Author: deirdrereid

Deirdre is a content marketing writer/partner for companies serving the association market. After more than 20 years managing associations and restaurants, she's enjoying the good life now by helping companies inform, educate, and deepen relationships with the association community. Away from her laptop, you can find her walking in the woods, enjoying live music, reading hundreds of newsletters, watching hockey, cooking, hanging at the local brewery or tap room, or relaxing in a comfy chair with a good Kindle book and a glass of something tasty in hand.

The New Volunteer Manifesto Series – Part 5: New Ways of Associating

As part of my New Insights from a New CAE weekly column on SmartBlog Insights, I’m delving deeper into my New Volunteer Manifesto that I published here. In Part 5 published last Thursday, I looked at New Ways of Associating.

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The New Volunteer Manifesto: New Ways of Associating

Deirdre Reid, CAE is an association consultant, speaker and trainer focusing on member engagement and social media at Deirdre Reid LLC and Leadership Outfitters. Connect with her @DeirdreReid.

I recently published a call to action for associations, a New Volunteer Manifesto. Last week I explored creating a learning culture for volunteer. Now I’d like to propose some new ways of associating.

Nurture social networks that connect members with one another and with your association. Don’t assume that if you build a private network that they will come. Find out where your members are hanging out – possibly Facebook, LinkedIn or Twitter – and build your community there.

Give members the encouragement and tools to self-organize informal member meet-ups. Don’t be threatened if members use your online networks to publicize these meet-ups. Encourage and help them. Be the connecting thread.

Make it easy for members to organize working groups to explore new ideas and projects. Don’t perpetuate barriers that rein in their creativity and desire to experiment and be innovative.

Give younger members the means to contribute their talents and their voice. Younger generations are not as willing as Boomers were to ‘pay their dues’ and watch and wait while others contribute to their association.

Make it easy for all members to give feedback. Consider a feedback area on your web site or an online forum. Allow your members to have a voice and a place to contribute their ideas.

Control is a touchy subject. You really have never had it, as much as you would like to think you did. This is the member’s organization, not just the board’s, definitely not the staff’s, no matter how invested we are. As long as members stay on message politically, don’t be threatened at their attempts to create what works for them.

Transparency and openness are now more important than ever. Many members want to know what’s going on behind the scenes, what decisions are being made, and what their association and leaders are doing. Make it easy for a member to figure all this out by sharing this information on your web site.

Don’t be afraid to take a risk and maybe even fail. Your fear of regret should loom larger than your fear of failure. Be receptive to new ideas. We are entering new territory – members no longer need us as their source of knowledge, news and networking. We must find ways to remain a meaningful and valuable part of their lives.

Keep a spirit of entrepreneurial innovation alive in your leadership.

What do you think about these ideas? Have you tried any?

The New Volunteer Manifesto: New Ways of Associating

Deirdre Reid, CAE is an association consultant, speaker and trainer focusing on member engagement and social media at Deirdre Reid LLC and Leadership Outfitters. Connect with her @DeirdreReid.

Make it easy for members to organize working groups to explore new ideas and projects. Don’t perpetuate barriers that rein in their creativity and desire to experiment and be innovative.

Make it easy for all members to give feedback. Consider a feedback area on your web site or an online forum. Allow your members to have a voice and a place to contribute their ideas.

Keep a spirit of entrepreneurial innovation alive in your leadership.

What do you think about these ideas? Have you tried any?

The New Volunteer Manifesto Series – Part 4: Creating a Learning Culture

As part of my New Insights from a New CAE weekly column on SmartBlog Insights, I’m delving deeper into my New Volunteer Manifesto that I published here. In Part 4 published last Thursday, I looked at Creating a Learning Culture.

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The New Volunteer Manifesto: Creating a Learning Culture

Deirdre Reid, CAE is an association consultant, speaker and trainer focusing on member engagement and social media at Deirdre Reid LLC and Leadership Outfitters. Connect with her @DeirdreReid.

I recently published a call to action for associations, a New Volunteer Manifesto. Last week I explored keeping volunteers. Now I’d like to propose some ideas for creating a learning culture.

Create a culture of learning, not only through your educational programs, but within your leadership and committees. Commit to enriching the volunteer experience by providing opportunities to learn and grow through service.

We’re the organizational experts. It’s our job to share our professional knowledge with our members and give them the information and tools to lead the association wisely, take some risks and try new things. They may not have brought these skills with them and need our support.

