Earlier this year, I attended the MASAE Mid-year Meeting and I was incredibly impressed by all that I took back. Below are the top 3 items that I found most beneficial to me, and what I feel we are already applying in our work at AH.
- Aging World
One of the Foresight topics was our aging world and how it affects our Association world. Some things that came to mind for me was how I currently struggle with the dynamic between older Board members, and the incoming younger generation of volunteers, and the interactions between “letting go” of the old ways of management that may be obsolete now, and looking into new, fresh ideas for revenue building and membership growth (i.e. social media, etc.)
A great take-away I had on this was utilizing a mentor/mentee program specifically for our incoming and outgoing board members to help bridge-the-gap, and allow the newer members (or even new volunteers outside the board) to feel more comfortable and confident in suggesting new ideas, and vice versa.
- More Human Humans
In this discussion, we spoke about artificial intelligence (AI) taking a very large role in our Associations. This is something we have to face as technology continues to grow and peak, however, we are still HUMANS, and bringing back the humanization to Associations is very important, especially for my client.
We are currently working on a “Many Faces of IECA” campaign to bring a “face” back to IECA, as so many things now-a-days are impersonal. I think it is important to make the user experience as seamless as possible for most things through AI, however, what I took from this is that emotion, thinking, and connection is still a very VALUED aspect of association management, and we need to continue to focus on this, no matter how “high-tech” we continue to get as an industry.
- The Next Gen Professionals
Having an Association that has an entire group devoted to Developing Professionals, I thought this was an important topic to address. Learning how younger people in the workforce like to work, be treated, and benefit from their career is important in keeping members and volunteers happy and fulfilled. We have developed “microlearnings” and “microvolunteer” roles designed for just this; the trend that people now enjoy more small tasks, quick reward and pay-off, and then to move on to another task. I think as our association grows, we have to continue to keep up with the trends of the incoming demographics so we can adapt to maintain our membership growth and longevity in this ever-changing workforce.
Is your association impacted by these three drivers of change?
