Searching for Your Association’s Core Comptency
Associations have long built their value to members on creating information products. Conferences, magazines, journals, newsletters and web sites all have been traditional vehicles for creating and providing information and knowledge to members that couldn’t be had elsewhere.
Then the Web came along. Suddenly, we all have access to vast collections of information. However, this has brought a new challenge: finding the valuable stuff in that massive pile of information. Your association can continue to provide value in an information rich economy by developing the capacity to assist your members in sifting through it. Invest in understanding how search technology works and how it could be tailored for your members. Think like an information concierge rather than a publisher.
Make helping your members to find critical information and knowledge a key part of your value, wether or not you published that information in the first place.
Associations have a huge tool in the internet. Normally associations have education type purposes (as part of the goal) – providing information to members and very often in getting non-members to understand the benefits of whatever the association does (engineering education, physical therapy, quality management…).
Associations should think about what is possible with the internet that never was possible before. Associations can often directly promote their aims using internet technology. But often they are so used to using content vehicles (books, conferences…) as primarily sources of funds.
Take ASQ as an example: “this professional association advances learning, quality improvement, and knowledge exchange to improve business results, and to create better workplaces and communities worldwide.” So it would seem to be getting material in the hands of people that will use it is the primary goal. But it seemed to me when I was a member their actual primary goal was growing income because they had always needed more income to accomplish their end goals. So instead o fusing the internet to make as much content available as possible (money after all only is useful in meeting that end goal – so restricting access to content to force people to pay for it so you get more money seems backwards to me).
Many associations suffer from this same looking backwards mentality as I see it. Obviously there are issues to consider. Money is needed to run the organization. So some method of raising funds is needed – I understand that. I just believe the internet offers incredible advantages to associations, societies and groups with a purpose other than making a profit. And far too many are not taking advantage of the new possibilities. It takes experimentation and trying new ways of thinking to take advantage of the wealth of new oportunities. The possibilities are amazing – very little progess has been made so far.
I agree there are still huge opportunities for assocations to use the Web more effectively in creating value for their members and better serving their missions. Getting past how we’ve always done it (if I may make a not too subtle allusion to our concept here) is the biggest challenge to getting started on discovering them.
Just dropping a quick note as I was just pointed to your fascinating blog and look foward to reading and joining in over time. The quick note (apologies if this is well covered elsewhere):
The web provides both a challenge and a threat as do all things – an association can offer a ’sifting’ service indeed, but, more powerfully, it can use the internet’s networking and knowledge-sharing opportunities to help (a) the members connect and share their (most importantly tacit) knowledge and (b) perforate the worrying wall that seems to have risen between associations and their members.
This might mean that *all* associations have that in common – a strategic goal to use the internet effectively to help members network and get all that lovely tacit knowledge (currently distributed around the world) moving between the members effectively, synthesising and capturing it to be streamed throughout the association (and society where the association interfaces with society) meaningfully.
Like i say – sorry if this is elsewhere – I’ll probably find it later and go ‘duh, how embarrassing I just made a comment that someone made weeks ago’, but couldn’t resist popping in.
Thanks for the comment, Ed! I think you are right and we do talk about some of these ideas elsewhere. They are worth repeating, however.