Platforms and Secession

This month's case study in Associations Now is about a Board member who feels his Special Interest Group isn't getting enough attention/resources from the association, so he threatens to start his own association. My friends KiKi L'Italien and Jay Karen provide excellent commentary on the article, making some suggestions about how the association could have seen this coming and supported the frustrated Board member more.

Underlying all of that, though, is the idea that there is inherently a problem with this SIG going solo. The obvious problem is financial for the association--this new group would be taking members and their dues payments away. But this got me thinking about my post last week about "valuable is not enough." Why was this guy paying dues in the first place? His special interest group gets a budget cut, so now he is ready to abandon the association and start his own thing? Obviously he's not seeing enough value in staying. A lot of the commentary focuses on how to keep this group within the fold--do virtual events, use social media, etc. That's all good. I'm happy if you keep this group within the fold. 

But the goal shouldn't be to keep them within the fold. It's like one of my committee members who complained that I hadn't achieved the goal of cutting the price of one of our events by 50%. The goal isn't cutting the price, the goal is getting more people to attend (and price cutting is one tactic). It's the same lesson at the higher level here. The goal is NOT to have more members or keep more members within the fold. That might be a good metric of success, but the goal is to provide exquisite value to your stakeholders in a way that allows for growth in your capacity to provide the value in new and expanding ways.

So yes, work with that Board member to creatively discover ways to keep that SIG within the fold, but beyond the communication pattern with that person, and beyond his desire for control, I hope someone is looking at the platform. Why is it valuable--to the members--that things be within the fold? Is it just because the association has a budget to pay for things? If that's it, then you're in trouble, because you'll eventually be overtaxed trying to pay to keep your special interest groups in. You need a stronger center of gravity than merely having a budget.

Comments

[Peggy Hoffman]

Your observation "The goal is NOT to have more members or keep more members within the fold. That might be a good metric of success, but the goal is to provide exquisite value to your stakeholders in a way that allows for growth in your capacity to provide the value in new and expanding ways." is what stopped me in my regular "scan" approach to blog reading. In the tug-o-war of component relations, the measurements rarely address capacity to provide value and this why the it is a war rather than a relationship. Thanks for expressing the why.