2018 has come and gone, and we have a lot to celebrate! Over the past year at fusionSpan, we’ve continued to grow as a company.  From mobile apps to Salesforce applications, we are proud to partner with some amazing associations and non-profits to build better ways for organizations to connect with their members.  Below are our highlights and celebrations from 2018.

View Our 2018 Launches

View our netFORUM Enterprise plugins

See our latest news and announcements

We Are Hiring!

We hope you have a productive 2017!

*Note: Just in case you think the author is being overly hyperbolic he wanted to point out that his parents did in fact move to Hawaii and leave him in the house his freshman year of college. 

fusionSpan was at AMSFest, put on by Teri Carden, founder of ReviewMyAMS.com. It’s an intimate event where association professionals can get an up-close look at a bunch of different AMS (association management systems) vendors all in one place. They also can talk with industry partners (like fusionSpan) about what the trends are and what they should have on their radar. Very informative for both organizations beginning the process of moving to a new AMS as well as organizations just looking to stay abreast of the latest news related to association technology. Highlights included:

AMS Implementation

Heard from Rene Shonerd who is currently implementing 5 AMS systems at once. A little crazy, but sometimes you just got to do what you got to do. She pointed out that before making a move, associations should always reassess their current system – new feature come out all the time, and those new features may solve your current issues. If you do decide to move, make sure to rank the importance of different feature BEFORE looking at systems – don’t want to make a decision based on some shiny object that isn’t business critical.

SSO and API

Featuring fusionSpan’s very own Gayathri Kher, this panel dived into the nitty-gritty of SSO (single sign-on) and API (application programming interface). While all AMS vendors can check a box that their system does have an API, not all APIs are built the same. As you are getting ready to make a purchase, ask them to demonstrate the capabilities of their API, budget money to maintain your integrations, and understand that, as the name suggests, you will need a programmer to do some programming. There was also an interesting conversation around Middleware that can serve as a cog to connect multiple systems, but can also be costly.

Investors Discover

Lots of AMS vendors are buying and being bought. A vendor being purchased could be a good thing – the panel noted that generally only good companies get acquired. It could also mean trouble – an acquisition likely means a change in culture. Key takeaway for associations? Ask questions – reach out to your favorite employees at that organization and see if they are sticking around. If they are leaving it may be a red flag of things to come.

Was a very informative event with lots of very knowledgeable speakers donating their time to put on a great event. Plus, if you’re about to begin the search for a new AMS, may as well do it at a location with a rooftop networking event. We had a great view of the Capitol, Union Station and the rest of the DC skyline.

Here at fusionSpan geek is a term of endearment; it’s not simply a noun, but a title of pride among our band of IT employees. In the age of endless days dedicated to the slightly obscure, Be An Angel Day August 22 naturally, or the beloved, national hot dog day this year falling on July 23, comes Geek Pride Day on May 25. Why today of all days grants such an honorable title?

The anniversary of the first Star Wars film, Episode IV: A New Hope was released on May 25, 1977; So do yourself a favor on this historical day and celebrate in whatever capacity suits you and your workplace policies. Comic-con outfit too over the top for the office? Opt for a subdued cape. Left your Star Wars collection at home? Stream the family guy Star Wars episode via Netflix from your phone or on a projector for all to cherish. None of the above? Crack open a butterbeer, recipe here, from the comfort of your desk and muse over the fusionSpan team geek offerings as a small escape far far away from your inbox.

Check out Aaron Wolowiec’s recent blog post featuring “10 strategies your association can immediately implement to boost the reputation of its signature events and, in turn, its bottom line.”

Has your association conducted a communication audit within the last three years? More specifically, are your meetings and publications teams working together to ensure your association’s events are effectively marketed?

If your events suffer from stagnant or declining attendance, sponsors or exhibitors – or if you have difficulty securing quality speakers – the answer lies not in a silo, but rather in your team.

See Aaron’s post as he elaborates on the ten strategies: Branding, Differentiation, Value Proposition, Voice, Brevity, Channels, Testimonials, Images, Sample Content, and Volunteers.

One of our clients, a small-staff association, wanted to improve user experience during the annual conference registration . In the past they just used their AMS, netForum Pro to register attendees but increased customer service calls forced them to look for an alternate solution. This time around they wanted to simplify the registration process and reduce the work that their staff will need to do in managing registrations.

