Acronym

I was just reading an interview on MediaPost which cited tagging as an important metric of engagement, which I found interesting. To go along with your terminology above, tagging shows that participants value a particular piece of information--and it has the added benefit of increasing the value of the information as well, since the tag makes it easier for others with interest in that kind of information to find it.

I wonder how many associations are set up to track online engagement that happens outside of their immediate website--like use of tags related to their association on del.icio.us, or blogs that discuss matters related to their association? I'd hope most associations do track this formally, but I wouldn't be surprised if that's not the case ...

Measurement can be (may be) important, as an indicator of progress, success or some other similar achievement. I wonder, however, if the real issue is about what we measure (not how) and, more importantly, why do we measure it? Are we measuring what matters most to our associations?

Situations come and go, but I'm coming to believe that what may matter most, over time, for many associations (at least those like mine) is our purpose and the extent to which we may be achieving or progressing in our purpose.

For many of our associations (including mine) our founding and enduring purpose is a "good of the order" purpose, ie, for ASME it's public safety and improvement/enhancement of the engineering profession. This is what we should be working on engertically and why we should be measuring.

There are many compelling and persuasive distractions: Greater personal benefits for individual members and customers: greater engagement of dues-paying members: growth of members, customers, revenues, scholarly papers and publication pages; more effective business models and processes, yada, yada. These are not unimportant endeavors. But they are means to an end. If endeavors such as these advance our purpose, that's very good. If these and similar endeavors do not advance our purpose, we should quickly redirect such endeavors.

Volunteer organizations may have important work to do--important value to contribute which may be unique to our sector of the economy and human enterprise. Association workload, however, is a function of capacity and resources. If our work is to successful (and rewarding), we may need to carefully assess our capacity and how we apportion our resources. It may be time to reassess our purpose and measure those efforts which support it. YMMV.

I appreciate the subtlety of your argument and offer this slightly different perspective. How can you achieve sustained growth over time without creating engagement? Renewal and repeat attendance are critical to growth...and new insight from new members and new attendees is critical for building engagement. Corporations who are building communities around their products are doing so as a way to grow and generate loyalty--and revenue--from customers. I look at engagement and growth as two sides of the same coin.

Lindy, you make good points. I am just not sure they are universally applicable. I must say, however, I am not sure I understand "engagement", and how, ipso facto, it leads to sustained growth, resulting in the insight from new members and attendees, which in turn feeds engagement, which leads to perpetual motion growth. Or cold fusion. I am not arguing; I am just asking for more insight or examples where this is/has worked.

Here is a 5-year example of sustained growth without regard to engagement: When I was the ED of the Project Management Institute, we experienced a net 30% membership and revenue increase annually for five consecutive years. At the same time, our annual member attrition rate was (if I remember correctly) 30%-40%!

If you do the numbers you will see that to achieve a sustained net 30% membership increase, while each year the annual attrition was 30%-40%, something unusual was going on.

What was happening was a tremendous annual "surge" becasue of the member discount on our global project management certification program. Our sustained growth wasn't driven by "engagement", it was driven by favorable member pricing on our most popular product. As soon as an individual had obtained their certification, many let their membership lapse. Fortunately, at the time, more new members came in the front door, than left our the back door. Greg Balesterro, the current ED, can comment more knowingly on experience over the past 5 years.

In our case, none of the jargon about engagement, personal member benefits, etc. had telling impact. Of course, every association has its own culture and experience, so this experience may be unique--but it is real and suggests to me to be cautious about accepting mantras, jargon and research conclusions. Just me with my curmudgeon hat on! Cheers!

My comment turned into a full post over on the Association Renewal blog (http://www.associationrenewalblog.com). My points seem to be in line with Virgil's comments above: It's not enought to say, "we don't just need more members, we need to give them more meaningful experiences." I still ask, WHY do you want to create meaningful experiences for members? If you can't answer that question, then you don't have a strategy.

Thanks for the great post and discussion.

One reason why membership numbers and attendance are good measures is that when people spend dollars it is a much more reliable vote of approval than for example a member checking a survey box saying "yes, I like what you are offering". There is competition for every dollar spent, so when someone spends the dollar on you, it confirms the value that you are delivering. Likewise, when people do not continue to spend their money with you -- as Virgil Carter noted above -- then it highlights a flaw in your product or service.

I'm honored by the thoughtful comments to my post. Fascinating experiences, Virgil. Thank you for sharing.

I agree absolutely with Virgil, that measuring engagement doesn't matter at all if what people are engaging in are things that aren't central to the organization's mission.

Virgil brought up Greg Balestrero—an association executive who is an extraordinary thinker. I interviewed him (and wrote about it) several years ago. (He also did a couple of posts on Acronym early on like (this one and this one.)) Part of that interview, as well as a talk I had with Ralph Nappi, currently with NPES (The Association for Suppliers of Printing, Publishing and Converting Technologies), I think dovetail with Virgil's point. The ultimate measurement is not a member's engagement. The ultimate measure is to what extent an organization fulfills its mission through its members and other constituents.

I can at least envision what measuring engagement looks like. It is somewhat quantifiable, though the assumptions you would use to quantify it would need to be subjective. But I can't even begin to figure out how to measure mission reach. One step at a time, I suppose.

I do share Lindy's belief that as engagement goes up, the numbers (members, retention, butts in seats) are likely to go up as well. But I don't think it's rock solid relationship. In fact, as I've tried to finish this comment, it's getting way too long and complex, because I think the inverse is also possible, and perhaps important. I'll write it up in a separate post, soon.