Deepen the reach of leadership development programs. Don’t limit training to officers and directors; include any member who leads a committee, team or project. Set aside competition and control issues and partner with other organizations so you can offer more programs to your members.

Give volunteers something to take back to the office. Teach leaders to build learning moments into committee agendas. Take ten minutes to provide quick lessons on social media, networking, speaking, leadership, etc. Give your members the opportunity to share their skills with others during these learning experiences.

Conduct ongoing training for leaders on how to recruit volunteers, break up and delegate tasks, make meetings meaningful and enjoyable, and work in new ways that involve more people.

Encourage leaders to train other members to do the work they’re now doing. Encourage them to find others to help them accomplish tasks and share the work. The association will never run out work to accomplish; there’s enough for anyone who wishes to participate.

Members in the early phase of their career will have very different needs than those more experienced. Take that into account when planning programs, events and volunteer opportunities.

Recognize and reward those leaders who have led well by delegating and involving others. Make them the models for other leaders to emulate.

What do you think about these ideas? Have you tried any?

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Today my fifth and last post in the series, New Ways of Associating, was published on SmartBlog Insights.

The New Volunteer Manifesto Series – Part 3: Keeping Volunteers

As part of my New Insights from a New CAE weekly column on SmartBlog Insights, I’m delving deeper into my New Volunteer Manifesto that I published here. In Part 3 published last Thursday, I looked at Keeping Volunteers.

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The New Volunteer Manifesto: Keeping Volunteers

Deirdre Reid, CAE is an association consultant, speaker and trainer focusing on member engagement and social media at Deirdre Reid LLC and Leadership Outfitters. Connect with her @DeirdreReid.

I recently published a call to action for associations, a New Volunteer Manifesto. Last week I explored recruiting volunteers. Now I’d like to propose some ideas for keeping volunteers.

Always remember that volunteering is a benefit of membership. Talk to any involved member and you’ll soon see how true this is. Make it easy for your members to find ways to get involved. Break down any perceived barriers, particularly the lack of information about volunteer and leadership opportunities and committee meetings.

Make the connection publicly (and frequently) between what volunteers do and the success of your association. Volunteers want to help your association achieve its goals and know that their efforts make a difference.

Make it part of your culture that projects and committee work are broken down into smaller tasks that volunteers can take on. Tell your chairs to look outside your committee members for help. Share the benefit of volunteering.

Chairs must learn to share the benefits of leadership — delegate delegate delegate. Train others to do your job. Make sure everyone can benefit from volunteering.

Make meetings matter. Use a consent agenda. Start and end on time. Don’t ever meet because you are supposed to; meet because you have lots to accomplish face-to-face that can’t be accomplished effectively in any other way.

Build in time during meetings for strategic thinking and discussion. Take advantage of their brains – see what they come up with. Encourage their investment in the association’s mission.

Aim to be the highlight of someone’s day — make meetings enjoyable. Give members the opportunity to not only get work done, but to do it in a way that makes them want to come back for the next meeting. Consider building some “getting to know you” time into meeting agendas. Members get involved to develop relationships, make that easier for them.

Encourage committees to explore new ways of meeting and working. Switch up a meeting location from the association conference room to perhaps a café. Brainstorm other location ideas. Consider short conference calls or, for a more personal touch, online video chat (check out tinychat.com) if scheduling or travel is difficult.

Teach members to use online collaboration tools like wikis or LinkedIn’s Huddle application to get input on projects and task assignments. Tools like these work well for sharing the status of projects, posting to-do lists and assignments, and allowing volunteers to edit and contribute their input.

Personally thank every volunteer who helps in even the tiniest way. They are not paid to do this; they pay to do this. Recognize their contribution and constantly be grateful.

Be a transformational organization. Everyone wants the opportunity to give, learn and grow – to transform into a better version of themselves. Volunteering at your association can be a way to do that, and for many of them, it may be their only way. Remember how important it is to provide those opportunities — the benefits of volunteering.

What do you think about these ideas? Have you tried any?

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Today my fourth post in the series, Creating a Learning Culture, was published on SmartBlog Insights.

The New Volunteer Manifesto Series – Part 2: Finding Volunteers

As part of my New Insights from a New CAE weekly column on SmartBlog Insights, I’m delving deeper into my New Volunteer Manifesto that I published here. In Part 2 published last Thursday, I looked at Finding Volunteers.

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The New Volunteer Manifesto: Finding Volunteers

Deirdre Reid, CAE is an association consultant, speaker and trainer focusing on member engagement and social media at Deirdre Reid LLC and Leadership Outfitters. Connect with her @DeirdreReid.