Our recommendation was to use a dedicated web based Event Management software. Some advantages of using an online event management software to manage your events and registration are

1.  Provides online access and a dedicated branded event website.
2.  Automate the entire event registration. Users could manage their own registrations. Optionally they are allowed to modify their registrations and even initiate refunds.
3.  Process credit card payments.
4.  All event and registration data is secure.
5. Affordable for a small staff organization
6.  Can integrate with the current membership database.

The first 4 features are pretty much universally supported by most good quality event management software.

Its the last feature that we were most interested in. Reducing staff overhead by letting attendees key in information does reduce your staffs overhead, but this information already exists in your membership database, why enter it again at all? Wouldn’t it be better if most of the registration information is already filled in for your members?

Most of the registration information including attendee name, address and contact information is already in your membership database (substitute with your CRM or AMS). Since the organization we were doing this for already used netForum Pro and Abila provides a comprehensive set of web services that provide secure access to your member data, all we needed was an event management software that would support this integration.

This helped us in selecting Cvent since it provides this exact capability we were looking for. They call it Single Sing On (SSO), but it is a little more than just single sign on. In effect they allow externalizing user authentication and also allow for pre-populating user information.

When a user goes to our dedicate event website and try to register, Cvent redirects them to the Organizations homepage. Here they see the familiar login page. Once we authenticate the user with their netForum credentials (username and password), we redirect the user back to Cvent and also send details about the user which includes

•  Full name
•  Address
•  Phone number
•  Email address
• Membership Information

The interaction is a little more complicated than shown in the previous figure. The following diagram shows some of the HTTP redirection that takes place when performing the SSO –

Since Cvent recognizes the organization as a trust identity provider, it just accepts all the information regarding the user and creates one in their own system. The user now sees most of their registration information already pre-filled and can make changes if something has changed or enter their payment details.

What is cool is that we can even recognize different category of users (in our case just Active Members and Non-members). This allows us to offer different registration fees to different users.

One minor caveat – Cvent did recommend using their SAML based SSO solution. After several tries and working with their support it simply did not work. It was either not installed on their end or their were some configuration errors. Either way it still seems experimental with minimal documentation. We ended up using HTTP FORM based SSO which also uses SSL (and a slight work around for mutual authentication), so it was just as secure if non-standards based. If you are looking at SSO with Cvent, please use this method first and if time permits try the SAML based approach.

Communication skills are important to all aspects of life, including work. It doesn’t matter if your expertise is in political science, economics or journalism – everyone needs to be able to communicate. This means anyone within your organization can be tapped to work on your organization’s social media campaign.

How do you find the right person within your organization?

First, get to know your staff’s social media skills. If you already have a staff member who has a personal Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn or blog, chances are they enjoy social media and may take an interest in handling it for your organization. They will also have the experience to hit the ground running, rather than requiring training.

Second, get a sense of your staff’s workload. Can this person take on another task in addition to their current commitments? You want to be fair and not overwhelm one person, while someone else may be looking for additional responsibilities.

Third, does this task fit in with your staff’s duties? If you have a marketing department, social media would fit perfectly into their bucket of projects. Alternatively, it may make sense for your organization to assign the writing task to a membership coordinator or assistant and have an IT person actually post the message. Maybe you have a staff who attends a lot of meetings and conferences where their involvement in social media would give your organization more exposure, for example through live tweets.

Finally, the most important quality to look for is the “want.” This person should want to do this or at least want to learn how. If the desire is not there, this project will not succeed in the long term. If the person who has the knowledge is unavailable because of a crazy workload, for instance, assign the expert as a backup to support someone less knowledgeable but with the desire to learn. This will create a collaborative team that will bring lots to the table, as well as get the job done!

Dear Betty,

We have a lot of non-members at our conference. I mean A LOT: 43% of our annual conference attendees are non-members. The thing is, the majority of them are active members of their regional chapters (we know because we asked). Why don’t they want to join us, too? What can we do to entice them to become members of the national association?

Name and association withheld upon request

Gentle Reader,

Are you sure you want them to join? Looking at your registration and membership rates, it appears that, at least for most of your membership categories, the cost of non-member registration is actually higher than member registration plus an individual membership. If all those non-member registrants were to join, it appears you’ll experience a revenue decline.

Are they sure they want to join? As I wrote recently in the Spark blog, we tend to give priority to the member relationship, but it’s not the only relationship we can have with our audiences. Stakeholders can be attendees, presenters, subscribers, authors, book purchasers, volunteers, etc. without being members. Perhaps these non-member attendees prefer one of those other roles for reasons that have nothing to do with your association or its membership offerings.

