Innovation Drives Double Digit Association Growth

March 13, 2013

innovationInnovation and ROI Drives Double Digit Association Growth.  Revenue growth is challenging in any environment. Regardless, constant innovation helped Gregory Casey, President and CEO,  BIPAC  http://www.bipac.net/(Business and Industry Political Action Committee) achieve double digit revenue growth and membership growth over the past decade.

Changed the Game

BIPAC delivers grass roots tools to help Corporations and Associations reach public policy goals. However, it is Casey’s persistent focus on maintaining the organization’s relevance with high impact tools that served as a game changer. Testing new technology platforms and always challenging his team to keep looking around the corner reflect the centerpiece of BIPAC’s culture.

Pain Points and Core Connections

BIPAC maintains a crisp focus on how members achieve their business objectives. It’s programs and services connects to and drive business outcomes through grass roots advocacy. The Rule of Thumb applies to BIPAC’s success; the greater the connection to “pain point” issues, the greater the degree of revenue growth.

Utilizing its programs (Prosperity Fund, Prosperity Project, PAC Resources and Political Analysis among others) BIPAC delivers actionable resources to inform and activate employees on priority public policy issues. Through its state deployment partners, BIPAC boasts its “50 State” grass roots capacity for Companies and Association who participate.

 

Silicon Valley Innovation Culture

Founded in 1963 as the nations’ first business bipartisan and independent political action committee, BIPAC continually evolves.  The organization invests and reinvests in new technologies to help Companies and Associations with customized technology solutions to accelerate grass roots policy impact with Congress.

Challenges and Opportunities

Not unlike any other Association or organization, BIPAC too has its share of market impediments. Making complex economic issues relevant to employees can be at times a substantial challenge says Casey. However, by leveraging technology as its most potent asset, they deliver results.

 

Innovation Drives Double Digit Association Growth

If necessity is the mother of invention, BIPAC is a good example of how innovation can be the mother of double digit growth.

How does your Association apply innovation to deliver new products and services to its members?

Much more on Association Revenue Growth at www.potomaccore.com/blog

Trade Association Insights: The only certainty is uncertainty

October 24, 2023

Trade Associations that utilize uncertainty to evolve their value propositions will be in a much better position to engage their members, grow their membership, and more effectively shape the business environment for the Industry they serve. Based on rapid moving competitive issues, cost pressures and the risk of increased military conflict, Trade Associations have an unprecedented opportunity to be the solution that Industries and Members are seeking. For Trade Association CEO’s thinking through their 2024 strategic moves, it’s a time for reimagination.

Unknown Unknowns Reshapes Strategic Planning

August 30, 2023

CEOs aren’t just focused on the current disruptions anymore, they are leaning in and identifying the unimaginable (unknown unknowns). For company Executives and Trade Association CEOs, it’s imperative to account for the unimaginable, and this happens by incorporating Scenario Planning into Strategic Planning efforts. Scenario Planning broadens Strategic Planning deliberations, and it forces consideration of most eventualities. In a marketplace defined by disruption and chronic uncertainty, the unimaginable must be addressed in every Strategic Planning process.

Association Reimagination: Speak From the Voice of Members

August 1, 2023

What’s clear is that Association Members don’t hesitate to vote with their feet and go somewhere else. Business challenges and an uncertain economy are causing professionals to evaluate how they invest time and money. Recognizing this trend, Boards seize upon the opportunity to reimagine their Association through their Strategic Planning Process. Reimagination occurs through the eyes of the Member in what is identified as “outside in” strategic planning. A highly successful example of this type of approach was utilized by the United States Naval Academy Alumni Association.

Strategic Partnerships Can Help Transform Industries

February 28, 2023

 

As change, disruption and technology take hold, companies are banding together with their supply chains to build a new future. These efforts are happening between industries and their trade associations, and they are building robust strategic partnerships. One of the more visible successes is between the Helicopter Industry and HAI (Helicopter Association International). This strategic partnership is helping a disrupted industry transform itself from the Helicopter Industry to the Vertical Aviation Industry. The broader definition incorporates all companies engaged in vertical take-off and landing aircraft that can operate without a runway.

