Wes’s Wednesday Wisdom

Annual dues vs. anniversary dues I served as director of membership for several years at a couple of different associations. When talking with my fellow association membership pros, the question often arose: Which is best; anniversary dues or annual dues? Some quick definitions: anniversary dues are dues that are renewed a year after the member joins […]

Every AMS vendor will tell you that the toughest part of implementing a new system is getting the association staff to think differently about the new AMS. And this isn’t just limited to changing processes (although that is incredibly important). It’s also about changing mindset. What do I mean by changing mindset? Here are three

It doesn’t have to be optimal to be beneficial I’m a big fan of the author James Clear (https://jamesclear.com/) who writes about the formation of habits. I believe (good!) habits are an important element of success (I’ve written about it before.) In a recent blog post, Clear wrote: “Just because it’s not optimal, doesn’t mean it’s

Look for small wins One of the toughest things about system implementation is simply how long it takes to complete one. And so keeping momentum and staff interest in the project is paramount. By month six of implementation, staff can be pretty burned out. I always recommend to my clients that throughout implementation they look for

Are you closing the loop? If your association does a call for presentations for any of your events, do you provide feedback to those submitters whose presentations were not accepted? Or do you simply send a generic “Thanks for applying but your presentation was not accepted” note? If you’re not providing feedback on WHY the

Declare victory and move on The law of diminishing returns is the point at which the amount of benefits gained is less than the amount of money or energy invested. My experience with my clients is that sometimes it’s easy to lose sight of this rule. Like a dog with a bone, sometimes we’ll encounter a

Clean As You Go A good cook or baker knows that, when working in the kitchen, you clean as you go, so that there isn’t a HUGE mess to clean up when you finish. The same is true for data management. Clean as you go. If you’re entering registrations for events, or new memberships, or

One of the keys to developing good data management habits is to be aware of biting off more than you can chew. Or to put it another way, when you set out to change some data management habit, start with baby steps rather than some huge, unattainable goal. For example, if you’re looking to clean

When it comes to data management, most of us know what to do; we just don’t do it. What is required is discipline. Discipline is absolutely critical when it comes to managing data effectively. For example, you have to have the discipline to: enter the data when you receive it (I so often hear associations say “We have

Because we’re so focused on always improving what we have now, it’s easy to overlook the things we already have. I’ve been working in association management systems for almost 30 years now, and the amount of progress in technology over that time is nearly dumbfounding. We’ve gone from systems that were entirely locked down, character-based,