Acronym

Scott:

I track with your comments.. When I think of engagement I use the bullseye as a metaphor ... each ring representing different levels of engagement with the most engaged folks being closest to the center.

People are going to self-select different rings of engagement but those selections may change over time for a variety of reasons. The boundaries between the rings therefore need to be appropriately permeable and people need to understand how they can increase their level of engagement, if desired. We don't want to end up with gated communities where some volunteer or staff member serves as sentry, only letting in select people based on their own criteria.

Thanks Jeff -- I like your bullseye metaphor a lot. The real trick in association work is to make the target big enough to capture people in a variety of meaningful (as defined by both them and the organization) ways, but not so big that people feel isolated or confused about what to aim for.

And how to let people know about the target and its different circles without annoying the snot out of them.

I am late to the party on this discussion, but find it interesting as I plan for 2008. In line with a few of the earlier comments on this post and the earlier one, I see two groups: members and customers. Members are the "engaged" and generally choose levels (the bullseye). Customers are really your "mailbox members" or those that just buy something. If you can turn your customers into members, your retention rates will usually go up. Granted I am speaking in generalities.

I would dare to guess that the mission of your association is to make the lives of your members better/easier in some way. Therefore, you are hopefully producing programs and benefits that succeed in that goal. The main reason to strive for growth is to have more revenue with which to use to create beneficial programs and services. Other than that, I too don't see a real need to focus on growth.

The main focus needs to be fulfilling the mission of the association.

Such good, through-provoking comments about members and customers! We owe Scott our thanks for sparking this good discussion. I would like to respectfully suggest that the bull’s eye metaphor may be very appropriate when/if a majority of members and customers have common purpose, ie, see and aim at the same target.

What if a majority of IMO members and customers do not have unified purpose? IMOs are composed of individuals, with varying interests and priorities. I’m going to suggest, based on experience, that many IMOs are composed of members and customers who see and aim at many, many different targets. I’m even going to suggest that this may be THE major challenge for IMOs in the future, ie, competitive personal interests of diverse constituencies vs. the interests and opportunities for the enterprise. Why would I say this?

Individual members and customers tend to self-organize into constituencies, based on common interest. If independent enough, constituencies may become silos (if sufficiently detached from one another). Constituencies, and especially silos, often compete with one another for association capacity, resources, and priorities. Why wouldn't they, when each constituency or silo passionately believes that their interests are the most important thing the IMO can do? Thus, constituencies (especially silos) may aim, not a common target, but at many independent targets.

For example, technical knowledge interest groups may be far different in aspirations and priorities from community-oriented chapters/sections that, in turn, may be far different from advocacy-oriented constituencies. Even within one segment, say knowledge interest groups, “basic” knowledge and “applied” knowledge groups have very different perspectives on what’s important. “Federated” associations (where membership is required at several levels such as local, state/regional and national/global) may find that some (many?) organizational levels of the “federation” compete with one another for relevancy, value and dues. When was the last list-serve message about chapters vs the association-as-a-whole?

In such circumstances, the more accurate IMO metaphor may be that an association is really a decentralized series of "nodes,” where each node shoots their best shot at their own prioritized target. If many of the “nodes” are unconnected with each other, with independent targets, the annual result can often resemble the evening festivities on the 4th of July—colorful streaks across the horizon in all directions!

What are the options for the IMO enterprise? There may be several choices: 1) let the most active independent nodes, with the greatest political skill and acumen, win the largest share of resources annually to use as they see fit; 2) impose enterprise priorities, which may or may not relate to some node's priorities; 3) strive for some harmonization or balance, year after year. In the last case, it helps to have a clear sense of enterprise purpose and strategy, to guide annual planning, budgeting and communications, not to mention measurement of how well the enterprise may do each year (here we go again). Does this take us back to where we started?