Empowering Growth with Real Data

Non-Dues Revenue, Membership Growth, and Advocacy serve as the most important priorities for associations in January and February of 2023.

This month we released the results from our January-February top initiatives survey.  It’s enlightening to see what association leaders have been focused on in the first two months of 2023.  Some themes have continued from 2022, but others seem to be gaining traction.  We will talk more about those results later, but first let’s discuss what associations can do to move the needle on the top trends. 

Data Helps Associations Navigate Pay Transparency Laws and Drive Member Value 

Pay Transparency laws are making waves in states across the U.S. with 8 states already having measures in place. In California, as of January 1, any employer with 15 or more employees must “include the pay scale for a position in any job posting. In addition, the pay scale must also be given to any third party that the employer engages to announce, post, or publish a job posting. The third-party is required to include the pay scale in its announcement, posting, or publication of the job posting.” Additional states, including South Carolina, currently have draft legislation in place. 

- 90% of DEI Platforms are Sponsored -

- You are one of 9 people sitting in a bar. Elon Musk suddenly walks in and now the average wealth of the group in the bar, including you, is 200 Million.- 

If you are like many associations, you survey your members multiple times a year on a variety of topics. Those surveys are usually conducted with an off-the-shelf product and then your staff spends time on the backend configuring the results and creating reports to release the findings. These surveys may be conducted anonymously or in the case of benchmarking studies, non-anonymous. But let’s get back to the question at hand,

What happens with your data once your survey is completed?

In the past 6 months Amanda Kaiser with Kaiser Insights and the DB team have been asked numerous times to BRING BACK the New Member Engagement Study.  Many of you are wondering how engaging new members has changed over the past few years and what others are doing successfully in this ever-changing landscape.  Are there new techniques that other organizations have implemented that’s working? Do you feel like there is something missing from your new member engagement plan? 

Just last week, an association executive asked me, “when are you going to update the data for that new member study you all did way back when?” The week before, two people asked a similar question. We also noticed a robust flurry of conversation whenever someone asks about new member engagement on a public forum. New member engagement is once again a big topic.

Compliance plays a role in every organization and often there are programs or actions that are a direct result of ensuring compliance. It is fine if these programs involve transactional only items, but DEI is more than transactional. It is about the culture of the organization, the success of the team and ultimately the bottom line. Compliance may be able to address the diversity part of the equation, but that is not nearly enough to thrive it in today’s environment.

I learned in one of my finance or economics classes (can’t really remember which) that economic and stock market growth can sometimes be as much a psychological exercise as it is a physical or fundamental exercise. Meaning, when people feel good or positive about something, it can have a strong impact on the performance of that activity. This is true in many areas of our lives. I know that when I stand over a golf ball on the tee box that my confidence meter is never completely neutral, it leans one way or another and typically my tee shot follows.