Spark Consulting

SEPTEMBER 20, 2023

Climate change and sustainability are increasingly in the news and showing up as a key topic for the association industry. Association execs are realizing that climate change is not just a moral imperative, it’s a business imperative. To quote ASAE from their well-attended webinar on this topic back in May: “Either as part of Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) initiatives or looking at impact and legacy, associations are increasingly grappling with the role sustainability plays in suppo

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Spark Consulting

MAY 8, 2023

We ABSOLUTELY can. People associate in order to solve problems that are, individually, intractable. I can’t think of a more important problem that’s not amenable to individual solutions than climate change. Shelly Alcorn and I were honored to discuss the association role in combatting climate change with Elisa Brewer Pratt on a recent episode of the Association Transformation podcast.

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Spark Consulting

MARCH 3, 2023

I recently had the opportunity to participate in Association Charrette , a project of Vista Cova, facilitated by Lowell Apelbaum. Most commonly used in design focused industries (architecture, urban planning, landscaping), charrettes “…serve as a way of quickly generating a design solution while integrating the aptitudes and interests of a diverse group of people.

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Industry Project Innovation Report 195

Spark Consulting

FEBRUARY 14, 2023

Would you like to learn more about how you can improve your information literacy and become a more discerning and knowledgeable consumer and sponsor of research? Caveat Emptor co-author Polly Karpowicz and I recently had the opportunity to sit down (virtually) with Jeff Cobb (Tagoras) for an episode of the Leading Learning podcast, where we discussed some fundamental issues in research study design, like primary versus secondary research, qualitative and quantitative research, mixed research met

Case Study 195

Case Study Course Tips Education 195

Spark Consulting

DECEMBER 7, 2022

And finally, coming in at #1 in the Spark All-Time Top 10 Blog Posts (and it wasn’t even close): Membership 101: The Welcome Series. First written more than five years ago, this post remains the first or second most visited page on my entire website month after month (thanks, Google Analytics!). Once again, I’m finding that the advice I provided, gleaned both from my own years as a membership director and my time working with clients, holds up: Create a drip campaign, mix your method

Communications 195

Communications Team Report 195

Spark Consulting

NOVEMBER 8, 2022

We’re almost at the end of the revisiting of the top ten all-time Spark blog posts in honor of Spark’s tenth anniversary! Coming in at the #2 spot: Strategic Planning v. Strategic Thinking. In the original post, I highlighted Henry Mintzberg’s well-known Harvard Business Review piece “ The Fall and Rise of Strategic Planning ,” in which he encourages us to focus on creating dynamic, flexible visions of the future that accommodate disruption and allow us to rapidly respon

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Event Planning Review Strategy Project 195

Spark Consulting

OCTOBER 13, 2022

On Tuesday, October 11, Shelly Alcorn hosted Joan Eisenstodt and me on The Phoenix Cast for an important conversation about association meetings in a post-Roe world. Just as meetings are starting to recover from pandemic shutdowns, new (and old) laws are putting pregnant attendees at significant risk. The key thing I think associations need to take from our conversation is that choices about where we host our meetings could be putting pregnant attendees at SIGNIFICANT risk if they have a medic

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Phoenix Industry Video Leadership 195

Spark Consulting

SEPTEMBER 20, 2022

Would you like to learn more about the critical skills you need to be a responsible consumer and sponsor of research? Would you like to hear directly from association execs who are doing good work in their own organizations about how they do it? Join me and my Caveat Emptor: Becoming a Responsible Consumer of Research co-author Polly Karpowicz on Wednesday, October 26 for a FREE webinar where we’ll review the findings of the whitepaper, share a plain-language review of key concepts and ap

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Review Education Industry Organization 39

Spark Consulting

SEPTEMBER 9, 2022

As Zora Neale Hurston described it: Research is formalized curiosity. It is poking and prying with a purpose. When you’re sponsoring a research study, one of the biggest decisions you’ll have to make is what method(s) to use. What are your choices? Quantitative v. Qualitative. Primary v. Secondary. You also have some decisions to make about data collection.

