Acronym

Interesting question. If you look at this through the lens of meetings and conferences, many nonprofit organizations that host large/general-themed meetings are noticing a decline in attendance, while smaller more niche conferences are on the increase both in attendance and diverse focus areas.

This trend would lead me to expect that the possibility of more associations that cater to even more specialized groups is on the horizon.

But what do I know? I'm more of a PR/Communications/Marketing type. This is just a casual observation.

Any one else want to take a stab at this?

Brian, interesting question, but I think the answer can only be provided by the bottom line. If the association has value, members will pay for it. If not, it dies.
In my field, physicians can join their specialty society, their state society, their county society, and the AMA. We don't compete directly against each other, but if we don't provide value, we lose. That keeps us on our toes.

This is similar to a discussion we're having on The Hourglass Blog (http://thehourglassblog.blogspot.com/2009/10/whats-your-apollo-program.html) inspired by a post from Dan Pallotta. Every non-profit arena, it seems, has more than one organization working towards the same goals. In many situations, this diversity could be counterproductive in the sense that it divides resources and allegiances so that the big objectives can't be accomplished. We asked people to think about their own environments and identify the areas where collaboration and commonality of purpose could result in greater success than working alone and protecting revenue streams.

Thanks all for the posts...Frank, your post spoke to me, my wife is a Doctor, and is a member of several nonprofit associations related to her specialty of child psychiatry...it is actually a great deal of personal money each year to invest in each, and as a doctor's arm charm, I personally question why she is a member of so many, as she rarely has the time to review or read any of the information in them! She attends 2 conferences each year and does get some value from those, so perhaps its worth it there...but we get a ton of mail that goes right to the recycling bin!

Chris, that is an interesting take on it, I've heard similar projections for social media, that folks will slowly over time gravitate to smaller, more focused social networks...

Eric, great post, I will check out the link you provided, and I think the collaboration point between 'competing' groups is the most important...here is another fun question: If your association could fulfill its mission by closing its doors and providing its resources/contacts/products/events over to another entity, would the association do it?

Interesting post, Brian! A couple of times this week, I've heard someone arguing that member loyalties are trending away from the "big box" associations and toward the smaller, specialty organizations. It would be interesting to research and see if there's data to back that up.

I would say that the answer to your question is "sometimes." Every association I've ever worked for has had multiple association competitors that overlapped with our membership somewhat. In some cases, those competitors offered something my association didn't--a high touch, local presence; specialization in particular technical area; etc. We were serving similar missions, but different audiences.

But I've also seen competitors who had very significant overlap with my association, where the main reason a merger didn't happen was organizational pride. If pride or ego is the main reason not to merge, then you're not serving your mission or your audience well.

(Which kind of ties in nicely the new question you posted in your comment!)

The pride/ego factor and the natural Gandhi dynamic (people will prefer the bad government of their own kind to a good government imposed from outside by others) will probably always lead associations and the general non-profit sector to have "too many players."

There are so few cases of runaway growth in the assocation community creating "big box associations" we can almost count them off if we have been in the association field for long.

In this economy and with the sharp downturns in meeting attendance that probably do lead to revenue downturns, this would be the time to contemplate mergers: yet I work with associations who, looking backwards, know that they splintered because their own constituency defined their niche in such a granular way, and so they're fearful to consider re-merging and losing their unique voice. In this free media world with low barriers to entry, where any individual or organization can create an effective online presence, and cultivate and care for a distinct constituency, as long as they're willing to accept being a low margin, low growth operation, it stands to reason that we'll be an 'industry' of many small operations who might work collaboratively with other organizations on certain initiatives, but won't need to or want to merge for greater economies of scale or to ensure our survival.