems living in a silo and being used by just a few – either because they are the only ones that have been given access or because no one else has bothered to learn how to use the tools.

After UnTech10, I pointed out that the key for technology success isn’t about the tools – it’s the culture.  In order for associations to compete in today’s fast moving markets and respond to members that expect instant responses the culture needs to change.    And in order for that to happen it’s going to require a push-pull strategy to change.

For association leaders, it requires opening up the systems to other users and either granting access or requiring other departments to use them.  Get user requirements from staff that don’t use a system and then integrate what they need to do so it becomes an indispensable tool for them to do their job.

For association staff, speak up and ask lots of questions.  Reach out to a different department and say “technically, how do you?” or reach out to your IT group and ask for new functionality.  Basically, hammer away at the sacred walls of siloed technology and show an interest.

From membership management to social media to event registration and more – along the way both groups will realize how integrated all of these technologies are and the efficiencies that can be gained by having more people using them.

A few months ago I sat down with a number of Avectra customers using the company's netFORUM Enterprise membership management system.  Several were clearly "power users" and others were in the “I know we could do better but I’m not quite sure how to get there” categories.

So what was the key difference between the two?  System adoption by the rest of the organization.

Let’s start with the “we can do better” org.  This group has about 15,000 members and 40 staff members working in 15 departments ranging from member services to publications to government affairs.  The database manager works in the membership department and is clearly a power user who can get the association management software to do amazing things.  However where she starts banging her head against the wall is when she sees e-Mails about a product go out to an old list (she hears about it because unhappy members contact her) or the event team sends her an excel file after an event to add to the membership database. 

The issue? Other departments haven’t bought into the association management software and aren’t using it.  They have their own databases.  When a member changes an address they call member services who updates it in the AMS but because the other groups won’t use the system, they don’t have access to the current information.

Now let’s look at the “power user” org.  This association serves 126,000 members with just over 50 staff members.  The first thing that jumps out is that while they have only about 10 more staff they are serving almost 10 times as many members.  In this association, every action is tied to the AMS.  Any member call gets logged in the system and all records are updated.   When someone wants to do a mailing, they have the most up to date list.  When a scholarship fund raising campaign is needed, they not only immediately know who the right people are in a region but they know who has already donated so they don’t need to fatigue their members?

What are some of the differences and how did these organizations get where they are?

• Change Management – in the Power User org, AMS adoption was mandated from the top down.  With executive buy-in and backing, membership and IT departments not only had funding, but had authority to assimilate each of the organization’s individual databases.
• Usability Issues – in the “almost there org”, other departments complain that they don’t like the system and that it’s too hard to use.   They keep saying, “I can do all I need to in Excel and it’s faster” while thinking about their individual needs rather than the needs of the member and the entire organization.

The good news is that it’s not that hard to change and get your organization on the same page (ok, it’s hard as in “some work” but it’s not hard like physics or calculus):

• Usability Concerns or Complaints – Are staff saying “I can’t use the system” just because they are complaining or do they have legitimate issues?  Survey them and find out.  Maybe what you need is more training, to add functionality, or review your business processes?  But you don’t know if you don’t ask.
• Promote Wins – People like to be associated with winning projects.  When you’ve implemented a new process or done something great with the system, make sure the entire staff knows about it.  “Did you know we processed twice as many memberships in half the time last month?”  I’ll be that those other departments come ask you how you did it – and now you can convert them.
• Be the Hero – Look for opportunities to save the day with your super-human AMS skills.  Once you show other departments there’s a better way, they’ll say “how can I do that?”  They’ll be thankful when you tell them they can do it themselves and they can make their department look even better.
• Create Evangelists – Every organization has someone who others look up to and has quite a bit of influence.  Find that person and show them all the cool things your AMS does.  Get them to talk about it in meetings or when someone asks for help make sure they now how the AMS can help.  You need a strong personality to push adoption and this is just the person to do it.

In addition to revisiting your change management program when you implemented your AMS these ongoing activities will slowly convert naysayers in to power-users.  And along the way your association and your members will reap the benefits with more efficiencies and better member data.

Bring Your Chapters Under Your Association's Online “Umbrella”

As an Avectra partner, we were able to exhibit at the Avectra Users and Developers Conference (AUDC) in Orlando. In addition to the great weather, we were able to talk with a lot of Avectra customers and see what they are looking for in regards to online communities.

There was a recurring theme we heard, and that was the desire to bring the associations chapters and components within their website. When you think about it, leveraging the netFORUM association software and online community functionality across all facets of your organization makes a lot of sense.

Currently, many chapters of associations, even though part of the group, are run as almost separate entities. Some will utilize the dues features of the national organization and netFORUM, but many are collecting their own dues, using different tools to run events, using Google Groups or Yahoo! Groups for communication and Google Docs for file storage.

