Associations representing professions, trades, and personal avocations (i.e., practice settings) differ dramatically in their purpose, scope, focus, and goals from for-profit and other nonprofit organizations.
Might be hard to believe but…they always have…they always will…and for good reason.
They exist to produce positive and lasting social change
for their members and their member’s respective practice settings,
as well as advance the quality of life for the larger society…
but only in functioning democracies.
Why is this so important now?
First, it will take approximately 10 minutes to read this post…but, I promise it will give you
information and insights you won’t find anywhere else.
Political affiliation aside, America’s democracy is engaged in an existential crisis. Freedoms and rights
are being ignored, curtailed or denied for unprecedented reasons; with courts now declaring such
actions unconstitutional. Yet, for those imposing such restrictions, what we view as sound legal
decisions is being portrayed by them as unacceptable and unpatriotic.
Few realize that associations, since the founding of our Republic, were established to address threats
and challenges by those seeking legitimacy and respect for their – at the time – emergent practice
settings. Since then and throughout American history, many of these associations – when needed –
rallied their members to combat burdensome legislative and regulatory initiatives.
But nothing in American history compares what’s happening today.
Threats and challenges – by our own government – are being levied on nearly every profession, trade,
and personal avocation in America…all at the same time.
These efforts are not just jeopardizing
members’ ability to fulfill their work responsibilities…
they are not just affecting the quality of life for the larger society…
they are intentionally undermining democracy itself.
Facing such unexpected and unwelcome backlash, what can or should associations do?
Interesting question…considering the seemingly tepid response from the organizations that represent
the association management profession.
Most volunteer and staff leaders don’t readily understand or appreciate the full extent of what their
organizations are designed to accomplish or of the unparalleled power that their members possess. So,
even these days, when their members’ practices settings are threatened or challenged, far too many
seem to be depending on the three key strategies that have always used (i.e., lobbying, political action,
and litigation).
But therein lies the problem.
The sober reality is that, especially in this political landscape,
those strategies – by their design – do not produce a lasting solution.
Why?
Because whatever outcomes are achieved, they is either being
further challenged or ignored entirely.
Associations that are determined to promote and protect their members’ practice settings would be
wise to recognize their organizations – from the start – are inherently designed to operate as
consequential change agents.
Their inherent power does not exist at the top of the organizational chart (apologies to volunteer and
staff leaders).
Their actual power has always resided with their members.
This becomes evident when members are inspired and instructed to act
in extraordinary and strategic ways.
What does that look like?
What do associations need to do to mobilize their members in this way?
They need to replace several long-standing somewhat inaccurate assumptions with those that are more
accurate…and fast.
Blindsided by Long-standing Assumptions
For decades, volunteer and staff leaders have been unintentionally misled by their predecessors and
others to adopt a series of decades-old assumptions, including but not limited to:
Associations are like businesses.
Members are like customers.
Members don’t engage because they are too busy.
Members don’t read our correspondence.
and so on….
These concepts have helped convinced most who govern and manage these organizations that they
would be more effective if they were managed like businesses; including adopting all the business-related terminology and concepts (e.g., value proposition, return on investment, onboarding, branding,
etc.).
While strategies – initially designed for use in for-profit settings – have generated results within these
organizations, they have failed to resolve associations’ most chronic and persistent challenges like
leadership development, member engagement, communication, and more.
And, for at least the past four-plus decades, those seeking to learn why, generally arrived at the
following two conclusions:
Associations’ governance and management practices were performing effectively.
Members – from lifestyle demands to generational shifts – were the causal source.
Seriously, after reviewing over 1,700 articles, studies, books on associations, dating from the early 1980s
to the present day, these findings – with a few word changes here or there – have remained eerily
consistent.
Can it be that most members,
over a nearly fifty year span,
have always been at fault for their lack of engagement?
In essence, what we’ve allowed ourselves to accept is that the majority of members who fail to engage
fully are different from the fraction of members who do. Does that make sense? From my early days as
a staff professional (early 1980s), it didn’t…but after decades of persistent exploration, alone and with
others, a more rational explanation finally emerged.
In the early 2000s, this unexpected revelation came from a rather unlikely source. And, it prompted a
great deal more unprecedented applied research; ultimately creating a new, better and broader
understanding of associations and their members.
What I realize now is that what was discovered then
could not come at a more pivotal time
not just for associations, but also for our democracy.
An Unanticipated Revelation
In 2013, after a decade of research, James R. Hudson, Ph.D., a sociological scholar, published his findings
in Special Interest Society: How Membership-based Organizations Shape America, after analyzing over
400 published histories of associations. From this unprecedented study, he discovered a series of
common patterns and trends about these organizations: from their emergence to their formation, their
development, and even their operations.
