At the Chapter level, volunteers and sometimes paid staff provide administrative support. If the NSA staff assumes any or all of this support, i.e. website hosting, event planning, creating/mailing newsletters, balancing the check book, etc., what’s it worth to you?
If membership dues increase and/or affiliate fees increase, how much can you/will you pay for these services to be transferred from the chapter level to the national level?
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tagged: chapter support, dues, fees
This is a difficult question to answer. I like the idea of using economies of scale to lower some of the administrative functions for chapters. With things like website hosting, it makes sense for chapters to use their collective size to get the best deal.
At the same time, if the centralization of admin support forces an increase in dues then we might see more of an alarming trend: People deciding to either be a member of NSA or their local chapter but not both. I’m not sure if other chapters are seeing this trend but in South Florida, where the economy has been hit hard, it’s an issue.
Ken Okel
Incoming President
Florida Speakers Association
Let’s not try to fix something that’s not broken, or worse, repair the wrong part. I suspect the real reason we’re having this rechartering discussion boils down to one thing …. ”money”. Both the national and the chapters are losing working revenue because of dropping members. This is a direct result of a terrible economy. Not because the nationals or the chapters are doing a bad job. With the increase in gas prices along with the weak economy attendance for chapter meetings, national conventions, and conferences is suffering more than ever. It’s not because chapters are holding their meetings within 14 days of national events. It’s because more members are having to pick and choose where they invest their dollars.
My chapter covers both North and South Carolina, resulting in some members having to travel long distances to attend meetings. A couple of years ago when National increased membership dues, at the same time gas prices were soaring, we went from 80 to 60 members. Today, I’m concerned because much of the rechartering discussion I’m hearing will result in a higher operating cost to nationals. This cost will be passed down to the chapters and the members. Based on history, I see this translating into higher cost for members, which will result into fewer members. Fewer members will result into some chapter failures.
We need to be looking for ways to increase membership, by making it more affordable to be a NSA member (not cheap, but more affordable). Airfare, hotel, registration, and other expenses for attending one NSA event can easily run into thousands of dollars. As long as these cost and unemployment remain high, attendance at NSA events will be low.
I suggest we should be discussing rolling the membership dues back as they were before the last increase. Also, looking at ways to lower the national’s operating cost. Let me be clear, “I’m not suggesting laying off staff.”
Too many Americans (and the world) are unemployed, and everyone feels the pain. We need to be looking at ways for NSA to weather this poor economy, and at the same time retaining and growing with quality members.
And here’s one more thought:
The existing guidelines that national now has in place for the chapters works well when chapters follow them. Each chapter, in each state, and each city is different. The chapters should be able to set their own membership fees. These fees should not have to go through the nationals. Let chapters have their own personalities.
If the nationals run everything and makes a bad decision, the entire NSA suffers. Changes and corrections at nation level are slow and complicated. If an individual chapter makes a bad decision, only that chapter suffers. Unlike the nationals, individual chapters are able to correct situations on the fly and move forward quickly. We should also look into ways to improve communications between chapters. Maybe, regular conference calls, and a yearly meeting as part of the national convention. That way chapters and the national can all learn from the successes and failures of others. We would then be able to make changes that are based on tried and proven facts and not on assumptions.
Careful on the question. Don’t get administrative support (activity based cost) mixed up with economies on scale in pooled services (product based costs).
For example, there are many shared services that we can leverage off of as Chapters that shouldn’t add administrative support (maybe one time configuration costs). For example, hosting, domain name registration, auto-responders and email campaigns… these are all web services that as a group, we can get better rates for then we can as individual chapters.
Administrative support is definitely direct cost that is tied to an activity. Whether this support would be worth it or not can only be determined when the support is provided, or what type of support is needed
I would have to say though that I like the option (kind of like the Public Option in Health Care
. If I knew that National could be contracted out at a certain rate (or a pre-negotiated VA for all chapters), it would allow the chapters to make decisions on how to allocate their time for volunteers, and their funding for Administrative support.
I’m all for partnerships between NSA corporate and her chapters.. I believe the best initial approach is to offer opt in, ala-carte support services to chapters at re-affiliation time each year.
If you want it, you pay for it (up front for the coming year). This allows national to plan for who will be participating and ramp up efficiencies of scale in core solution areas: membership dues collection, event registration, shopping cart options, web hosting (or just temlates), etc.
Each year, chapters re-evaluate and if the national solutions are working, more chapters will opt in each year. As more chapters opt in, the cost will probably drop and can be adjusted annually due to economies of scale. Once all chapters have opted in, the cost could just be added to a chapters affiliation fee.
Raising membership dues to individuals is not a good option in my mind. We are already very expensive nationally compared to other not for profit professional associations like SHRM, ASTD, AMA, etc.