I recently published a call to action for associations, a New Volunteer Manifesto. Last week I explored the big picture. Now I’d like to propose some ideas for volunteer recruitment.

Survey all your members at least once a year to find out their professional development needs, leadership experience, interests, talents and number of hours they can volunteer per month (or quarter) so you can match them to the best volunteer opportunities for them. Keep this inventory readily available. Plan on getting updates because members’ needs and interests will change. Ideally, volunteers will call or visit members to get this information (a retention “touch”), but at least include the survey in welcome letters, renewal invoices and mailings. Follow up by phone with non-responders.

Committee involvement may be too demanding for personal schedules. Encourage ad hoc or episodic volunteering — an hour or so here and there. You need a variety of options that are still meaningful and do not require long-term commitments. Spend some time creating a list of these opportunities.

Publicize all volunteer opportunities on your website, particularly those requiring a minimal time commitment. Communicate in new ways: feature a few at meetings in an automated PowerPoint presentation; post on event table tents; announce ad-hoc opportunities via opt-in mobile texting; feature a few in each e-newsletter and on your home page, Facebook page, LinkedIn group or Twitter stream.

Keep in touch with volunteers who may step out of their roles temporarily due to other commitments. Let them know they are missed and will be welcomed back in any capacity.

Your leaders and staff must be able to answer the question, “what’s in it for me?” Don’t so much sell volunteering, as listen to what members need (that’s where the inventory comes in handy) and provide them solutions (volunteer opportunities) to help them grow, learn, meet others, etc.

Consider this:

“The primary difference between volunteers and non-volunteers, when measuring what they do with their time, is the amount of television they watch. People who do not volunteer watch hundreds of hours of additional TV a year compared to people who do volunteer. It’s not that people don’t have enough time to volunteer. People do not volunteer because nonprofits do not provide them with volunteer opportunities that interest them enough to pull them away from their television sets.” (Stanford Social Innovation Review, Winter 2009, The New Volunteer Workforce)

Are your volunteer opportunities meaningful and valuable enough to pull your members away from Jack Bauer?

Make it easy for those who are looking into involvement. Publicize committee meeting times, locations and agendas on your website. Publicly encourage members to attend a meeting if they’re interested. Take the mystery out of it.

The personal ask is the most effective way to recruit a volunteer, not a passive call for volunteers. When a member is asked to help, be ready with a few options, so they can choose the one that’s best for them.

Cultivate evangelical leaders and volunteers, those with social capital, who will personally ask others to get involved, and who can testify about the benefits of their volunteer service.

What do you think about these ideas? Have you tried any of them?

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Yesterday my post on Keeping Volunteers was published. Check out SmartBlog Insights!

The New Volunteer Manifesto Series – Part 1: The Big Picture

As part of my New Insights from a New CAE weekly column on SmartBlog Insights, I’m delving deeper into my New Volunteer Manifesto that I published here. In Part 1 published last week, I looked at The Big Picture.

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The New Volunteer Manifesto: The Big Picture

Deirdre Reid, CAE is an association consultant, speaker and trainer focusing on member engagement and social media at Deirdre Reid LLC and Leadership Outfitters. Connect with her @DeirdreReid.

I recently published a call to action for associations, a New Volunteer Manifesto. Now with your input, I’d like to dig a little deeper into that. First, here are my ideas on the big picture.

View all members as strategic assets whose talents can be shared with the association. Focus on developing ways for them to contribute their talents.

Invest in the infrastructure necessary to effectively recruit, develop, place, recognize and retain volunteer talent. You might have to admit that your current systems aren’t working as well as you’d like. What percentage of your membership is volunteering now? Your association is a community of talents — more work is accomplished with more hands on deck and more members invested in the goals of the association.

Slay your sacred cows! Can we get that on a t-shirt? Get rid of committees, programs or pet projects that aren’t moving your association toward achieving its goals. Establish sunset reviews every two or three years.

Beware the leadership bubble! Put that on a t-shirt too. Leadership can develop an insular perspective and won’t always see what members really need and value. Their view could be colored by their association service, their age or career stage. Make sure you have multiple perspectives participating in decisions that affect your membership and the future of your association.

Find new jobs for your deadwood leaders. If they’re not open to innovation and new perspectives, ease them out. Their fear of regret (for not taking a risk) should outweigh their fear of failure. If anyone says, “that’s the way we’ve always done it,” be very scared. Or, “if it’s not broken, why fix it.” Is mediocrity good enough for them? Will they even know if something is broken? If a leader isn’t concerned with the future needs of the association, or isn’t interested in growing as a leader, bid them adieu. This isn’t about a title; this is about leadership and vision.