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Survey Innovation Strategy Leadership 195

Spark Consulting

SEPTEMBER 8, 2022

And why should you care? Associations generate a lot of original research, but association execs also use a lot of research created by other entities both to assess the internal operations of the association as a tax-exempt business and to understand what’s happening in the industry or profession the association serves. And let’s face it: Lots of research terms are pretty jargon-y.

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Sample Industry Report Innovation 30

Spark Consulting

SEPTEMBER 7, 2022

Association execs consume – and produce – a lot of research in our day-to-day work, but most of us don’t have formal training in research. A lot of the language of research programs– p-values and confidence intervals and margins of error – can be pretty jargony, and some of the concepts behind what makes for good (or less good) research can be challenging for people who haven’t had the opportunity to take a graduate level methods course.

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Case Study Course Review Team 30

Spark Consulting

AUGUST 3, 2022

We’re at the midpoint of the Top 10 All-Time Spark blog posts, with #5: 10 Tips for Creating an Effective Marketing Piece. The original piece was written in response to a conference presentation I’ve given a handful of times, where I ask participants to submit their marketing pieces ahead of time, I work with the sponsoring organization to mount them on foamboard and place them around the room on easels in advance, and then after sharing the 10 Tips, I hand the attendees markers and

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Tips Marketing Sample Library 195

Spark Consulting

JUNE 29, 2022

In position number 7 of the top ten all time Spark blog posts: Membership 101: Exit Surveys. (I told you the Membership 101 series would be back!). Once again, the advice in the initial post remains solid. To this day, I regularly recommend conducting an exit survey as part of client projects, or as something they should start doing on their own after we’re done, or both.

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Survey Team Examples Project 221

Spark Consulting

JUNE 8, 2022

In position number 8 of the top ten all time Spark blog posts: Membership 101: Effective Renewal Cycles. (Spoiler alert: you’re going to see more of the Membership 101 series posts in the countdown.). When I reviewed the initial post, I realized everything I wrote still holds four years later. I still walk clients through this process today in creating renewal campaigns, answering questions about goals, audience(s), offer, message, tactics/platforms, resources, schedule and responsibilitie

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Discount Examples System Resources 195

Spark Consulting

JANUARY 14, 2022

I recently had the opportunity to participate in the January 2022 Association Insights In Old Town (ASAE login required) virtual educational session, Better Engage Your Members and Attendees to Solve Association Problems , led by Better Meetings ‘s Lee Gimpel. It was one of the best educational sessions I’ve attended in some time. Lee crafted an effective and highly interactive session that showed rather than told us how to craft a session that would actually get people working wit

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Revenue Education Organization How To 370

Spark Consulting

OCTOBER 1, 2021

Join me and the nice folks from Grype Digital on Tuesday, October 12 at 3:30 pm ET for Explosive Growth for Associations Through Better Membership Management , the second episode of their second season of video podcasts. On the pod, we’ll talk about things like: Levels of engagement (not everyone wants to be maximally engaged, and that’s OK!).

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Membership Management Video How To 221

Spark Consulting

SEPTEMBER 22, 2021

One last question from my brief series on member engagement, inspired by serving on a virtual panel on engagement, organized by Mary Byers, for the Veterinary Medical Association. Would you rather have a lot of members lightly engaged or fewer members more deeply engaged? First, I guarantee your association does not have the capacity to support every member being fully engaged with everything the association does or offers.

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Member Engagement Examples Industry Organization 195

Spark Consulting

AUGUST 31, 2021

Back before Maddie and I launched The No BS Guide to Digital Transformation , I had been writing a brief series on member engagement, inspired by serving on a virtual panel on engagement, organized by Mary Byers, for the Veterinary Medical Association. We had talked about things like engagement lessons for the pandemic and who is doing engagement well.