But maybe you do want them to join and don’t mind about the revenue loss, and they would want to join if only they knew. Now what?

I assume some chapter members are national members. You need to find out what’s different about them relative to the chapter members who aren’t national members. What makes that group of chapter members unique? If you can mine your data and identify that, you will know which chapter members are good prospects for national membership, because not all of them are. One initial clue: what will their employers pay for? Many employers who will pay for professional development related registrations and travel will not pay for professional memberships. If that’s frequently the case, you’ll need to try to find a creative way around that.

Also, how easy is it for people to figure out what’s the best deal? If I’m a chapter member who’s decided to attend your annual conference, and I’m on the registration page of your website, I might think, “Hmm. That’s a pretty big price difference between the member and non-member rates. I wonder what membership costs?” But if I have to go hunting around the site to find the rates, figure out which of your rather lengthy list of options is the appropriate membership for me, figure out how to do two transactions, and wonder how long I’ll have to wait to qualify for the member rate, I might just skip it, again, particularly if my employer is paying.

A better approach would be something like:

Someone selects the non-member rate, so the registration form dynamically populates or creates a pop-over with something to the effect of: “Did you know that you can join our association right now for $XXX and register for the annual conference at the same time at the member rate of $YYY, saving you $ZZZ off the non-member rate? Click here to find out more….” Clicking would send her to a combined join and registration form, where she could do the whole thing in one simple transaction

Of course, once you’ve gotten that new member to join in order to qualify for the discounted conference rate, the question becomes: how do you keep her if she decides not to attend your conference again next year? But that’s a topic for another post.

Have a question for our membership and marketing expert, Betty? Leave a comment below or email .

Your repeat attendees are wonderful — they love you and you love them.  But, that familiarity can create a bubble that seems impenetrable to outsiders. Don’t let this happen to your event. Embrace your newcomers — make them feel special and welcomed.

Track Attendance Records

Make sure you keep good track of attendance. Use this information to tailor your message for different attendee groups — regular attendees, occasional attendees, and first timers.

Market to Potential Newcomers

Show potential first timers that you’re interested in them by devoting resources to them on your website’s registration page and in your outreach materials. You want newcomers to know that you’re ready to help them navigate your event for their best benefit.

Welcome Newcomers Right Away

As soon as you identify first time attendees, welcome them into the fold with some tips for how to get the most out of your event. If you can do this before the event – even better! Let them know the flow of the meeting, from where to pick up their badge, where the main socializing areas are, and where to find out about any ancillary networking events.

Give Newcomers Recognition

Offer to identify newcomers on their badges, but don’t pressure them, since not everyone wants to be called out. Appeal to repeat attendees to greet newcomers, and let them know how to find them. If you have the space in your program, host a reception that can help newcomers mingle with the most active participants of your group, which will help them to become more engaged participants themselves.

Guide for Newcomers

The more practice you give to your newcomer welcoming strategy, the more it will be appreciated. Publish a guide for newcomers with all of the materials you’ve created. You can include this guide with your registration packets and in your program and mobile app, and returning attendees may even find this useful.

Have other ideas about how to engage newcomers? Let us know in the comments!

Trying to get the attention of the media can seem like a daunting task, especially when you have minimal to no staff dedicated to this. But even with limited funds or staffing, it is still possible to get the media attention that you crave. Below are three ways to get started:

Hosting or attending an event

While the prospect of hosting an event might sound overwhelming, it doesn’t have to be. You certainly need to dedicate time to ensure it is an event that people want to attend, but it does not need to be big or fancy. Perhaps you host a small cocktail hour at the office or a working luncheon.  This gives you the opportunity to invite and engage media and other organizations you might want to work with. This also provides a great opportunity to control your messaging.

On the flip side of this is attending events. Research what types of conferences or events are occurring in your area so you do not need to travel. This will help keep costs down, especially since conferences can be pricey to attend. Additionally, this provides another opportunity to encounter people you might want to partner with and engage media.

Work on building relationships

Relationships are important in both your personal and professional life. And while creating and maintaining relationships might seem like an obvious thing to do, it still amazes me how many people do not do this. I’m not saying you need to be best friends with everyone and call them on the phone every day, or even every week. But as long as you are making the effort to keep in touch and not only reach out when you need something, your connections will be more open to helping you.

