The Challenge of Membership (Part 1)... Underlying Questions!

My first membership of an Association was in the very early years of my career. I ensured that it found a mention in my CV, incorporating the word “active” before the word “member”, spoke about it in my then limited forums, desperately trying to sound knowledgeable. By the time half a year rolled by, I had forgotten all about it and had willfully removed it from my CV after a prospective employer asked me “more” about it.

I didn’t hear anything from the Association’s office ever since I sent them my first cheque, barring a few cyclostyled sheets of newsprint that was sent as a quarterly newsletter to my “neighbor’s” address.… till about three years later when, I incidentally stumbled upon an executive from the same society who asked me why I wouldn’t consider being their member. I couldn’t gather the emotional courage to tell him that I didn’t want to repeat the cycle all over again. But I continued to be fed with the newsletter by my neighbor till I moved residence.

That was the first significant lesson on non-profit sector management that I picked up quite early in my career. And today as a Consultant, as I participate in the many discussions surrounding membership challenges of an Association, the underlying questions are generally always two: First, does an association need a member like the aforesaid me? And second, did I deserve better from the association that I was a member of?