D6 Reflections, Observations

This was one of domains I did the worst on the first time I took the exam, so I'm leaning in hard. 

What did you read this week that surprised you?

1. Royalties vs Commission. "Royalties must be totally passive income; one must make sure the association is not engaging in any activity to support the vendor's efforts".  Not sure if providing a member list falls under "any activity". For example, if you provide a list of members to a third-party and the third party emails members to sell them insurance - does the association book the resulting revenue as royalties or commission? One falls under UBIT - Which one?  I would think commission would be the answer if the association directly emailed its members? 
2. "Volunteers should know they have contributed to their association in a meaningful way. When asked what would best improve their experience, 39 percent of current volunteers said they would like a better understanding of how their work fits into the association’s larger context, and the same percentage said they wanted clearer guidelines about their duties". - https://www.asaecenter.org/resources/articles/foundation/2019/be-a-more-effective-volunteer-manager

3. “If a tax-exempt 501(c)(6) association uses its code of ethics primarily as a tool to resolve business disputes among members, the association could run afoul of federal tax law prohibitions on 501(c)(6) organizations providing substantial "particular services" to members. An association would be in danger of losing its tax-exempt status only if the IRS were to determine that this activity constitutes more than half of all the association's activities. Even if this test is not met, the IRS still might seek to tax (as unrelated business income) fees the association receives for providing this service.” – Ethics Done Right. https://www.asaecenter.org/resources/articles/an_plus/2014/march/ethics-codes-done-right-avoid-antitrust-risk

What did you learn from this reading? 

1. Domain D6A: Susan talked about PCI compliance. PCI stands for "Payment Card Industry".  There are standards to be met and fines for getting it wrong.  I found this article approachable and not too deep. https://www.lightico.com/blog/pci-compliance-checklist-7-steps-to-compliance/#:~:text=Do%20the%20Self%2DAssessment%20Questionnaire,auditor%20to%20verify%20this%20checklist.
2. Retention: Smart takeaway - Ask members "What is the most important thing we do?" Build personas and use to tailor the inspiring "here's what we accomplished and what's next- please renew" message to that thing per person. Personas again.
3. PCI Compliance. Payment Card Industry, standards for data protection and privacy

4. The move from “Careers for Life” vs “Careers for Life Stage” potentially increases the demand for resources and structures to support retraining or mid-career transitions” – PPAM page 586

What do you take issue with?   

1. Quick Key Question 8 - How does retaining members increase an organization's dept of membership?
2. Even with looking at market penetration, there can be a big difference between your membership numbers "being good" and membership revenue "being good".  They are not always the same. If an association has a substantial increase in the number of members from LMICs (lower middle income countries) that pay a substantially reduced rate, then your average revenue per member can be significantly out of whack. An association with varied tiers of membership has to decide which metrics (or segments of metrics) to use. Your overall numbers may be going up, but this will mask a declining renewal rates of members who pay "full price" if one isn't paying attention to this. Circumstances like these affect Renewal Rate, Average Tenure and Lifetime Value formulas. See "What constitutes good membership numbers" - PPAM 556-557 for other segmentation info.

What assumptions do/did you hold about this topic that may not be true?

1.  

What is your takeaway from reading that article/chapter?

1. "People join associations for all kinds of reasons.....people join...as much to support a common good for their profession or industry as they do for the individual benefits that may be received." - PPAM, page 554. This is reassuring in my case as we're having trouble defining our value proposition.
2. "Retention efforts will be greatly helped if association staff find ways to meaningfully connect with its members...Members may view connection and value differently....The need for connection may change over time."  - PPAM, page 555. Early in a career, having access to education and info; mid-career, networking and connection with peers, colleagues and friends. 
3. The "Freemium" model of membership may be the very reason people never join. This is why content management strategy is critical. " PPAM, page 558. 
4. Member retention involves systems, strategy and tactics. Renewals should feature a compelling story of key accomplishments, what we're working hard on, what the goals and vision are. 

5. The Engagement Continuum: Consuming (Viewing, Reading, Attending); Promoting (Liking, Sharing, Recommending); Creating (Contributing, Commenting; Responding to Surveys); Serving (Volunteering); Governing (Volunteering in Leadership Role). Associations with deep engagement focus on the Consuming-Promoting-Creating stages and move members along the pipeline. If an association wants to grow its diversity and number of members in governance, the door opens at Creating. PPAM page 583-4

Is your study plan working for you? 

1. I believe it is, the outline complete with number of pages, time for videos etc. help a lot with planning the content through the week. I block a day (either Sat or Sun) each weekend and spend six hours studying. It allows me to dive deeper into a topic. On Mondays and Fridays when I work from home, I start at 7 or 8 am and plow through more content. T-W-Th I work in The City so I don't have any time. The flash and content cards for this domain are minimal in number (13).

