Thirty years ago, I started a new job as director of membership for a small trade association. It was my first real membership position, having worked in marketing and communications for four years prior at another trade association.

While I knew how associations worked, I had no real idea how to recruit, manage, and retain membership. Luckily, my office was located just a couple of blocks from ASAE's offices. ASAE's offices contained a library of books all about association management. (Remember, this was effectively before the internet existed.)

And so I spent hours every week at that library or with books I had purchased from ASAE, learning everything I could about how to be a membership manager in an association. And, in part thanks to those books, I was successful at doing something I had never done before.

Most of the authors of those books and articles were volunteers. They were unpaid. But they took the time to share their wisdom with others, and I've been forever grateful for that.

And so, that is why I write. I write because I believe I have experiences and knowledge (dare I say wisdom) that might be helpful to someone else attempting to go down a path I've already been down.

And maybe someday they will share their knowledge with someone else.