Uncertainty Opens Doors For Industry and Trade Association Breakthroughs

January 10, 2023

Nowadays, there’s a lot of conversation of what cannot be done. Many say we are in uncharted waters, and that is true because uncertainty keeps reaching new orders of magnitude. The Federal Reserve continues to raise interest rates to tame inflation, job openings break new ground surging past 10 million, military conflict persists in Ukraine, gasoline prices are heading higher again. Some say that a longer-term cohesive industry growth strategy is not feasible.

Strategic Partnerships Change the Game for Industries

December 13, 2022

Some great strategic partnerships were created to weather tough times. COVID-19 was an especially difficult time,  impacting profits, workers, families, and the U.S. economy. Most writing on strategic partnerships focuses on how companies have combined their strengths and mitigated their weaknesses to expand customer bases and achieve far more together than they could separately. However, there are more prodigious, inclusive, and ambitious types of strategic partnerships—the sort that change the game for entire industries. These take shape between industries and their trade associations.

David Chavern

September 13, 2022

“Reimagining Industry Growth is a powerful exploration of what is possible when businesses work together. Our economy is appropriately based on competition. But some challenges are too profound — and some opportunities too great — to be addressed by individual companies. Strategic partnerships create outcomes that are far greater than the sum of the parts. Dan Varroney explores exactly what goes into such partnerships and provides a roadmap for those trying to build something beyond what people currently imagine.”

Expertise & Services

October 11, 2021

Building Industry and Profession Centric Strategic Partnerships that Employ Market Research, Strategic Planning, and Scenario Planning

Professional Market Research:
Surface Critical Challenges and Outcomes

  • Stakeholder interviews
  • Focus Groups
  • Alignment & Business Impact Surveys
  • Value Proposition & Alignment Surveys
  • Governance Alignment and Member Engagement
    Surveys

Strategic Partnerships are functional relationships that align in a precompetitive space to overcome the biggest challenges, and then help Industries and Trade Associations shape a more favorable external environment.

Research Guided Strategies:
Shape the External Environment

  • Customer Centric Strategic Partnerships
  • Strategic Industry Plans
  • Scenario Planning
  • Transformation Plans
  • Association Governance
  • Industry Ecosystem Development
  • Post-Merger Integration Planning
  • Value Proposition Development
  • Product development
  • 3 year workbooks, roadmaps, and metrics

Board members work towards common threads of unanimity with other board members and staff to employ actionable market research to launch the strategic partnership process.

Executive Coaching Solutions:
Support Professional Development and Industry Success

  • Overcoming impediments
  • Shaping the external environment
  • Building strategic partnerships
  • Long- term growth for the industry and the association

Harnessing vibrant communities is one of the keys to success in any arena.

Members Hire Relevant Associations

February 11, 2019

Members Hire Relevant Associations Associations have endured downturns before, what’s different this time is the valuable lesson learned after the great recession, that Members hire relevant Associations. Boards and their CEOs aren’t interested  in hemorrhaging balance sheets that come from dues losses and shrinking Trade Show revenues. Regardless of the economic climate, organizations are committed to keeping their organizations relevant. From 2009 forward, leading Associations find ways to maintain their relevance and are perceived as the Industry or the Profession. If a global downturn occurs, Associations should prepare and conduct a rigorous and research driven relevance test.

Associations who want to pass the relevance test should initiate conversations with their Boards or Executive Committees to:

  • Talk through and quantify the sources and the business impact of market challenges.
  • Brainstorm with leaders on how the Association can be helpful in a strategic manner that benefits the entire Industry or Profession.
  • Build nimble strategies to address new or critical Industry or Professional challenges and opportunities.
  • Develop metrics and key performance indicators with Board leaders to measure how relevant your Association is to the member’s marketplace.
  • Report back regularly on how aligned the Association is with these metrics and key performance indicators at Board meetings.
  • Have ongoing strategic conversations about Industry or Professional challenges and opportunities.

