My personal algorithm has changed in how I think about membership

What do you value most in your association memberships?

Association professionals are often focused on what their own org’s members want (or on what their association clients’ members want, if they are consultants).

But what do you, the association professional, seek in your own association memberships? Has that changed over time? If so, how has that changed? And why?

I’ve observed that many of my reasons for joining an association have remained the same, but shifted wildly in priority over time. Some of the different types of value I’ve sought from my memberships in associations over the years have included:

• A way to learn the most important skills unique to my field so that I can be the best I can be and earn more money!
• Connecting with people working on the same types of problems to commiserate and learn from their experience.
• Meeting people who might want to hire me or work with me one day.
• Opportunities to share my knowledge with my peers.
• Recognition from my peers and industry. (This one feels embarrassing and vulnerable to admit, but it would be lying to omit it.)

I don’t believe this is vastly different than what others seek in association memberships. But in my own experience, my options for where to satisfy these reasons for joining have increased dramatically since when I started out in my field.

Some of the options I’ve explored include:

• Free social media and privately hosted communities
• Paid social media and privately hosted communities
• For-profit “associations” that aren’t 501c, but otherwise operate similarly to nonprofit professional societies
• For-profit networking groups, masterminds
• Free and paid education (asynchronous, synchronous, and both) opportunities

With so many options, how does one choose? Even if the finances aren’t a problem, the investment of time usually is.

In the past, trust has paid a big factor in my own decision-making on these types of things. Trust in the competence and character of an organization plays a critical role.

I ask “how much am I willing to invest in adding one more thing to my busy life?” and that also feeds into the equation.

I am looking for a quick connection to what I value. Proof of concept in my investment. And if I don’t see rewards early on, I’m willing to end my course, community, or membership relatively quickly because I’ve experienced the “sunk cost fallacy” too many times at this point in my life to fall back on my underlying sense of loyalty to keep me paying past a certain point.

This has changed the way I determine whether I will join an association, group, club, course, or community. It has changed how long I’ll be patient with a group, too. I’m sorry to say, I’m less patient today.

Has your experience changed your personal algorithm on saying “yes or no” to membership?

Have your members also changed their decision-making algebra?

I talked with the author of The Death of Demographics David Allison yesterday for the podcast. We were discussing core human values and the patterns of values that form certain archetypes of people, these combinations of values lead to more predictable decision-making for those groups.

It’s stunning to me how much we have in tech and data available to us today, but also how impossible a task it can seem to unravel the knot that all this information can produce. (I should know – this is the type of knot I get paid to untangle through digital strategy.)

But one thing I know for sure is that the first rule of communication (or design-thinking or any project, really) is to know the people. To understand the humans involved.

Understanding your audience, client, staff, committees, and yes, members, is always a good place to start. When the questions arise, go back to step 1: understanding the people.