Have a good story

As stated above, relationships are critical to getting the type of coverage you want, but even if your best friend is the managing editor of The New York Times that does not mean your story will run. If your story is not interesting or newsworthy to the general public, who your best friend is won’t matter.

I work with many different types of organizations and they all think their story is the next greatest thing. Maybe that’s true, but most of the time it’s not. Managing expectations is important, as well as using common sense.  Think about the trade outlets and journals your organization already works with or subscribes to. Those will be a good starting point for trying to get your story out there, and specifically to the people who will be most interested. After that, work on developing a good local angle and start reaching out to your hometown media.

All of these steps are interconnected and vital to getting the type of media coverage you want. And while none of this will happen over night, you can start taking steps now so that when you have a story you want to share, you will have the relationships and basic tools in place.

Send Alexi comments or questions on how to engage the media at .

Basic as these tenets may seem, it is truly stunning to see how many organizations manage to lose sight of these essential elements as other pressures mount around efforts to achieve underlying specific dollar or participation goals that may or may not have been developed with the larger picture in mind.  These challenges aren’t unique to smaller organizations.  Similar challenges exist in many big and seemingly well-resourced organizations, where institutional complexities and secondary “noise” can pull precious resources in multiple directions—and away from their core goals.

But, some would say, “Aren’t dollar, market penetration, and participation measures what really count anyway?”  Indeed, they are often the hard, easily identifiable metrics for all the world (including bosses, boards, etc.) to see and quickly grasp.   They matter for these obvious reasons, but the point is that just delivering on these quantitative numbers may or may not indicate qualitative strategic mission success—or reveal an imbalance, as is more often the case.   I suggest you can find your own best way to achieve this equilibrium; if you do, many more metric and impact successes will follow.

It’s not easy to keep the big picture front and center in your organization.  In small shops, many hats are worn by few and times of big crisis (or good news) can swallow the entire team in response.  It requires great discipline, often the courage to reiterate (and sometimes alter) priorities with top leadership or your manager depending on your role.  You have to have the professional and personal confidence to step out of the trenches periodically and take larger stock of your particular association’s real state of affairs.

Here are some types of questions you can start asking:

• Are our fundraising priorities coming out of and feeding back into our top goals as an organization?  Or are they only somewhat related (even ancillary), feeding one person or group’s pet program because it’s always existed?   Is that the highest and best use of our development team or others’ time?

• Who are our real constituencies, their needs, and related opportunities?  Are our goals based on serving the largest (or most important mission-wise) swath of our constituencies possible?  If so, how?

• Have we articulated clearly why we need the money or other resources, such as volunteering, contributing services, content, and so on?  Remember, resources with a little “r” all can carry value if you need them– often with great financial worth– if you stop to think about it.

• Are we allocating our development resources optimally?  Can volunteers help leverage our small staff, ad budget and so on (priceless)?  Who can we tap into as our larger team in the field? (hint: there are so many options)

And I’m sure you can think of many more that fit with your particular association’s unique needs! (Share your questions in the comments section below.)

In a successful venture, regardless of sector, these questions and their answers are openly and repeatedly discussed across the organization, clearly articulated and understood by all stakeholders.  They’re also thoughtfully reviewed on a regular basis– not just every so many years when the next major strategic planning effort may occur.

When it comes to development, YOU own this piece—no matter what role you may play in the operation.   This includes bringing to the same table “bottom-up” key tactical efforts (which we’ll address in the future around messaging), creating opportunity, facilitating others’ efforts, ongoing stewardship, and broad engagement.

Most of all, you must drive realistic expectations that still stretch everyone (including your board and senior leadership) to think out of the box.   They must buy-in to a truly collective effort and be encouraged to “give” in all ways possible.   Once this full cycle is embraced and ingrained in your  constituents’ culture, you are more likely to have an energized, bigger team on your side— and a far better chance of achieving success.  Good luck!

Click here to see Part 1 of this article.

Next Month:  Delivering the Goods on Your Development Plan 

It’s a delight to contribute several guest blog posts here on fundraising tips & tricks for associations, especially the many small organizations who face a myriad of support and resource challenges.

Today’s initial thoughts start at a high level, because as important as tactics and execution can be (future topics), I believe the most important factor in your success is effectively crafting, clarifying, and communicating your association’s strategic vision so that it translates to an optimal development road map.   You may not realize this is also a part of the development team’s collective job description (whatever your role), but it is absolutely key!  Everything starts (and ends) here.   It’s an iterative process, with your leveraging thought leadership at the top of the organization– as well as informing strategy from the bottom-up—based on the true realities of your market position.

