Organization has to come from somewhere
Organization is not my strong suit. I'm not terrible at it, but I have to force myself to work at it because it doesn't come naturally to me. So that probably colors my viewpoint on the value of organization; I know it has to happen to get things done, but I sure wouldn't call it easy.
This week Tom Morrison argues on his blog that membership is still the strongest model for associations and points to the value of organization. One of the three keys to success, he writes, is "you must provide services and products that your members can't provide themselves effectively." And he tells a story of a fellow attendee at a Florida SAE event:
… an executive right next to me [said] "he didn't need FSAE to be able to pull together people and have a meeting like this. Members don't need an association for that anymore as much," he claimed. […] I immediately piped in and stated that, "You paid $50 to be at this 2-day event with 35 of the best minds in association management and you're telling me that for the $50 you paid to be at this amazing event, you could pull together this crowd for 2-days? Who's going to do your day job?"
This brought to mind an op-ed from The Washington Post (more than six weeks ago) by David S. Meyer titled "Americans are angry. Why aren't they protesting?" A couple points stuck out to me, the first about the transfer of emotion into action:
There is plenty of anger in America today […] Where are the people taking to the streets? The closest thing to a strong social movement in the United States in recent years has been the tea party, and it demands that government do less. Lately, we hear about the tea party largely from members of Congress and candidates for office, who have drowned out and replaced the activists at the grass roots. This is largely because although movements carry anger, anger doesn't make a movement — organizers do.
He later pointed out that even Rosa Parks had organizational support:
Rosa Parks wasn't just a tired seamstress in 1955, when she refused to move to the back of a bus in Montgomery, Ala. She was a longtime organizer who served as chapter secretary of the local NAACP, which organized a bus boycott and a lawsuit in response to her action. […] Without such organizational support, individual actions might be dramatic and heroic, but effective movement politics is a test of endurance. Organization gives individual efforts meaning and staying power.
This is not the first time I've said this here, but I'll say it again: It takes a vast amount of organization to channel the energy of a large group of people into collective action. And despite all the advances in tech-enabled self-organization, I still only see these types of movements knocking off the low-hanging fruit of those organizing bodies (e.g., associations).
So count me in agreement with Tom on that first key to success being effective organizing that a market can't provide itself effectively on its own. I don't know if that means membership is the model that must support that organizing function, but the means for that organizing to occur have to come from somewhere.
Below the logo on the cover of every issue of Associations Now is a tagline: "Ideas Into Action." I've always liked it because I think it embodies what associations do in just three words. But as any association executive who has come out of a board or volunteer meeting with a brand new initiative to implement knows, getting from idea to action is never, ever as easy as it sounds.
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Comments
As an assn. CEO, my largest frustration, is the time it takes to implement volunteers into action, and with the sense of immediacy in today's culture, it makes it hard to keep volunteers focuses, or show progress. They want things now, but it's often the long term planned actions that have the greatest impact.
Posted by: Michael Long | September 30, 2011 2:12 PM
I don’t disagree that it takes effort to organize events, but I do think we need to broaden this conversation a bit.
First, Tom’s post presumes that a program attracts the best and brightest in association management. Unless there is some screening involved, that’s not a guarantee. That’s why some people increasingly want to know who else is attending before they register. They want to make sure the learning community will be one in which they are going to truly benefit. This puts an increased pressure on those doing the organizing to (1) attract the best and brightest, (2) ensure that the learning format and any presenters are of the highest quality, and (3) design the event to maximize the value of face-to-face interactions. We’ve got a ways to go before that happens consistently in many organizations, particularly at the large events in my experience.
Second, you said you agreed with Tom that "the first key to success being effective organizing that a market can't provide itself effectively on its own." The reality now though is that it is easier than ever to self-organize events if you have a decent number of existing connections in place. Free and low-cost technologies enable event design and registration, and you can find high quality content in online videos from many sources (TED, MIT, to name just a few). Now some people still will find it easier or simply prefer to pay a reg. fee and let someone else do all the organizing. But others may prefer the exact opposite: some of the value they receive and the relationships they develop come through the very act of organizing.
I think associations have to intentionally calibrate what they directly provide (as outlined in Tom’s post) and what they might help facilitate being organized/created by others. It definitely will vary for organizations, but to simply go to one extreme or the other limits the potential value that may indeed attract or keep individuals as a member … the goal Tom’s post addressed.
Posted by: Jeffrey Cufaude | October 2, 2011 7:19 PM
Thanks Michael and Jeffrey.
@Michael, that's a great point about the sense of immediacy in today's culture. It's amazing how, when certain things happen quickly, people begin to expect everything quickly. This brings to mind an article from Associations Now from a couple years ago by Amy Showalter titled "Training for the Legislative Marathon." She talks about the specific challenges of keeping grassroots advocates engaged during a prolonged (sometimes years-long) lobbying campaign, but some of the advice likely fits in other contexts as well: set expectations with volunteers early, keep them involved and updated throughout the process, and share the incremental victories with them.
@Jeffrey, thanks for adding some additional context to this, because you're right that I zeroed in on the small organizational element. I fully agree that there is increased pressure on association to develop or organize better experiences for members. As the level of what members can do themselves increases, naturally so does the level of of what they can't provide themselves, thereby raising the bar for associations. The ones that continue to improve will be better able to use their organizing capacities to their advantage.
I think the point where our viewpoints might differ is where the mix falls between those who are inclined to self-organize and those who seek organizations to do it for them. My gut feeling is that the web's 1-9-90 rule applies in this context as well, that even while self-organization has become easier, the portion of people inclined to self-organize in significant ways is still limited to the 10 percent or less who are the most passionate. I have no clean evidence of that; it's just a hunch. I'm curious where you see the balance falling or if you think it's moving.
Posted by: Joe Rominiecki | October 3, 2011 1:43 PM
Joe: I think you appropriate put a key limit on self-organization when you note that the percentage who want to do it in significant ways may still be relatively small. I do notice more people exercising initiative and using free tools, network connections and the like to do for themselves much of what was previously done to them.
And sometimes it is easier to say yes to self-organizing at an event where some of the organization has already been done (i.e., open space conversations at a conference someone else initially convened).
I'd like to see more organizations attempting to learn what value members might be interested in self-organizing more than they have in the past and then experiment accordingly.
Posted by: Jeffrey Cufaude | October 7, 2011 7:19 AM