Align committee work with association goals. Are your committees charged with goals to achieve? Are they accountable? Do they have the autonomy to choose how best to achieve those goals, or are their strategies and tactics imposed from above? Do they report back on progress made? Your committees must do meaningful work in meaningful ways to avoid stagnation.

Make all your leaders accessible to each other. Is there regular communication amongst your leadership – board members, committee chairs, and other formal and informal group leaders? Are they really a team, all of them? Are they in a position to help each other? Learn together?

Choose the right chairs. Make sure the members who are leading your association, not only the board, but also committee chairs, have the right motivations to be there. They’re not in it for the ego or title. They want to help the association achieve its goals and bring along others to help them do it. They’re enthusiastic about sharing the benefits of leading and volunteering. They have social capital — they can recruit others to get involved. They’re forward-thinking and receptive to new ideas and perspectives.

Appoint a Community officer as part of your leadership team, perhaps your incoming president, whose main responsibility is to develop and retain a huge corps of volunteers. Just as you need to focus on your budget and reserve to ensure the financial health of your association, so too do you need to focus on your volunteer corps and reserves.

What do you think about these ideas? Have you tried any of them?

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Thursday in Part 2 I’ll discuss Finding Volunteers. Stay tuned to SmartBlog Insights!

Xtreme Communities

This post is from my weekly column, New Insights from a New CAE, on SmartBlog Insights. I really like this post and I hope you do too.

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My knowledge of evangelical churches is limited to driving by mega-churches with gigantic parking lots, the kind that cause traffic jams on Sundays. But I’m captivated by their approach to community.

Xtreme Ministries, a church in Nashville that’s also a mixed martial arts academy “where feet, fist and faith collide,” is one of a growing number of evangelical churches where ultimate fighting attracts and retains a hard-to-reach demographic – 18-34 year old men. We know this lesson – provide activities that appeal to young adults if you want them to pay attention to you.

Brandon Beals, lead pastor at Canyon Creek Church, created the church he’d always wanted as a spiritual home, a place where he’d want to hang out — one that recently had 100 men show up to watch ultimate fighting on big screen TVs. Half of them weren’t members but came because they heard about the party. Maybe they’ll also come to his lectures that draw parallels between ultimate fighting and Christ’s life, “the ultimate fighter.”

Beals says this is “not a gimmick to get 20-somethings into our church. Canyon Creek doesn’t need a gimmick to encourage them to come.” I was skeptical about that until I read his description of the church’s Culture:

Expect the unexpected
Irrelevance is irreverence
Love people when they lease expect it and least deserve it
Playing it safe is risky
Everyone is invaluable and irreplaceable
Everything is an experiment
The church ought to be the most creative place on the planet
Maturity does not equal conformity
Go the extra mile

Make no mistake, this is a seriously evangelical church, but they’re doing it on their own terms, in ways that are authentic to its members. In addition to services, they have cook-offs, movie nights, book clubs, yoga, sports, a Facebook fan page and podcasts, all aligned with their Core Beliefs — be Real, Relevant, Relational, Reproductive and Rousing. They’re creating an innovative spiritual community.

Are we providing Real, Relevant and Rousing professional communities for our members? I agree, being relevant isn’t enough, but here’s how their definition of Relevant:

Understand the emerging culture
Utilize creative innovative means to present truth
Encourage diversity
Willingness to change

That aims higher than our usual definition. Why do we settle? Think about it: how many communities can people have the attention, time and energy for? Maybe several, but if your association is not meeting their need for a Relevant and Rousing community, it’s not going to remain high up on their relevance scale, or their attention, time and energy scales.

Their church evolves so it remains Relevant to the community. Do our traditions, activities and ways of operating really work for everyone, or just those who actively participate? Do they prevent us from evolving? What happens if someone proposes something new? Do they dare to even do that?

Churches like Canyon Creek are successful for many reasons. Take a look at churches in your neck of the woods through an organizational development lens. You may find that they are fulfilling their primary organizational mission while remaining flexible and innovative in how they serve their members. Their parking lots are full. Are yours?

New Insights from a New CAE

My new weekly column New Insights from a New CAE debuted on SmartBlog Insights this week. Here is the first post.

