“In Their Own Words” commemorates the 20^th anniversary of the CMCA credential.  We’ll hear from CMCAs who’ve reached important milestones this year:  their 10^th, 15^thand 20^th anniversary of earning and retaining the Essential Credential. It’s a snapshot of who we are as a community and a glimpse into how some CMCAs entered the profession, what they love about their work and some of the challenges they face.

By Stephanie Durner, CMCA, AMS

Stephanie is the Director of Community Management at River Landing, a private gated golf course community in Wallace, NC.  She has held and retained the CMCA credential for 10 years.

Becoming a community association manager was a big career change for me.  I spent 20 years in television working as an anchor, reporter and producer, primarily covering NASCAR racing.  I quickly discovered when I got married and had children that a schedule which involved racing more than 36 weekends per year was not very conducive to family life. When my husband had a business opportunity near his hometown and away from the heart of NASCAR, I decided it was time to follow a different path.

During my time in NASCAR I had been serving as a volunteer representative for my community association near Charlotte, NC. When my family moved, that experience led me to apply for a job with River Landing. I found my background and skills in communications really helped and supported my role as a community association manager. But as a newcomer to the industry, I still had a lot to learn.

I joined CAI and took advantage of all of their resources. I quickly decided to earn the CMCA credential as it’s a critical element of the profession. Earning the credential 10 years ago helped launch my career but it continues to help me today.  Like the TV industry – things move very quickly and change is inevitable. I love taking advantage of the CECs offered and I utilize the wealth of other resources available on a regular basis.  Whether I’m tapping into the network of peers, participating in an industry event or reading a new research study – I feel I’ve got the support system needed to enhance my role as a strong CMCA.

Homeowners benefit every day from the work we do. Whether it’s managing daily operations and budgets to ensure things are operating smoothly, to troubleshooting a water, sewer or architectural issue, or coordinating a wildlife seminar to help our homeowners co-exist with nature in this rural community, we touch all aspects of their lives. It’s very satisfying to see the work I do appreciated and to see my commitment to my career, demonstrated by the CMCA credential, recognized. I know this is a career that, with the resources available through both CAI and CAMICB, I’m well trained to do.

(oatawa/iStock/Getty Images Plus) 

Ensuring the safety of your event is important, but if a sexual harassment incident comes up at your event, due process needs to be considered as well.

1. Make sure the person who was targeted feels safe. “We might need to move their hotel room, provide any additional security, help them travel home earlier, and help them file a police report,” says Entomological Society of America Director of Meetings Rosina Romano, CMP. Following up with them to let them know action has been taken is also important.

2. Decide who has the final say. Sherry Marts, president and CEO of S*Marts Consulting, LLC, advises setting up a system that can decide what to do about a harasser quickly. The board could delegate the responsibility to the executive director, or it could be handled by a small group of designated officials, such as the executive director, president, and president-elect. “This is, to some extent, a safety issue,” she says. “If you’ve got someone doing this at your meeting, you want them out of there.”

3. But don’t be too hasty. Julia Judish, special counsel at Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman, LLP, warns against acting without establishing procedures and providing notice of those procedures to members. “There can be—with the best impulses—the desire to be responsive and take action when something is reported,” she says. But under basic concepts of due process and fair procedures, associations need to give the person who’s affected notice and an opportunity to respond before imposing discipline.

By Allison Torres Burtka for Associations Now, a publication of the American Society of Association Executives.

By Ernie Smith / Apr 9, 2018 (bilhagolan/iStock/Getty Images Plus) 

A member engagement expert applies three fundamental laws of physics to everyone’s favorite association topic.

Here at Associations Now, we’ve highlighted lots of ways to think about membership. But a Newtonian approach to member engagement—as in Isaac Newton? That’s a new one.

Kudos to Rhinocorn Consulting’s Ben Bisbee, writing at the Wild Apricot Blog, who has a creative take on how Newton’s three laws of motion can be applied to member engagement:

1. “An individual tends to not engage unless acted upon by someone engaging them.”
2. “An individual will continue to engage or grow their engagement when a nonprofit continues to engage or advances the engagement.”
3. “When your nonprofit is matching the engagement of the stakeholder, your organization is met with equal relationship engagement.”

“Just as Newton’s laws of motion define the relationship between a body and the forces acting upon it, Newtonian Engagement does the same for the [member] relationship development and design,” Bisbee writes. “Having a need, options, or an opportunity does not automatically create motion, movement, or friction. The same is true with engagement.” He adds that organizations need to “invest strategically in the design of their engagement dynamics.”

Whether or not you agree with that analysis, one thing is for sure: It’s a fresh way of thinking about one of the most important issues facing associations.

From Associations Now, a publication of the American Society of Association Executives.

By Tim Ebner / Oct 18, 2017 (nicolas_/Getty Images Plus)

Getting your members on board with a bold strategic initiative that they may not initially welcome isn’t easy.

To sweeten the deal, the CEO of the National Confectioners Association conducted a listening tour to hear members’ concerns and share data that helped win them over.

Sometimes the most powerful way to persuade is to stop talking and just listen.

That approach has been a big success for the National Confectioners Association, which has been working to convince candy companies to sign on to a strategic initiative that NCA understood would not be an immediate hit among members: a nutritional and dietary commitment that gives consumers more product information and choice.