They pull it all together with a website that was created in FrontPage and hasn’t been updated in weeks. This is no fault of the chapters, these are passionate volunteers that are doing the best they can with the limited resources that they have available to them. However, as an organization, you can continue to allow them to use tools that cause them to take more time managing technology than they are forwarding the cause of your organization and members.

Or, you can utilize the Avectra association management software, integrated with an online community to enable your chapters to run like well oiled machines that put a polished look on your organization at the national AND local levels.

There are a number of benefits when you look at doing this:

One central place for all organization communication & collaboration

With association software like Avectra’s connected to an online community system, your members can access their dues information from the membership database, annual conference or other event information, general member communication and information, chapter and committee communication and collaboration all with one login and within your membership website.

The chapters then get all the features of the full online community at the chapter level. This includes integrated forums and listservs, file storage, poll/surveys, wiki platform, blog platform, media libraries, advocacy tracking, marketing pages, event management, calendars and more.

So by coming under the ‘umbrella’ of the organization, the chapters get much better tools. The organization now has all communication and collaboration in one place, so it is much easier to manage, support and see trends in those communications from one tool.

Consistent Look and Feel

No matter if a user goes to a chapter site, your main site or an event marketing site, you want the same consistent look and feel to present your brand in the best light. If they go to a chapter forum, or your main forums, you want them to be consistent. If they are looking for a file, no matter of it is a chapter, member or committee file, you want it to be easily found, accessible and searchable in one place and with the same format. The only way to do this is to have all of this in one integrated web presence.

Secured Information

When your chapter leaders are using these free sites to manage their communications and file storage, do you have any idea if it is secure? Are you allowing access to information that would put your organization at risk? When you link an online community system to netFORUM, you can be assured that no one outside of the organization will have access to sensitive information because access is controlled by the permissions authorized by the association management system. You can also manage, directly within netFORUM, who can have access to areas of the online community so the right people get access to the right information.

Simplicity of Support

When your chapters are all using different tools, support can be a nightmare. Your chapters are all trying to accomplish the same things, so give them the same tools that are powerful, yet simple to use. Your support people will thank you and now chapters can actually help each other, because they are all on the same tools. Through the online community, chapter leaders can have their own support forums and files areas to help each other.

No matter what online community partner you use, the benefits for your organization are profound when you look at bringing your chapters and components under your ‘umbrella’. 

Paul Schneider is the Co-Founder of Socious, an online community software company that specializes in working with associations. You can read his blog at: www.socious.com/paulschneider or you can learn more about Socious at www.socious.com

• Web-based applications are programs that run on Web servers and use Web pages as the user interface -- making software easier, cheaper, more mobile and more reliable than desktop software. Because all you need is an Internet connection, Web-based association management software makes sure your most important resources -- e-mail, CRM, accounting, events, e-Commerce, etc. -- will still be there in case of a power outage, flood, fire or other disaster. (Or, more simply, to give your staff direct access to current information, whether they're in the office, on the road or working from home.)
   
• A hosted solution not only keeps you up-to-date with the most current technology -- at no cost or disruption to your business -- it promises that your data is safe. Look for a hosted system that promises complete system redundancy, fail-safe power systems and full database backup to bring possible disaster recovery time down to minutes rather than days (or even months).

Tony Rossell recently wrote a great post about unleashing the Power of Testing in Your Membership Recruitment.

Tony is a huge believer in database driven marketing for associations (as am I).  However, the issues that I've seen where associations have a hard time stepping up to this marketing model are two fold.....

First, they don't have a proper membership database.

Many smaller associations are trying to compete against much larger orgs, yet they are still managing their members with an excel file or access database.  Some larger associations are on outdated systems that function as no more than a glorified mailing list.

The result is that because there is no integrated member database they don't have demographics, can't segment based on purchase history, etc. 

The common excuse is that there isn't enough time, money or resources to move to proper association management software. 

But what these organizations fail to realize is the potential they are missing out on by not integrating their association technology with their efforts.


Second, too few people own the database.

Quick.  Who manages your membership database and owns it in your org.  How many people said "The Membership Department". 

Wrong.  Everyone owns the database. 

This plays out in the fact that member data becomes outdated, incomplete, not detailed enough etc. and can't be used for advanced member marketing efforts.

Once you have enough data to work with, you can open it up to your departments so they can do some of the advanced testing that Tony talks about.  Let the meeting and events group do some testing based on the membership type, let your learning group market test pricing on courses, etc. 

Now that everyone has ownership, everyone can test and the organization can succeed.

The bottom line?

I realize as an association management software vendor it's self serving to say "hey you need better membership databases".  But the truth is when the data is better and being tracked properly, you can target and market even more efficiently.

• Have a unique piece of information like a compensation study
• Offer a discount on a product if you register
• Offer limited time access to the member directory
• Offer limited time access to the job board or let them upload a resume