Their similarities were so broad and consequential that he was convinced they should be viewed and
treated as a unique population of organizations within the nonprofit sector. He assigned the term
membership-based organizations (MBOs); along with a very precise definition.*
Of note, he discovered that the founders readily understood that members’ contributions (i.e.,
volunteerism) – not just their participation – were essential for their MBOs to achieve their goals.
Thus, these initial volunteer leaders intentionally took steps that empowered their members to
establish the kind of social connections that transformed into social bonds and then ultimately
evolved into socially-meaningful relationships.
They did this because they recognized that mutual trust had to be achieved within the
membership for mutual support (i.e., contributing to one another) to follow.
Further, every founding volunteer leadership team – recognizing the need for their MBOs’ to
endure – intentionally structured their organizations to operate as micro-democracies; thus
giving their members the power to choose their volunteer leaders and establishing a process for
that leadership transition to take place.
His analysis and insights led to the formation of the Melos Institute and further unprecedented
research; ultimately leading the Institute to publish additional unparalleled findings – like those below –
in The Member Engagement Paradox…focusing specifically on members and member engagement.
MBOs are institutions uniquely designed to assist members
(within their specially-defined membership communities)
develop and advance their competencies and capacities.
MBOs provide these opportunities so their members – collectively –
contribute to advancing their respective practice settings.
MBOs exist to employ strategies that
advance positive and lasting social change.
Ultimately, this collective endeavor finally revealed why some of the most egregious challenges,
afflicting MBOs had persisted for decades. Hint: Members were not the cause.
It was MBOs’ dependence on employing
traditional transaction-based business management strategies
initially designed for for-profit organizations –
to govern and manage their organizations.
There’s a good reason why.
It was – and still is – the only management model in existence…until now.
A Management Model Uniquely Designed for MBOs
One of Dr. Hudson’s greatest insights was the need for volunteer and staff leaders to fully recognize and
appreciate why MBOs were formed and what they had the capacity to accomplish. Most volunteer and
staff leaders came to know their MBOs based on their mission statements and developed organizational
structures they felt would best support them in securing that outcome. Following traditional business
management practices, they often put themselves at the top of their organizational structures.
From his analysis, Hudson discovered that MBOs’ existential purpose was to establish distinctive
communities of practitioners or professionals that represented what were then emergent practice
settings. They accomplished this by establishing eligibility requirements for membership. Doing so
created a wide range of specially-defined communities within the larger society; each consisting of
members reflecting similar backgrounds, training, and language.
When they began their recruiting efforts, they created a subset of those specially-defined
communities…one dedicated to delivering meaningful, purposeful, and transformative experiences to
members. This effort resulted in specially defined membership communities that were not just
homogeneous in nature, but also where most everyone shared similar needs, interests, goals, and
aspirations; something not observed in most other types of for-profit or nonprofit organizations.
The initial founders also recognized that their members possessed more information, knowledge,
experiences, expertise, and connections than they did. They understood that their members –
collectively – would always possess more knowledge (i.e., core content) than their MBOs ever could.
So, for their practice setting to succeed, they needed to take steps to secure their members’ willingness
to share and exchange as much of that as possible…not just with their MBOs, but also with fellow
members.
This prompted his finding that MBOs “were more than organizations serving target audiences or
subscribers. They were organizations that had a distinctive symbiotic relationship with their uniquely
portable communities. Further, empowering their members had a more consequential impact than just
advancing their practice settings.”
Their members also lived, worked, and engaged in their local geographic communities. Thus, their
members had the ability and opportunity to influence a broadly-defined social network.
Yet, most MBOs continued to depend on widely-popular transaction-based business management
strategies to communicate with their members; not realizing they were only developing direct
relationships with their members.
Hudson concluded that this unintentional oversight – not employing very specific community
development strategies – was hindering them from building highly-engaged specially-defined
membership communities. In essence, for a host of reasons, MBOs needed to include the kinds of
strategies that helped members develop meaningful relationships with each other (Hint: This does not
happen on its own). Doing so would create the kind of social cohesion necessary for the vast majority of
members to “respond when called to action.”
Further, continued use of these traditional transaction-based strategies was also unintentionally
undermining their ability to achieve their organizational goals; especially when it came to increasing and
expanding member engagement. MBOs didn’t realize that – for decades – they had been inadvertently
and unknowingly teaching their members not only to view themselves, but also to behave like
customers; thus prompting them to respond in kind.
With this new knowledge, the Melos Institute set out to discover if a management model either already
existed or could be created to include both sound management as well as community development
strategies.
Finding no existing model, the Institute set out to conceptualize one solely designed for MBOs. Initially,
key strategies specific to member engagement were examined to see if the transaction-based aspect
could be replaced by an approach the Institute referred to as relation-centered. Doing so would create a
new type of strategy: one that embodied both sound management as well as practical community
development practices. Members’ stories, their anecdotes of how they got involved and what they
found most valuable about their membership, played a key role in this discovery.
