According to a CDC report, more than 1 in 5 US adults live with a mental illness. With colleagues often facing post-pandemic challenges outside the workplace – from inflation to international issues and more, it isn’t surprising that mental health-related absences from the workplace rose 33 percent in 2023 from 2022, said an article in the Society of Human Resource Management’s (SHRM) HR Daily Newsletter (March 6, 2024).

Join HR professionals Christine A. Glover, SHRM-SCP, VP of HR, Consulting, Marcum; and Cynthia White, Director of HR, Consulting, Marcum; for the June 26 AXC webinar where you’ll learn how you can appropriately check on the mental health of your team; gain insight into privacy “dos and don’ts,” and consider the perspectives of different workforce communities. You’ll walk away with tips for noninvasive ways to show you care about your team members’ mental health and well-being.

If your association is looking to boost chapter performance, optimize operations, and elevate membership engagement, consider the power of benchmarking. Join us for AXC’s May 29 program, as Christi Beatty, Vice President of Chapter Services & Member Engagement at the Associated General Contractors of America (AGC), discusses how AGC launched a chapter self-assessment and benchmarking program to enhance the performance and success of their 89 chapters. Fueled by healthy competition and collaboration, AGC is seeing chapters experiencing growth, witnessing enhanced member engagement, and fostering a culture of excellence and continuous improvement.

Participants will walk away understanding the role of benchmarking for chapters, knowing some self-assessment techniques to identify strengths and areas of improvement, knowing how to leverage benchmarking data to set goals and strategies, and identifying benchmarking and assessment tools for chapters.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) helps unblock writer's block, provides ideas for taglines and themes, and generally makes life easier for association executives. But as much positivity as AI brings to associations, questions--especially around ethics--remain unanswered. No association executive wants to publish biased information, be the subject of a lawsuit for privacy violations, or be accused of plagiarism. Just how do association executives navigate the risks and ethical considerations of AI?

Join AXC’s April webinar as Public Relations Society of America’s Ethics Committee member, James Hoeft, APR, discusses the organization’s, "Promise & Pitfalls: The Ethical Use of AI for Public Relations Practitioners,” a framework for decision-makers hoping to employ AI effectively and ethically.

ASAE’s Research Foundation’s latest research looked at effective models for volunteer management and organizational success. The research analyzed input from about 700 association executives in 49 associations to map out a new vision of association volunteer systems. Join Peggy Hoffman, FASAE, CAE, president of Mariner Management & Marketing, LLC, and a member of this research team, for an insightful look at how associations embrace volunteer management in a changing environment.

According to a recent article, the shift towards remote work among associations is a trend expected to continue in 2024. With the pandemic demonstrating that associations can function—and function well--remotely, and technological advances making easier to be 100 percent virtual, associations are choosing to go completely virtual and many are using a hybrid model.

Recognizing this trend, Kevin Helm, MBA, CAE, and David Westman, CAE, created the Virtual Association Network (VAN). The purpose of VAN is to explore the uniqueness of associations that chose to be 100 percent virtual.

VAN conducts an annual survey that collects data about membership, staff recruitment, retention and benefits, government compliance, staff benefits, and other operational issues relevant to associations that are 100 percent remote. Join AXC for our February program where Kevin will discuss VAN’s 2023 survey key findings and share some interesting survey data with AXC participants.

Organizations are always looking to stand out from the competition. By recruiting and retaining Latino and Hispanic employees, associations will build a more inclusive workforce that is better equipped to achieve success. Join us to learn more about recruitment, retention, and leadership development to attract Hispanics/Latinos to expand your talent pool. Speakers will provide guidance and recommendations for mentoring, sponsoring, and coaching to foster increased Hispanic/Latino leadership in associations.

Presented by S. Keith Moulsdale, Partner and Co-Chair of the Cyber Security, Information Management & Privacy practice at Whiteford Taylor & Preston

A recent ASAE survey of more than 450 C-suite association executives revealed that while less than 25 percent currently are using AI, most were in the planning stages and likely to implement plans, assessments, work groups, and seek advice about AI in the next year. One way associations could leverage AI is for cybersecurity.

