3 Actions to Grow Your Association
Ambitious directors of non-profit organisations are not satisfied with a status quo. Here are three actions you can take to grow your association.
Convince your team of your purpose and added value
Make sure you and your team are convinced of the added value of your own services, before starting convincing others.
Do you want to organise trainings? In which areas specifically and with what actions? Do you want to increase your countries’ changes to get golden medals? In which disciplines and what are the actions you will implement?
And why would potential interested persons in your goal, be willing to collaborate with your association?
Answering these questions obliges you to define your ‘unique selling proposition’ (USP). Knowing ànd truly believing your USP, will make all future actions much more productive.
Manage your association as it was a business
You are not good in everything. We all have to admit that. Therefore: carefully select and create partnerships with organisations, suppliers and individuals that can bring true added value to your association.
And for those areas you really want to make a difference for your members, make sure you hire and grow the best talent that is available in the market. If not, your members will seek help elsewhere.
You are right, a balance scorecard might seem boring, but it’s a great tool to align everybodyto achieve the same goals (from Board to your support team): number of new Members, number of participants at your Annual Congress, click-through rate of your e-newsletters, number of Members that seek your advice per month, etc… These metrics help to focus and to answer the difficult question: what are my priorities today?
You are the best: believe it, show it and communicate as such to your addressees.
You are the best association in your field and you make a difference. If not, why bother…
Use technology to drive personalisation in your communication: customised emails, mobile applications, What’s App and text messages complement more generic tools as mobile websites, e-newsletters, Linked-In, Facebook, etc.
This personalised communication starts with strong (and painful) database management: Know whom you are aiming for and stand out from the crowd!
Through targeted and relevant communication of information to your target audience you make sure they know you are the best.
To summarise
Once your association is convinced and aligned on your own purpose and the concrete actions to bring added value to your members, it all comes down to selecting the right partnerships, hiring the best people and monitoring closely the correct implementation of the agreed actions. All this will increase your association’s impact, which makes it much easier to communicate on a personal level your added value to the right target audience.