“It’s very challenging and very difficult to bring an entire industry together under a very bold change agenda,” says NCA President and CEO John Downs. “You have to go and meet members where they are. Really, the job of any association is at the intersection of business, policy, politics, and diplomacy.”

For about 18 months, Downs was on the road meeting on factory floors and at regional facilities. While he traveled, he heard a common issue from members—consumer demand was reshaping the industry. Candy lovers wanted smaller portion sizes.

“I call it the democracy of choice,” Downs says. “That helped us to realize that we needed a new kind of messaging and purposeful positioning for our product.”

After the tour, Downs met with some of the biggest names in the industry—member companies like Nestlé, Mars, and Wrigley. Ultimately NCA launched a strategic initiative called Always A Treat, a member agreement to create smaller portion sizes and produce packaging with clearer labels and calorie counts.

While listening tours can be a useful way for association executives to get to know their members and their industry when getting started in a new CEO position, Downs says these opportunities to meet face-to-face with members are especially valuable for strategic purposes. Here are four lessons that he learned on the road:

1. Come and go with data. Meeting with members where they work can reveal valuable insights into the nuts and bolts of their business operations. “That gives you a much better understanding of their supply chain and the complexities of their business operations,” he says. Throughout his tour, Downs carried with him aggregate member data that he could compare and contextualize with individual members. By sharing data, he built a “platform of understanding” that served as the basis for discussions about the Always a Treat initiative.
2. Travel less, listen more. Downs logged a lot of miles on the road, and at one point, about 70 percent of his time was dedicated to travel. That can come at a cost to your staff, budget, and office presence, he notes. Even when your members are far away, consider whether virtual meetings, using video conferencing or 360-degree video tools, can accomplish the same goals and feel nearly as personal as an onsite visit. In some cases, a listening tour might a quick two-hour office visit just down the road.

3. Benchmark with third-party experts. To track progress and measure the success of the Always a Treat initiative, NCA formed partnerships with vetted, third-party organizations, including Partnership for a Healthier America and Hudson Institute, a research firm. These partners helped to survey members and eventually will provide progress reports to measure outcomes. “It challenges us to hit on specific metrics that we set out,” Downs says.

4. Share your learnings. The listening tour would not have been complete without sharing what was learned. Downs says the Always a Treat website is a digital hub to share resources and information publicly, including data on nutrition, packaging, and ingredient information for consumers.

While a handful of big-name members have come on board to support Always a Treat since the listening tour, Downs says he’s still trying to recruit a number of small and medium-sized members.

“You have to continue to repeat, reinforce, and bring [members] along with an understanding of bold change,” he says. “We’re on this journey together, and we’re going to continue working to recruit additional companies in the years to come.”

From Associations Now, a publication of the American Society of Association Executives.

By Tim Ebner /(PeopleImages/Getty Images Plus)

Take a do-it-yourself approach to board self-assessments.

When it’s time for a board to evaluate its own performance, some associations turn to standardized self-assessment tools. But not all self-assessments are created equal, especially if you have a complex governance structure like the one at the New England Interstate Water Pollution Control Commission.

NEIWPCC has 35 board members, also known as commissioners, who are appointed by governors in each of its seven member states. “We toe the line between an association, a nonprofit, and a pseudo-government agency,” says Cambria Happ, CAE, the organization’s business operations manager and board liaison.

Last year, NEIWPCC set out to conduct its first board self-assessment, and Happ was looking for a tool that would reflect its leaders, who are state administrators, engineers, and consultants.

The main finding was that we needed to have a little more focus on board training.

“A lot of the options out there were too lengthy, and the terminology didn’t quite fit our organization,” she says. “Given the diversity of our board members’ backgrounds, it was clear that we needed an assessment tool that felt familiar to everyone.”

Rather than pay for a prebuilt self-assessment, NEIWPCC took a do-it-yourself approach. Using SurveyMonkey, Happ built an online survey with customized questions and unique survey pathing. “We decided to use paths so that the questions could vary for agency or nonagency commissioners,” she says. “It got us to some very specific information from each respondent.”

Happ knew that the assessment wouldn’t be useful without a high level of participation. She distributed the survey with a cover letter, explaining that responses were anonymous and valuable to the organization. And the online format made participating easy.

“If you have everyone in a room and give them a piece of paper, yes, that helps with your response rate, but I don’t think you get as thorough or thoughtful a response as you do with an online self-assessment,” Happ says.

From start to finish, the self-assessment took about four months to create and administer. The timing felt a bit rushed, Happ says, and it may be why the survey did not receive a 100 percent response rate. Plus, there’s at least one downside to the do-it-yourself approach—you can’t benchmark results the way some off-the-shelf products do.

“Something that we are focused on now is increasing the response rate,” Happ says.

But already there have been some quick wins from the first self-assessment. NEIWPCC is changing how it orients new commissioners, and the quality of board conversation has gone up.

“The main finding was that we needed to have a little more focus on board training. Now, we are focused on the onboarding process for new members and continuing that education over time,” Happ says. “Overall, the board is excited to engage in a different level of discussion now.”

From Associations Now, a publication of the American Society of Association Executives.