When your association surprises you - in a good way - they've remixed their membership. When your association does something worth modeling in your own organizations - they've remixed their membership. When those two things happened to me, I just had to pick up the phone and find out more. Check out my SmartBlog Insights posting for the rest of the story on how an association shifted how they looked at the membership cycle and rethought engagement.  Love to hear your feedback!

I had the opportunity to speak with three different groups of volunteer leaders this week and in each case we talked about the challenge of increasing member engagement. What struck me was that the focus of engagement is on the “big ticket items” of event attendance or volunteer leadership (read serve on committee or board). It will be difficult if not impossible for us to increase engagement if we keep this focus so narrow.  And there is a lot at stake.

I paid my dues on-line today to continue my membership in ASAE & The Center. No, it's not cause to alert the media or sound the trumpets. I've been doing this steadily since about 1981. Some years, it was paid by my association, a few out of my pocket and of course the last 8 through my association management company (read my own pocket). So what's the cause for the announcement? Well, I paid on-line as the result of an annual reminder set-up in the finance folder. The announcement is: I didn't need a 5-step dues billing invoice system to renew.

Here are two posts worth the time to read (and it won't take long) that will help chapters and associations address member communications ...

What made the Buzz2009 experience special? Well, all the buzz and ...

I did it! I earned my CAE credential. That’s Certified Association Executive, the highest professional credential in the association industry (as the credential’s sponsor ASAE & The Center calls it). According to ASAE, less than 5% of all association professionals have earned the CAE – that’s more than 3,500 individuals.

A familiar refrain in the song about embracing social media goes like this “it’s about listening.” David Alston of Radian6 gives us another verse in his presentation on "I Love Stories" captured over at the Conversation Agent blog.  It’s 45 slides but skip to #30 to learn the ten conversations you need to listen for in social media. The one to focus in on is #1: The point of need. How can we as associations remain relevant if we don’t know the changing needs of our customer base? And, how can we grow if we don’t anticipate future needs?

David is obviously talking about social media conversations. I would suggest that these conversations are happening in many places around our associations in addition to the social media sphere. Take your components (you know chapters, communities of practice, councils, sections, SIGs) for example. These are natural places for your customers to gather and they do talk about their needs and about you. Are you listening?

Ever noticed how when the going gets tough, we begin to expect more problems? Like in associations who are predicting that we’ll see softer renewals, fewer registrants and less volunteers around the table? (As an aside, read ASAE & The Center's new research for some comfort.)

With this conversation playing all around, it was a delight to stumble upon Ken Thomas’s posting on Six Ways to Engage People in Tough Times. I’d recommend association’s read Ken for two reasons ...

This afternoon my association sent me an email with the subject line “Economic Resources Update - 2.27.09 - Will Your Members Stay?, 7 Strategies for a Recession.” It caught my eye. It offered a new service for me as a valued member. The new service is free. It’s easy to access. It offers a variety of channels from the blog to white papers to video clips.

TwitterFriends gives you your 'conversation and link quotient' which says TwiTip helps measure how relational you are on Twitter (read more and see awesome graphs here). In a nutshell, TwitterFriends is a statistics package that tracks you and your friends.

Imagine an association version that gives members an engagement quotient. We could then see how membersare  connecting with others, how often they are connecting and in what ways. We could then begin to see what services and programs they are really using and recommending.

Possible?