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I'm somewhat pessimistic, but to me the role of consumer or member are roughly equally powerless (Board member is very different but in culture where almost all members don't aspire to or realistically stand a chance, comparing Board membership to being a customer is less relevant).

Associations have structures that are run by members, but I wonder what proportion of members actually get that impression and appreciate that feature. In turn I wonder how much of the collective loyalty we have within our marketplace is driven by the goodwill of being truly member-driven. Most of us don't find governance exciting, time constraints and/or lack of vision prevent us from wanting to have more influence within our organizations, and you sometimes hear mild resignation in conversations with members that the division between active members and the masses reflect a caste system or a club.

I also suspect we're conditioned to feel that way based on our exposure to other organizations with Boards and periodic voting. When a first-time member hears 'board' or 'elections' in an institutional context, their expectations are driven more by business news and what they learn about investments. You may be a BP shareholder, but you're so far removed from the decision-making apparatus you'd never aspire to holding a Board seat or to have a chance to help vote Tony out of office. I know I tear up my proxy invitations all the time rather than take 2 minutes to respond.

The fact that our association elections and membership surveys often have low turnout suggests to me that most associations are democracies, just not necessarily terribly participatory ones. Perhaps a good association-member relationship often IS more analogous to the relationship we form with a reasonably strong brand such as Coke or Lexus--affinity and some power through collective action. We vote with our feet and our wallets far more often than we do with our actions, and a good organization notices and adapts.

I'm with Kevin -- unless we're talking about collective action, the solitary voices of members and consumers is virtually silent.

The only way Coke would make a change would be if many customers (not just one) vied for that change. If you doubt me, think back to the recent Toyota recalls and all it took to get them to make changes, despite the number of "individual" customer voices that kept trying to get their attention.

We might not want to admit that this is the way we also do things in associations (even trade associations), but it's the way things work.

I'm sure I'm not the only (in my case former) staffer who has witnessed individual members unsuccessfully advocating for a particular change or program or initiative only to see a board member manage to get that very same change or program or initiative approved.

Board members have power in their individual voices to influence events within an association (their voices are one among 20 or 50); members have power in their collective voice to influence events within the association (otherwise their one voice gets lost among hundreds or thousands).

If anybody has an example of a major decision made by an association based on one member's request (an unsupported by the board), I'd love to hear it.

A single Board member has more power than a single member. The entire membership has more power than the entire Board. That's what makes association management fun (and challenging).

Thanks for the comments Kevin, Ellen, and Eric.

Kevin's comment about members voting with their feet and their wallets is exactly what I had in mind in regard to the power of the consumer.

Ellen, I also like your point about the power of a single voice on the board. As to the example you mentioned of a board member being able to effect a change that a single member could not, I'd suggest that, in an ideal world, the board member would be supporting that change in his/her role as a representative of the greater membership and not because it's a personal preference or pet project. The reality we all face, though, is that this usually isn't the case. The "democracy" isn't all that participatory, as Kevin mentions.

Eric, you've summed the whole topic up nicely in your comment, and your point about the fun and challenge of association management gets to the underlying theme I wanted to get at: as an association executive or staffer, you're positioned between those two often competing demands of a board and an at-large membership. If you ever find yourself caught in the middle between a board that wants one thing and a membership that doesn't show a sustainable demand for it (or vice versa), it can be a tall task to bring the two together.