One of the biggest challenges associations face when implementing a new association management system is staff buy-in. How do you get the staff to adopt the new system and make it their own? In a phrase: rational self-interest. In order to get any staff person to use the system, you have to determine how using that …
I’ve written several times about transparency among the AMS vendors, and I received another great example last week from MemberSuite’s CEO, Andrew Ryan. Andrew sent out a long “state of the company” letter to his customers, and while the information is limited to customers (and consultants serving those customers), I can share with you that he …
A client of mine, National PTA in Alexandria, VA, has created a new position within the organization called “Data Records Manager.” This is a great opportunity for someone who really digs data management and wants to put their mark on how the organization manages data. You can read the entire job description and apply online …
As I work with my clients it becomes clear that there are two “classes” of users when it comes to your data management system. Some staff are managers of data (e.g., membership and events) while some staff are consumers of data (e.g., marketing, communications, government relations). And given these two classes of users, you have …
Are you overwhelmed by the idea of cleaning up your database? Rather than trying to fix it all, focus on just ONE area within the database and work from there. For example, do all of your contacts have email addresses? If not, identify those that are missing email addresses and work up updating those records. You …
I’ve written in the past about the need for more AMS vendors to be transparent about how things are going with their company and product. Here’s another nice example of that from Dmitriy Buterin at Wild Apricot. (I interviewed Dmitriy a couple years back. You can hear that here.) In this blog post Dmitriy highlights …
There have been two significant announcements in the AMS world in the past several weeks. First, Timberlake Software was acquired by Naylor just one day before last month’s ASAE Technology Conference. I had a chance to talk with Timberlake’s CEO, Brian Choate, briefly at the Tech Conference, and he’s very excited about what this acquisition …