Michelle Turenne
Chief, Strategic Alliances and Development
American Thoracic Society
E: mturenne@thoracic.org
M: 646-379-7567

I learned a lot even though it was a tough week for me with our board meeting until Saturday. Membership is not my area of expertise and I have only been working at an association for about a year and a half. I have learned a lot about member and volunteer engagement and how we can improve communication with our members and stakeholders at our organization. I found better questions to ask our members, and benefits vs features. Thanks!

I am also enjoying the readings—especially this domain. I appreciate that the various readings and podcasts reinforce each other. My organization is grappling with many of these right now: how to broaden our membership categories to encompass more stakeholders, without getting away from our mission; and volunteer management—how to recruit, manage, and keep volunteers engaged. My study plan is working okay—it helps that there is a variety of videos and readings of different lengths. I spent some concentrated time reading, then listening to the podcasts reinforced the reading, but I was able to listen while I was doing other tasks.

There is so much nuance to membership categories, expansion, and engagement. We are currently expanding to a more global membership model - though we have international components - so it was very timely for me. Communicating and demonstrating value to members (current and future) is very interesting. I wonder when member to member communication carries more weight than staff to member communication? I was also wondering how many of the calculations will be required. I'm definitely finding more time for the audio content then the reading so am thinking of going with the audio version of the text.

With the D6 reading, I learned lots given that we are structured differently with regards to membership, volunteers and stakeholders.  I really want to dig into our bylaws!

I am hoping to today to get some clarification on mailing list and UBIT as well as the data calculations for membership (renewals, retention, steady state, etc.).   Which calculations are relevant for the exam?

The topic of communities piqued my interest and I hope to learn more about how associations are using them. 

With the Quick Keys, I missed several questions.  I am overthinking the questions and not going with my gut :)

Studying is going well but it's very time consuming.  I am working through it.

I guess I commented on the wrong thread last week. For D6, a takeaway from one of the radio/podcast recordings was: The focus should be on the benefit, not the feature. Make sure your communication strategies focus on the benefit. 

Since we don't accept any industry sponsorship, it's difficult for me to understand the stakeholder relationships, specific to sponsors. 

I was surprised how much I genuinely enjoyed all the readings. I also found myself applying a lot of the readings to my current CSE and organization, which can be helpful but I found it more challenging to apply them to myself. My self-assessment skills aren't as strong. I learned about ASAE's ForesightWorks. 

Ethical decision making is much more challenging in real life than it is on paper. It is difficult to document all of the factors and intricacies or actual situations. 

I loved the focus on culture; performance culture and culture over strategy. 

My study plan is working alright. Looking forward to the group discussion. 

Natalie Hinman wrote:

I'm not sure that anything stood out as a surprise this week, but it reinforced a lot of what I already knew. Seeing some of the things written down as a theory rather than just something I practice was encouraging (now it makes sense why my organization does things the way it does).

I thought Chapter 12: Managing with Foresight was intriguing and I'm interested in hearing more examples of how people do this, specifically the scanning and forecasting steps. How do organizations implement these? It can't be only from a strategic planning perspective, so how are these steps included in more day-to-day conversations and decisions?  

My study plan did work this week. I built in enough flexibility to accommodate changes in my schedule as the week progressed, but I was still able to complete all the readings/video watching. I'm struggling with the flashcards, though. Someone mentioned on our first call that they weren't sure how to use them because of the amount of text on each one. I agree with that, and would be curious to know how others are utilizing the flashcards. I find myself just reading them over and over, but I'm not sure that's effective. 

The comment about the "Flash and Content Cards" was me Natalie. People call them just "flash cards" but they aren't. I am confident they are valuable, I haven't been able to make them work for me. Friday I spoke with one of my CAE mentors. She suggested punching holes in the corner of every card (UGH) and putting them all on ring to flip through. When you know them, move them off the ring onto a second ring, which she reviewed less often. Ring one, she carried with her everywhere. She found reassurance as the number of cards remaining on ring one decreased....  

Michelle Turenne
Chief, Strategic Alliances and Development
American Thoracic Society
E: mturenne@thoracic.org
M: 646-379-7567

I'm not sure that anything stood out as a surprise this week, but it reinforced a lot of what I already knew. Seeing some of the things written down as a theory rather than just something I practice was encouraging (now it makes sense why my organization does things the way it does).

I thought Chapter 12: Managing with Foresight was intriguing and I'm interested in hearing more examples of how people do this, specifically the scanning and forecasting steps. How do organizations implement these? It can't be only from a strategic planning perspective, so how are these steps included in more day-to-day conversations and decisions?  

My study plan did work this week. I built in enough flexibility to accommodate changes in my schedule as the week progressed, but I was still able to complete all the readings/video watching. I'm struggling with the flashcards, though. Someone mentioned on our first call that they weren't sure how to use them because of the amount of text on each one. I agree with that, and would be curious to know how others are utilizing the flashcards. I find myself just reading them over and over, but I'm not sure that's effective.