The Power of A

The ASAE’s President and CEO on this week’s Health Care discussion as a follow up to yesterday’s post.

As John mention in the clip, click on Get Involved to join in the conversation.

The May edition of Associations Now is hot off the press and one of the most popular pieces features interviews with a variety of CEOs all answering questions surrounding the economic downturn, the effect it’s had on their organization, and what they’re doing to recover.

Below, I’ve pulled the highlights of the most compelling responses.  As you read the answers, be thinking about what you’d say if someone asked what associations are doing to move the country forward.  If you’ve got an answer we want to hear it; comment on this post, or click Get Involved to submit a video, become a guest poster, or add an association to the growing list of PowerofA.org particpants.

(You can read the full feature here. )

Associations Now: How has the economy affected your association?

Kris Cook, National Affordable Housing Management Association: “We have a little bit of a unique situation in that we’ve been a stressed industry for eight to 10 years. Being a stressed industry, you learn to live on a shoestring, so now that everybody else is stressed, it’s like, “Been there, done that.” We’ve been lean and mean.”

Chris Bates, Independent Office Products and Furniture Dealers Association: We have two membership divisions—office-supplies dealers and office-furniture dealers—and it’s been remarkable to see how differently, in terms of degree at least, they’ve been impacted. The office-supply dealers have soft market conditions, but by and large, because they’re nimble, they’ve been able to gain market share and partially offset what’s going on.  The office-furniture dealers, on the other hand—the business is falling off the map. When the overall industry compresses in a six-month period of time by 25 to 30 percent, that’s huge.

Erin Fuller, Tysons Tomorrow: As an organization that just celebrated our one-year birthday, the lucky thing is that we only know this environment. I never had any fat-cat days.

AN: What has your experience been like with your boards through the economic downturn?

Kris Cook “We created what we affectionately called our Financial Meltdown Taskforce. Within a month, they had come up with a white paper that had 10 possible solutions to bringing back investors.

AN: Do you have any last thoughts or takeaways?

Cedric Calhoun Alliance of Hazardous Materials Professionals: I would throw in partnering—partnering with staff to get things done, partnering with chapters, partnering with like organizations. There is obviously strength in numbers and, depending on how you partner, potentially less risk in some of the things that you’re trying to accomplish.

Chris Vest
Director, Public Policy
ASAE

[updated with new posts as of May 5, 10:00am EST]

Whew, what a weekend. The first full week of the campaign and we’ve already heard a lot of insightful feedback. We want you to know that we’re listening and we want to hear more from you. In case you missed it, here’s a rundown of some of the posts, all of them thoughtful responses:

Deirdre Reid’s The Natives Are Restless - How Do You Respond?

Maggie McGary’s The Power of..Huh?

Lynn Morton’s Power of A, lets take it to the next level!

Chris Bailey’s The Power of A, So Close Yet So Far Away

[Added May 5th]

David Sabol’s The Power of…Missed Opportunities

Jamie Notter’s The Power of Frustration

Right off the bat, we’ve already made some changes based on some posts over the first week.  We’ve changed the ‘add your association’ feature to a more inclusive ‘get involved.’ We never intended to exclude non-association members from the conversation, only to track who was participating from what association. To one writer’s point, readers may have thought we only wanted to hear from other associations. That’s not the case at all. Great point. Change made.

Second, it’s worth addressing the point made in many of the posts about who the target audience should be. As we noted in the release announcing the campaign, the “top priority is to inform decision makers on Capitol Hill, particularly those individuals who comprise the group of newest political gatekeepers to the American public.”

While that will remain the primary focus, we certainly hope the Power of A demonstrates the value of associations to everyone – members and non-members, association bloggers, and the general public across all industries.

We view this to be the beginning of a larger awareness effort. We are starting with a focus Inside the Beltway because we have an opportunity right now to get in front of many new faces within the administration and on Capitol Hill, and because of the magnitude of the legislative and regulatory challenges facing these decision-makers right now.

Imagine if you were sitting across the table today with a member of the Obama administration or a legislative director for a member of Congress. What would you want them to know about your association and your members that might assist them in crafting good policy? Consider The Power of A site as your opportunity to start that important conversation.

We need the content from you to make this work:

• Post: submit a guest post either here on the Power of A, or write about what an association is working on right now on your own blog.
• Submit your videos: “short, sweet, to the point, and not overly produced” (as Lynn Morton described) video clips telling the story that demonstrates the Power of A.
• Tweet about it: (yes, both positive and negative comments) using the #pwra hashtag. Your tweets will be aggregated on the Power of A homepage.

Also, I do want to address a concern I noted in a couple of posts, and that has to do with member dues helping to finance an expensive PR campaign. Perhaps this hasn’t been conveyed clearly enough, but in no way is The Power of A financed by ASAE & The Center’s member dues. The campaign is fully supported by our Associations Advance America (AAA) Fund, a separate fund fueled entirely by contributions from members who support ASAE’s advocacy and public outreach efforts on behalf of the association community.

We’ll continue to listen to the conversation and make changes. From the very beginning the Power of A was meant to be an iterative process; a site that evolved over time. As association bloggers, members, and enthusiasts, we’ll need your help and participation as the site evolves. Join in the conversation; tell us what your association is doing. We’re all ears.

John Graham,

President & CEO

ASAE & The Center