Members hire relevant associations Relevance is about being connected to the member marketplace with resources geared toward helping your members overcome challenges & achieve success. Associations who utilize this approach understand that Members hire relevant Associations, which means these organizations are built to withstand downturns and thrive during healthy economies. What makes these Associations especially relevant is how their strategies and products position them as either “Industry or Profession solution partners” with their Boards and members:

members hire relevant associations

Heidi Biggs Brock

The Aluminum Association – Heidi Biggs Brock, President and CEO, works with her team to continually refine the organizations focus and stay connected with the Aluminum Industry’s evolving challenges and business outcomes. The Association utilizes actionable data to brainstorm with Executive Committee members about current emerging challenges to ensure that they are focused on quantifiable outcomes that move the needle for the Industry. The strategies that the organization develops have Key Performance Indicators and are reported through a Scorecard in the Aluminum Association’s Annual Report.

members hire relevant associations

 Donna Orem

National Association of Independent Schools – Provides services to more than 1,800 schools and associations of schools in the United States and abroad, including more than 1,500 independent private K-12 schools in the U.S. In formulating its strategies, NAIS embraced an underlying premise that in today’s marketplace “people no longer buy products or services. Instead they hire them to make progress.” Based on the Clayton M. Christiansen “Jobs To Be Done” approach in his more recent book Competing Against Luck, the NAIS team utilized this approach to develop value propositions that addressed the struggles that heads of schools and administrators face and to understand how those struggles change as they progress through their careers. The Association is led by its President Donna Orem.

Members Hire Relevant Associations

Melissa Hockstad

American Cleaning Institute – The organization is positioned to help its members overcome challenges and find pathways to business growth through each of the following Industry focused strategies:

  • Thought leadership and Industry promotion.
  • ACI Annual Convention that provides opportunities for the Industry to market and sell products. The most recent Convention had record setting attendance.
  • Industry centered Advocacy to help members protect their intellectual property and product category reputation.

The organization’s President & CEO, Melissa Hockstad, engages members on a regular basis as part of an organizational “listen in” program and connects with her Board to surface any new opportunities to support Industry growth.

members hire relevant associations

     Julia Hamm

The Smart Electric Power Alliance’s key focus is to bring all distributed energy resources to the conversation in order to develop, share, and build practical solutions for the entire Industry. The membership comprises utilities, large energy users, as well as for-profit and non-profit corporations and SEPA’s overall focus is on grid modernization. The Alliance conducts Industry focused Board meetings where executives share knowledge, address Industry challenges and devise solutions. In addition, the Alliance provides unbiased and actionable research and Advisory Services to Utilities to help them address the challenges of a clean energy landscape. Led by Julia Hamm, the organization’s President and CEO, the Alliance maintains its neutrality, does not advocate or take positions on issues, drive trends, or pick favorites.

Each organization’s Industry or Profession focused approached positioned them for a possible downturn because they understand that Members hire relevant Associations.

Members Hire Relevant Associations

As Associations think through a possible global slowdown, the 22nd PWC Annual Global CEO survey provides insights that could be beneficial in the rigorous relevance test that you are about to conduct. The survey reveals that in 2019:

  • Data about customers and clients needs and preferences is viewed as critically important in CEO decision making.
  • 436% increase in the number of CEOs who expect global economic growth to decline.
  • 16% decrease in CEOs who say they are “very confident” in revenue prospects for the next 12 months.
  • Some of the top ten threats include: over regulation, policy uncertainty, availability of key skills, trade conflicts, cyber threats, geopolitical uncertainty, protectionism, populism, speed of technological change, and exchange rate volatility.
  • CEOs seeking growth will pivot inward to drive revenue growth and focus on operational efficiencies, launch a new product or service, enter a new market, new mergers and acquisition opportunities, collaborate with entrepreneurs or startups, or sell a business.

members hire relevant associationsStrong U.S. economic performance shouldn’t shield concerns voiced by global CEOs who in many cases are Association dues decision makers. Reinforcing these results is the monthly Wall Street Journal Small Business Survey conducted by Vistage. Of those surveyed, 14%  expect the economy to improve while 36% expect it to worsen among owners of firms with revenues ranging between $1 and $20 million.  The PWC and Wall Street Journal surveys introduce new information that should be the impetus for your organization to conduct a rigorous relevance test soon.  Waiting only adds to your Association’s risk, the timing to transform your organization into an Industry or Professional Solution Partner is immediate. Note to self: Members hire relevant Associations.

To learn more about how your organization can become a relevant Association click here.