XtremeASAE Blog

Self-forming Group Scenario

Situation

Your association has long had a small segment of members who have not felt well represented in your governance and programs. The leadership of your organization have made periodic efforts to be more inclusive of the group but at the same time their small numbers limit how much attention the Board felt they could give them when balancing all priorities.

In the past few months, several people in this segment have gotten together and launched a new web site focused on their particular needs. The site features weblogs, forums and wikis where the early participants are busy collaboratively creating content and forming their own community.

This effort was under your radar for a quite a while but something occurred recently that has placed it prominently on your Board’s next agenda: the site has secured sponsorship by one of your top advertisers. Your advertising manager discovered that the amount was only a few hundred dollars, enough to defray the costs of hosting the web site, but your staff view it as a foot in the door that has them worried.

Another item of concern is that there are also talks (completely in public on their web site) among the members of this informal group about launching a new conference for their specific area of focus. Your organization has never developed a stand-alone event for this segment because the numbers simply didn’t add up to even break even. You are worried that you are at risk of losing the entire segment within a few years (maybe less!) if this group is successful where your association was not.

The Chairman of your Board has asked you to develop a set of options for the Board to consider at their next meeting as they decide how the association should react to these developments.

Discussion

• What are the risks in this situation? Opportunities?
• What options would you recommend that your Board consider?
• In addition to prepping your Board, what else would you do?

Betsy has already posted some of the ideas and questions that came out of the session.

For me, I think one of the key ideas to consider in this situation is how both the association and the self-forming group have their own strengths that are actually quite complementary. The trick is to figure out how to work together to get the benefits of both while still allowing their individual value to still express itself.