Is Your Association Meeting the Needs of the 15% of Neurodiverse Members?

Neurodiversity describes the unique way people's brain's work. From ADHD and autism to dyslexia and dyspraxia, neurodiversity may affect up to 15 percent of your association's members, attendees, learners and staff. One in seven people in your association's target audience may process information differently from the way society often expects.

Holly Martinson, M.ED., Executive Function Coach, and owner of Patient Minds, defines neurodiversity and explains what associations must do differently, additionally, and intentionally to serve their neurodiverse members. You'll walk away with tools to re-examine your education, training, networking, and other offerings with an eye toward meeting your neurodiverse professionals' needs and expectations.

The Diversity Lens

Following the murder of George Floyd in 2020, many associations publicly pledged to “do better” when engaging with communities of color, but authentic engagement isn’t achieved just by having different faces in your photos. It's only the beginning.. Join the AXC June session, when our speaker, Steve Jones, Founder and CEO of pocstock.com will explore the importance of diverse representation in media and advertising, across companies and teams, and how it impacts the perceptions and actions across various communities. In this virtual session, you will hear suggestions about what to do…and what not to do…when choosing the right images for your association’s marketing and branding materials.

Your event is a product, and it should be designed to meet the needs of your audience. This interactive design session will give you an exciting new approach to enhancing your events. You will learn core design constructs to help you think about your event in new ways and break into interactive groups for prototyping.

It’s time for associations to ensure ethical leadership is aligned with DEI culture. According to the Institute of Business Ethics, eight in 10 employees now report misconduct. And, according to Ethics.com, 43 percent of employees who report misconduct, say they experienced retaliation.

When you witness injustice or inequity, do you speak up, call out the behavior, demand a shift in polices, or ask for revised procedures? Join AXC’s November speaker, Mariama Boney, CAE, ASAE Ethics Committee Vice Chair, to learn more about ASAE’s newly revised Code of Conduct. The new Code focuses on how association executives can use it to align and advance your professional ethics, ensure DEI culture, and launch or revise your ethics program.

It’s time for associations to ensure ethical leadership is aligned with DEI culture. According to the Institute of Business Ethics, eight in 10 employees now report misconduct. And, according to Ethics.com, 43 percent of employees who report misconduct, say they experienced retaliation.

When you witness injustice or inequity, do you speak up, call out the behavior, demand a shift in polices, or ask for revised procedures? Join AXC’s November speaker, Mariama Boney, CAE, ASAE Ethics Committee Vice Chair, to learn more about ASAE’s newly revised Code of Conduct. The new Code focuses on how association executives can use it to align and advance your professional ethics, ensure DEI culture, and launch or revise your ethics program.

It’s time for associations to ensure ethical leadership is aligned with DEI culture. According to the Institute of Business Ethics, eight in 10 employees now report misconduct. And, according to Ethics.com, 43 percent of employees who report misconduct, say they experienced retaliation.

When you witness injustice or inequity, do you speak up, call out the behavior, demand a shift in polices, or ask for revised procedures? Join AXC’s November speaker, Mariama Boney, CAE, ASAE Ethics Committee Vice Chair, to learn more about ASAE’s newly revised Code of Conduct. The new Code focuses on how association executives can use it to align and advance your professional ethics, ensure DEI culture, and launch or revise your ethics program.

Description

There’s no argument that society has changed during the last few years. Disruptors such as COVID-19, the rise in social media use, and increased videoconferencing on platforms such as Zoom, have changed the way we work, and get information. These changes also have affected the relationship between associations and their sponsors. Join Association Xchange and our October speaker Bruce Rosenthal of Bruce Rosenthal Associates, LLC , as we discuss how your association can continue to strengthen its sponsorship program in this new environment by attracting and retaining sponsors, increasing revenue, and, most importantly, enhancing member value.