Remarkably, every relation-centered strategy, which was specially designed to increase and expand
member engagement – when pilot tested – actually generated better and more lasting results. These
initial successes led the Institute to expand its efforts to ultimately define an organizational and
theoretical framework for a relation-centered management model specific to MBOs and association
management.
Adaptation is All That’s Required to Adopt Strategies Specially-designed for MBOs
Since the pilot testing was done with MBOs, the Institute also gained insight of what their volunteer and
staff leaders needed to do to embrace this new way of thinking.
Shifting from transaction-based to relation-centered thinking first requires a willingness of those
interested to suspend long-standing assumptions and practices about MBOs and members…and replace
them with those which are more accurate. Some of the assumptions that volunteer and staff leaders
needed to re-examine include the way they:
- view members
- view associations/MBOs.
- adjust management processes and practices.
- recognize what members actually expect.
- promote MBOs and membership.
- communicate with members.
- prepare volunteer leaders.
Doing so provides the insights needed to make adaptations to existing strategies (i.e., from transactionbased to relation-centered) to generate better and more lasting results. Some volunteers and staff have also been inspired to create new relation-centered strategies as well.
New and more accurate assumptions – along with a host of already pilot-tested relation-centered
strategies…some created decades ago by extraordinary volunteer and staff leaders – are described in
detail in The Member Engagement Paradox: Overcoming 7 Obstacles to Build and Maintain Thriving
Membership Communities.
Again, Why Now? And, Why Your MBO?
MBOs’ founders established their organizations to overcome threats and challenges that they believed
would be detrimental to their fields of endeavor.
While their successors have followed suit, nothing in history could ever be compared to the threats and
challenges that nearly every profession, trade, and personal avocation in America is facing today…at the
same time.
Again, these efforts – coming from our own government – are not just jeopardizing
members’ ability to succeed in their work…
they are not just affecting the quality of life for the larger society…
and they are intentionally undermining democracy itself.
If ever there was a time for MBOs to recognize, accept, and adopt their inherent role in American
society…it is now.
To do that, volunteer and staff leaders need to inspire and activate their members in new and different
ways. They need to do more than build online communities…they need to build socially-cohesive
specially-defined membership communities.
This can only be accomplished by transforming their current transaction-based management strategies
into those which are relation-centered.
The Melos Institute is the only organization currently offering complimentary guidance and support to
accomplish this.
Adopting a relation-centered approach will help volunteer and staff leaders better capture members’
awareness and cultivate their appreciation for what it means to be a member…how they can
benefit…and the responsibilities they must fulfill to shape their future, that of their colleagues, and the
larger society.
MBOs expecting that lasting change will come about by having their members contact their legislative
representatives, help elect favorable candidates, or financially support litigation, will be rudely
awakened by the temporal nature of any positive outcomes. The rules of engagement have shifted…and
so must the strategies.
MBOs must learn how to respond in an asymmetric way.
An Example:
Members will be far more supportive in overcoming these threats and challenges – during these
uncertain times – by engaging with their local social networks (e.g., family, friends, neighbors,
colleagues, religious and civic groups, etc.); combatting head-on the misinformation and
disinformation that is being spread about their practice settings.
To do this, their MBOs need to help them realize that in addition to being American citizens, as
members, they are also citizens of their specially-defined membership communities.
Traditional board and member orientations, as yet, have failed to convey this essential information in
ways that make sense to volunteer leaders and members. Knowing this, the Institute has created two
key training modules to do just that.
For Volunteer Leaders
Using Power and Influence to Achieve Positive Social Change
how membership-based organizations organize and mobilize their members to advance their
mission and vision
For Members
Making the Most of Your Membership
a relation-centered orientation module for new and current members
Modules provide general guidelines, facilitator preparation and talking points, key graphics, and
participant materials…compliments of the Institute and available for immediate download.
Lastly, remember that disruption often generates new information and innovation.
While America’s future is yet to be defined, scholars have warned us that MBOs can only operate
effectively if the democracy is functioning.
Thus, MBOs’ volunteer and staff leaders find themselves at a crossroads.
Maintaining the status quo, including the use of transaction-based business management strategies, will
continue to undermine their ability to deliver meaningful, purposeful, and transformative experiences to
their members. Continued efforts to use them will, unfortunately, be intentionally allowing unnecessary
and possibly permanent damage to befall to their members’ profession, trade, or personal avocation.
It doesn’t have to be this way.
By embracing a relation-centered mindset, MBOs may well on their way to helping members and those
in their practice settings not only address these current unprecedented threats and challenges, but also
take steps to redefine, restore, and reshape their members’ future; empowering them to thrive in the
21st century.
Only you have the power to determine the legacy you want for your MBO.
*Learn more by visiting www.melosinstitute.org.
Patricia A. Hudson, MPsSc is the founder and president of the Melos Institute.
