Changing faces of membership
Below is a slide from the Great Ideas lab "Membership Models of Associating from Outside Organizations" by Diane James and Paul Pomerantz. I'm presenting it because I'm not sure how I feel about it. One attendee made an excellent point. James and Pomerantz used the context of their 2005 Journal of Association Leadership article "New Models of Associating" (may be members only) to point out the rapid and massive growth of the Willow Creek Community Church and the communities centered around the magazine Fast Company. The attendee's point: that's two case studies that are successful, there are probably hundreds of thousands of case studies of things that didn't work.
But on to the slide...
It depicts characteristics of traditional associations on one side and characteristics of new, developing communities on the other. I think in the past, I would have accepted this slide without question, but now I wonder if traditional associations have in fact moved closer to some of the developing models. And I'm pretty sure that I think the new models are little more like traditional associations than this slide presents--these communities take leaders to drive it. So, here's the slide... what do you think?
| | Permalink |
Comments
Scott, I concur with your take. I think this slide would have been spot-on five or ten years ago, but much less so now.
I actually wonder if doing the whole Associations vs. Networks doesn't limit our sense of what's going on. Associations are by definition networks of sorts and networks are all about associating.
Posted by: Jeffrey Cufaude | December 8, 2007 3:37 PM
I too had similar concerns when I started to compare "traditional" associations with newer forms of networking (http://www.ddmcd.com/professional.html). Rather than focus on such a general comparison, though, I think it is more productive to focus on all the networks or communities the member belongs to, and work from there to figure out where the association can provide value.
Dennis McDonald
http://www.ddmcd.com
Posted by: Dennis McDonald | December 9, 2007 11:27 AM
Thank you for your comments.
I think the slide presents "positive" and "negative" sides, with traditional associations being the negative.
But part of the discussion that ensued was about the need for the association to put their stamp of approval on it vs. the need to encourage broad participation... centralization vs. decentralization.
Seems to me that this isn't an either-or discussion. I think associations need to do both of these things: they need to establish what is good in the body of knowledge. At the same time, they need to add decentralization and let their members add and build in their own communities in their own ways.
Posted by: Scott Briscoe | December 9, 2007 1:32 PM