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I’ll be sharing New Insights from a New CAE with you each week here on SmartBlog Insights. Studying for the Certified Association Executive (CAE) exam gave me insight into corners of the association office that I merely peeked into before. It reignited my commitment to and fascination for this industry. Julia Child once said that she loved her job because she learns something new each day. I know what she means.

When I was working at associations, I struggled to find the time to think about the larger issues that we, and all associations, faced. My mind was overloaded by my interminable “get it done” lists – a typical symptom of those who, as the old cliché goes, wear many hats and juggle many balls. I had hundreds of bookmarked posts, piles of magazines, and unread notes from educational sessions. My mind only found the space to wrestle with these challenges while driving, chopping vegetables or before falling asleep. How many times have you scribbled great ideas down on a notepad in the dark?

Imagine the joy I took in simply reading and reflecting during my CAE studies. I had the opportunity to delve deeply into areas that I could only dip into before, and it brought me a much deeper and future-oriented perspective.

However, this new perspective is somewhat tempered by my conditioning – ten years working for trade associations. I know that “what could be” is often sacrificed for the challenges staring us in the face; that what we can realistically expect to get done is based on the limited staff, volunteer and financial resources on hand; and that change, no matter how beneficial, can be challenging. However, I fear that staying stuck because of these challenges prevents us from seeing where we could go, what we could be.

Many of our members are innovative entrepreneurs who have succeeded in starting a business and making their dreams a reality. How can associations capture some of that same spirit and create new 21st century ways of associating? Engaging our members, serving them and bonding them to us?

I believe there are lessons to learn (and inspiration to gain) from many sources, including each other. I’ve written about my CAE journey of learning. It is never-ending. I invite you to suggest topics for my weekly SmartBlog post so that we can get inspired and continue learning together.

It’s Love a Lurker Day

Today, March 19 is Love a Lurker Day. Yes! I love lurkers! Many thanks to Kiki L’Italien who way back in December came up with the idea for Love a Lurker Day.

Anyone who blogs loves their readers. We love you truly deeply and ardently, those of you we know about and those we only know about because of blog stats. I know you’re out there. I love it when you comment because you make me think or just make me happy. And even if you don’t comment, I’m still happy you visited. You chose to come here and read. That’s really cool, and I am very grateful.

According to Forrester Research’s latest data, 70% of online adults are Spectators, aka Lurkers. When you think about your members, most of them are lurkers or “mailbox members.” They don’t actively participate or volunteer in any way. In ASAE’s Decision to Join we learn that those who don’t volunteer are much less likely to recommend membership than those who are involved, even those involved in an ad-hoc (or episodic) way — an hour here, an hour there. Why? When they stop lurking and start participating they have an opportunity to contribute in a meaningful way, use their skills or talents and belong to a community. That is the benefit of volunteering that we don’t always talk about, maybe because it’s too “woo woo.”

Most of us bloggers started out as lurkers. I was a lurker for a long long time. You could say that I wasn’t so much an Early Adopter as an Early Lurker. Way back in the 90’s I first discovered the web, courtesy of a Brazilian colleague at the World Bank who showed me this really cool thing called Mosaic. Then I discovered newsgroups, remember those? That’s where I got recipes and beer and restaurant recommendations for several trips to Europe. I was a lurker there.

In the early 2000’s I discovered Readerville, an online community for, yes, readers. Again, I was a lurker even though it was a really active community that provided me tons of good book recommendations. Newsgroups and Readerville — they were social media, way back then. Later I started reading blogs, again, as a lurker. I kept reading about this Twitter thing, thanks to my tweeps who attended ASAE’s San Diego meeting in 2008. Finally I created a Twitter profile and slowly came out of lurking mode.

I remember always thinking, what if what I say isn’t important, or it’s too shallow or even wrong. Then I realized many twitter users, none I knew personally of course, were offensive and obnoxious, so I couldn’t be any worse than that! I started participating in LinkedIn group discussions, then commenting on blogs, then tweeting more. One day last spring I took the biggest step and started this blog.

I write because I love the act of writing — finding just the right word or phrase, seeing the disheveled thoughts in my head somehow find clarity on my laptop screen. But I also write because I want to share, to help, to stimulate and to maybe spark a good thought in someone else’s head. I write because I want to be a positive giving part of the community that I found and love here online.

You’re part of that community too, whether you peep up or not. You might decide one day to stop lurking and write a comment or start tweeting, or you may keep on lurking. Either way, it’s okay. Your visits keep me going.

Thank you lurkers! Your presence always makes me smile. Cheers!

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