Finally, I have to disagree a bit with Tony. I don't mean to say that the traditional measurements should be completely ignored. I just think if those things are going to be your primary measurements, your strategy will fall in line with making those measurements look good, whether or not that is what's best for the organization. I would argue that time is much more precious than money, and in a way, that's what an engagement index would measure: the time that a member is willing to give an organization. Measuring money spent is a valid measurement, I just don't think it should be the most important one, and certainly not the only one.

That's it for now. Go read Jamie's excellent post and come back for another post on this topic soon (maybe today, but more likely in the next couple of days).

A thought about the value and benefits of "engagement": is there anything really wrong with having 65% (0r some typically high percentabe) of your members as "mail box" members, who are, by definition, "unengaged"? I mean, if your annual renewal trends are strong and positive (meaning your mailboxers are staying with you), what is so compelling about "engagement"? What would the implications be if 65% of your membership were "engaged"? Could you support them? Are we sure we understand the effects of engagement?

On the subject of measurment and success, I wrote an Acronym article back on Aug 28, talking about how associations might measure success, ie, categories and metrics related to what might matter most to IMOs. It was not nearly so popular as the current buzz, but I think it may have some current relevancy. Cheers!

A few random thoughts:

1. I concur with Virgil's observation about mailbox members. For a few associations with whom I have membership that is my desired level of engagement, and I renew annually because what I get in the mailbox (real or virtual) is relevant and meets my needs.

2. Many of us probably were brainswashed with "what gets measured gets done" mantra at some point in our lives and to a certain extent, it is true. What we need to do is identify the appropriate things to measure and then figure out how we might go about doing measuring those things. I've worked in a number of places over my lifetime where we spent a lot of energy tracking certain measurements without ever discussing if those were the most important things to track.

3. Meg Wheatley has done some nice anti-establishment writing on the topic of measurement. You can find it in the articles section on her website, http://www.margaretwheatley.com

4. Scott, perhaps people are so hung up on growth as a measure because they see the shrinking as inherently bad because they have not refined membership size beyond the most generic of scales.

I'm not saying mailbox members are inherently bad. I wonder, Jeff, how many of those organizations know that you prefer to be a mailbox member. Perhaps an engagement index score would show that you are a mailbox member, yet year after year you renew. Suppose they discover there are a 100 or 1,000 or 10,000 more like you. It's possible they could reach out to you -- all of the mailbox members -- not in an effort to engage you, but to find out how they can serve you as a mailbox member even better.

But ultimately, I think membership orgs are going to improve by focusing on those that most engaged and marginally engaged, to figure out how to keep the former and boost the latter. I'm not saying boot the mailboxers, but find out who they are and stop trying to serve them in the same way you serve those that are engaged.

The issue of growth for growth's sake is one I've struggled with for a while. Going into strategic planning just a few weeks ago, I kept asking myself if growth needed to be a top priority of the association I now lead (I'm in my first role as CEO). If we are able to accomplish our mission, regardless of how many members we have in our association, then why is growth important (I kept asking myself)? I remember posing this same question to a former boss, and even to John Graham when we were together in Halifax at the 2006 Leadership Forum.

I think a lot of it has to do with where you are in terms of association "maturity," market penetration or level of existing resources. If your mission and/or vision dictate that you change the market or industry for whom you serve in a positive way, it is generally easier to do so if you have more heads under your tent. If your association is attempting to pass friendly or kill hostile legislation, you are bound to get more attention from the policy influencers if you represent, say 70% of your marketplace rather than 10%. If your goal is to bring progress or new levels of professionalism (however that might be defined) to your industry through education, how many people you reach at the conference, through webinars, etc. matters, right? The follow-up measurement (and more difficult one) is to see if that education is actually making the difference for which you hoped!

If you can figure out how to accomplish your mission in a sustainable way without the need for making growth a priority and measurement, then growth for its own sake might not be important - and that's perfectly ok. But, if you're a struggling association or a brand-spanking new association, growth for its own sake might not be bad...even necessary.

I'm encountering that here at the Professional Association of Innkeepers. It's a chicken and egg scenario. Our strategic planning recenctly resulted in a fantastic vision statement and organizational goals...and as the CEO in charge of achieving these goals, I have a certain respect for the concept of growth. We need more resources (people's time, money, et al) to tackle our top priorities in a successful way. So, I cannot take my eye off the need to actually grow our membership...grow our conference...grow our trade show...grow the level of engagement in our association. There may be a point at which I have a solid, sustainable "engine" running, which is allowing us to accomplish the goals of that time - so growth for its own sake may not be that important. I think once an organization hits that place (and how you know you're there, I'm not sure), then the growth measurement could be moved from high priority to medium or low priority, and the measurement of "are we accomplishing what we're supposed to accomplish for our industry" takes center stage. Right now - for us - it shares the spotlight with growth.

Think of it in other terms (sorry, I love analogies). If a major league baseball team's purpose is to win games, entertain fans and turn a profit for the team's owner, growth is going to be very important if only 3,000 fans are coming to the home games. How are you going to afford to bring in the most talented players? How are you going to sell more $7 hotdogs without butts in the seats? If you're already packing the house with 40,000 fans each game, well then growth (in terms of number of fans, level of talent on the team) might not be that important. Your top priority might be to repeat a division title championship.

But, I should add, that the growth of resources (membership, non-dues revenue, etc) should not wholly replace creativity or innovation. A vision can be achieved by as much creative thinking as money. I believe the ideal situation is when you are nurturing both - growth and creativity.