Keys to a Strong Trade Association

I won't debate whether the primary element in a successful trade association is the professional staff CEO or the passionate volunteers of the Board and Committees. Evidence abounds to demonstrate success with either of these elements prevalent above the other. But if you want to see super-success you will most likely see it in trade associations where the staff CEO is a skilled and experienced association management professional and the volunteers believe and act as deeply about their association as they do about their business. I challenge you to find a profitably surviving and growing trade association that is void of one or the other of these key elements.

Many small trade associations, however, are financially limited in the level of professional association management they can afford to employ. The most common solution to this challenge is to hire passion if you can't afford the experience. I have great respect for dozens of such passionate Executive Managers and I have learned from most of them myself through the years. Typically, the strength of the passionate Executive Manager is operations; the power to reinvent the association does not yet live in them.

Passionate volunteers are much harder to find and even harder to organize into productive member machines. Without them, the association is in deep trouble. With an engaged team of volunteers who take their Board and Committee positions seriously and who will dedicate themselves to be champions of their specific cause and their association in general, the association is poised for great success.

Imagine the chemistry where your organization has access to the most experienced, best connected and critically inventive CEO talent, employs the most passionate executive manager and sits on the shoulders of many volunteer champions.

That is exactly what I am imagining for associations like the Chesapeake Automotive Business Association, a Maryland-based, regional non-profit representing auto service centers, tire dealers, parts jobbers and their suppliers. Their Board has contracted with me to support their Passionate President and their Passionate Executive Manager.

This is an exciting new trail for trade association management which lies somewhere between the traditional CEO/Board model and the Association Management Company model. If you think your association would benefit from my talent, experience and contacts, please let me quote you on my C6Support. SKIP POTTER