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Spark Consulting

JUNE 3, 2021

In our research for The No BS Guide to Digital Transformation: How Intentional Culture Change Can Propel Associations Forward , Maddie Grant and I learned that, while associations definitely still have work to do on the technology front, it’s not technology that’s holding our industry back: it’s culture, and more specifically, culture change.

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Technology Industry Innovation 195

Spark Consulting

MAY 25, 2021

I’m so excited to announce that the next Spark collaborative whitepaper will be dropping ONE week from today. In it, Maddie Grant (Digital Strategist, PROPEL ) and I discuss digital transformation for associations, seeking to address what makes the process of digital transformation different for associations. Spoiler alert: it’s culture.

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Project Process Organization Innovation 195

Spark Consulting

MAY 6, 2021

Two weeks ago, I had the opportunity to appear on a virtual panel on engagement, organized by Mary Byers, for the Veterinary Medical Association. We covered a wide range of topics, a few of which I think others would benefit from thinking about, so I’ll be doing a few related blog posts. Of course, the pandemic was top of mind for everyone. As vaccination rates rise, people (including your members and other audiences) are cautiously poking their heads out of their pandemic hibernation, try

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Video Survey Course Member Experience 370

Spark Consulting

APRIL 6, 2021

Associations tend to default to a formal tone in communications. It feels safe. It can be hard to nail being appropriately funny, and no one ever got in trouble for being excessively formal, right? Well, no. A colleague recently shared some “tips” that had been sent to presenters for an association virtual event by the virtual event provider.

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Tips Examples Communications Organization 221

Spark Consulting

MARCH 16, 2021

Today marks one year since DC shut down for the pandemic. I wrote a Twitter thread to memorialize that fact, and realized I should probably have written a blog post, even though it’s not very association-y. So here it is. One year ago today, DC shut down for the pandemic. One year ago yesterday, I went to my last in-person boxing class at Nuboxx and had my last meal in a restaurant (brunch with friends at Coconut Club at Union Market).

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Class DC Sample Process 195

Spark Consulting

FEBRUARY 5, 2021

The Partnership v. Membership blog point-counterpoint series I was writing with Lewis Flax got abandoned a little abruptly almost exactly one year ago. I don’t know about you, but I could use some closure. And, of course, there’s the question of: How is all of this impacted by the pandemic, and the massive disruption in pretty much every aspect of our lives that’s resulted?

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Revenue Course Industry Resources 195

Spark Consulting

DECEMBER 4, 2020

As we look to 2021, I see three main membership challenges for associations: Remember that membership is a lagging indicator. Per Marketing General’s annual Membership Marketing Benchmarking Report , the Q4 2007 economic crash didn’t fully show up in association metrics until 2009. As hard as this is to hear, given what’s happened in associations this year (canceled meetings, revenue down, staff layoffs), it’s unlikely we’ve seen the bottom yet, and it’s likely we won’t see it for another

Revenue 221

Revenue Committee Maine Conference 221

Spark Consulting

SEPTEMBER 28, 2020

I’m participating in a fundraiser for my favorite nonprofit organization, Reading Partners (where I’m both a tutor and a board member), and ?I’m asking for your financial support.?. Reading Partners works to ensure students from low-income households have the literacy skills they need to succeed in school and life. Although the pandemic has had a significant impact on the ways we work with our young scholars and their families, Reading Partners’ mission remains the same: helping children b

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Library DC Organization 170

Spark Consulting

AUGUST 31, 2020

And why should associations care? Shelly Alcorn (Ubiquity University and Alcon Associates Management Consulting) and I will be presenting for CalSAE on The Perils and Promise of Blockchain Wednesday, September 30. “Hm,” you may be thinking, “I’m not IN California. Why is Elizabeth telling me this?” Because CalSAE’s annual ELEVATE meeting has been converted into a series of Virtual Summits taking place for four consecutive Wednesdays in September, starting Sept

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California Technology Industry Association Management 150

Spark Consulting

JULY 13, 2020

Mark your calendar to join me Wednesday, September 2 (NEW DATE!) at noon for “Leading Engagement from the Outside-In” at Association Insights in Old Town Cyberspace. I’ll be discussing findings from a whitepaper I wrote with Anna Caraveli a little while ago on member-centric engagement. Key takeaways: learning a new definition of member engagement, refocusing engagement to generate real value, and placing engagement at the heart of your membership strategy.