We all have volunteers, what we don’t all have is effective volunteers. More than that, we are increasingly finding that our volunteers pool is limited in many ways from its diversity to its skill set. For many associations COVID brought not just employee burnout but volunteer burnout as well. The reality is that our volunteer systems were suffering before COVID, it’s just that the pandemic highlighted the weaknesses. During COVID, ASAE Foundation asked how to create a volunteer system that associations can use to enhance their volunteer engagement for a new age. Let’s look the options for associations and highlight resources you can use to improve the volunteer experience for your members and your staff.

The pandemic, the economy, Ukraine—there’s no doubt that associations are in the midst of a changing workplace. Members are asking for more with fewer resources. Handling this changing landscape and shifting priorities is a challenge in the easiest of times—let alone when we are thrown into crises. But there’s a solution--project management. These practices may save associations resources, time and money.

In the May AXC program, Hannah Alleman, Executive Director, Ignite Solutions, Household Consumer Products Association, will discuss how incorporating project management principles into association operations may help streamline even the smallest project. She will share resources and best practices to help you implement project management practices in your association.

Burnout is a key factor affecting professional and personal productivity. Join AXC’s April program, where Dr. Anees Chagpar will discuss risk factors leading to burn out, how to recognize the early warning signs, and how to develop tangible skills for improving resilience on both an individual and institutional level.

As digitization continues to reshape advertising and marketing, it’s time for associations to embrace content innovations and consumer retargeting marketing campaigns.

Association executives are well-aware of the benefits of implementing a DEI program, but may be struggling with how to integrate DEI culture.

The past few years have been challenging for leaders. 4.5 million workers quit or changed jobs in November 2021. The workforce and employment landscape are shifting. With so much uncertainty, greater expectations are expected from association staff, volunteers and business partners. How does your leadership style need to change to continue to have a positive impact on the people and organizations we serve?

Inspiring leaders often embody their values, vision and commitment--especially under pressure. Good leaders align their actions with their values. The key to becoming this type of leader requires building “muscle memory” which many of us do without even realizing it. In fact, 95 to 99 percent of the time, we operate based on learned habits and instincts. While we may believe we are choosing how to behave, in truth, our rational mind plays a limited role in behavior.

According to a report by McKinsey Global Survey of executives, the pandemic accelerated technology use by seven years and many of these changes are here to stay. Like association executives, global executives said that they were surprised at how quickly they were able to adopt new technologies.

According to a McKinley Advisor report, the type of membership model best suited to your association is one that best meets your members’ needs. Do they want one price for full access to all benefits, or a pick-and-choose tailored approach. These decisions are often based on factors such as risk, feasibility and market desire.

According to recent studies from the American Medical Association and Medscape, physicians and other healthcare professionals who have worked tirelessly on the COVID-19 frontlines are experiencing burnout.

According to an article in Forbes (How Covid-19 Changed Culture, January 29, 2021), organizations with strong workplace cultures outperformed others in 2020. During COVID, many associations saw permanent changes, others saw temporary changes, and, who knows--there might even be more changes just around the corner.

According to Accenture, cybersecurity breaches have increased 11% since 2018 and 64% since 2014. These risks may include lost data, system downtime, lost revenue, and reputational harm. The April Association Xchange (AXC) program provides an overview of the 2021 cybersecurity landscape including what threats are trending and how your association can minimize its risk.

March marks continued call for justice regarding Breonna Taylor and the start of the George Floyd trial. In this third segment of Association Xchange’s Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) series, our March program features a conversation about the dynamics of black fatigue, and managing racial trauma while addressing privilege and unconscious bias, plus dismantling the structures of systemic power and privilege.

With the future arriving with full force in 2020, the urgent challenge before association boards in 2021 is crystal clear: strengthen board performance to begin shaping a better future for stakeholders and successors.

One thing we learned in 2020 is the critical need for association executives to have solid communication skills and competencies—no matter what their job title may be.

Governance provides leadership, direction and accountability to ensure your association is fulfilling its mission. Although the governance responsibility rests with your board of directors, it is the CEO’s responsibility to lead the effort to strengthen board performance and ensure that the governance system is delivering value to the organization. In fact, the CEO’s ability to perform with excellence is dependent on a high performance governance system.