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Member Engagement Strategy Innovation 195

Spark Consulting

MAY 19, 2020

Shortly after the coronavirus pandemic stay at home edicts began coming down, a colleague posted a question to LinkedIn: What’s your vision for when we come out of this? I suspect she was looking for stuff like: “associations will embrace smaller, regional, hybrid events” or “employers who were convinced there was no way their staff could work remotely would realize they were wrong.” I responded: We as a society will realize that healthcare must be affordable and ac

Content 195

Content Organization Innovation Leadership 195

Spark Consulting

MAY 15, 2020

If an association wants to move beyond mere aggregation and serve your members by providing real curation, what should you do? To quote my co-author HilaryMarsh: “Stop trying to be Google.” Quoting from our new whitepaper, Cut Through the Clutter: Content Curation, Associations’ Secret Weapon Against Information Overload , Your association’s community is experiencing information overload in a time when it’s become increasingly difficult to assess the quality of that information due t

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Content Industry Leadership 195

Spark Consulting

MAY 13, 2020

Associations use the term “content curation” frequently, but to quote the great Inigo Montoya: “You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.” Many times, when we’re using the term “content curation,” what we actually mean is “aggregation.” That is, pulling together a list of related links.

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Content Process Leadership 243

Spark Consulting

MARCH 20, 2020

It’s time to act like it. Several weeks ago, when it was first becoming apparent to association executives (and everyone else) that the coronavirus pandemic was, in fact, going to be quite serious, most of the industry discussion seemed to revolve around “Do we REALLY have to cancel our conference? What about our revenue!” WHAT ABOUT YOUR ATTENDEES’ HEALTH AND SAFETY?

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Revenue Industry Team Conference 291

Spark Consulting

MARCH 16, 2020

I have to caveat this by saying I can’t help you with what do to with your kids (I don’t have any myself) or with your team telework tech (it’s just me here at Spark). BUT. I have been working for myself from my home office for nearly eight years. Here are some things that work for me, to keep me productive without letting work consume my entire life (well, at least until the times that things get REALLY busy with client work).

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Tips Social Media Products Team 381

Spark Consulting

FEBRUARY 3, 2020

Now that you’ve mapped out the changes you want to make to your membership program, and your board of directors is on board with those changes, how do you go about communicating them to the members who will be affected? In contrast to communicating with your board about changes, dues increases can be the hardest sell to members. “What do you mean my dues are going up?

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Communications Conference Industry Education 248

Spark Consulting

JANUARY 7, 2020

It’s that time of year, when we all think about what happened last year and what we’d like to do differently in the next. Two observations: First, 17 years ago, I realized that “lose 10 pounds and become a better person” was a terrible resolution to make, which is why I never kept it. So I resolved to resolve differently, choosing resolutions that are fun and about something I want to learn or try.

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Class Review Project Committee 195

Spark Consulting

OCTOBER 10, 2019

Let’s say you’re over email and want to take your welcome, retention, and/or renewal communications to the next level. Should you call, or should you text? Well, who are your members? What generations are represented and in what quantities? It’s not just your imagination – Millennials and GenZ genuinely do prefer text to voice calls, by pretty significant majorities (in the US, nearly 3/4 prefer text).

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millennials Committee Member Engagement Software 186

Spark Consulting

SEPTEMBER 12, 2019

No, I’m not going to get into which white-label platform you should use – for that, we have ReviewMyCommunity. Take one step back: white-label or public ? That is, the publicly-available, commercial platforms (LinkedIn, Facebook, and their ilk). This is a tough one. The advantage – and it’s a BIG one – of using a public platform is that your members are already there.

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