It sounds pretty basic, right?  Well, maybe.  We’ve certainly heard some of these themes before, maybe even preached them ourselves.  But, finding the way to translate this philosophy into an integral part of your entire organization’s fundraising ethos and support system that is clearly understood, embraced—and then articulated– by all on your team can often be your biggest challenge.

And your team includes the entire “community” that makes up your organization and a host of stakeholders, often with their own interests in programs, resource needs, and so on—within and outside your association.  Many associations remain fundamentally built on a membership model, which inherently carries some level of say and ownership in how it does things.  The trick is to leverage this as a strength that helps you optimize development results to achieve ONE strategic vision that, hopefully, many constituencies have had a say in crafting.

Every organization should engage in a commitment to “disciplined development” that is first and foremost driven by its board and senior leadership.  This ensures engagement and financial goals are focused with laser clarity on:

1. Strategic Mission.
2. Organizational Priorities (what they are and equally what they are not).
3. Fully aligned tactical fundraising execution road map based on concrete market assessment data.

Tune in next week to see Part 2 of this article on Association Fundraising for Success: Embrace the Big Picture and learn the important questions you need to start asking. 

Questions? Leave a comment below!

You have to get the word out about your event, and chances are you should have started your marketing campaign a few weeks ago. Don’t fret! This article will give you the inspiration to get your marketing right on track.

Identify Themes Right Away

Use your last event for guidance. What themes came up that your attendees feel need to be addressed next? Even if the themes evolve through the planning process, having something to start with will help keep the message relevant.

Identify Keynote Speakers Soon

The sooner you can identify keynote speakers and the topics of their talks, the sooner you trumpet how awesome your event will be. Market early, and market often.

Motivational Deadlines

Deadlines are necessary for proper planning to establish how many people are coming, but more attendees means more revenue. You can increase your attendance by leaps and bounds If you plan your early registration deadline as a motivational deadline. After the first deadline passes, you can announce an extension that will help you capture all of the people who were on the fence about signing up but who let the deadline slip past. This technique works especially well for events that have a submission component, such as a paper or an abstract.

Exhibitors and Sponsors

A whole article will be devoted to building exhibits and sponsorships (so stay tuned!), but in the context of promotion, you have to let your prospective attendees know who’s coming, and who’s endorsed your event. Not only can these endorsements help catalyze prospective attendees, the exposure is good for the vendors and they’ll thank you for it.

Promote, Promote, Promote

You can’t win at promotion if you don’t promote. Early and frequent outreach to your membership and potential attendees is crucial. If you’re not emailing them at least once a week, you’re not doing it enough. Make sure your subject lines carry as much information as possible, and make sure you’re not just repeating yourself. You identified your themes and your keynote speakers early. You know who your exhibitors and sponsors are. You have several deadlines to promote. There is plenty of material available to keep things fresh on a weekly basis. That said, don’t be afraid to repeat key parts of your message from time to time. Your material evolves as the event planning proceeds, so even a repeated deadline reminder can carry a paragraph about why a certain speaker is important to your industry, even if you’ve already told your audience that she’s coming.

How do YOU win at meeting promotion? Let us know in the comments section below.

Where do you want to take your next event? This blog will give you some important things to keep in mind when you are selecting your city and venue. It will include some tips to help you ask the right questions and make the best decision for you and your organization. These tips will also help you compare several attractive proposals that may have vastly different terms.

Convention and Visitor’s Bureau (CVB)

First and foremost, you can reach out to a city’s CVB for help with finding venues and circulating an RFP. It is their job to bring business into their city so leverage them as much as you can. I say that with a caveat. Use your CVB but do not rely completely on them. Since it is their job to sell you their city, they may embellish or exaggerate or omit a few details. Do your research and ask friends, members or board members for their advice on a certain city.

Wi-Fi

Most meeting attendees have come to expect free Wi-Fi, and will grumble if it’s not provided. Do your best to secure this in your contract with your venue, but if that’s not an option, and be sure to get price quotes up front. These costs vary widely, though you can often talk the provider down from their standard quotes.

Union Contracts

Make sure to find out when a venue’s union contracts are going to expire, and whether the venues are on good terms with their labor. The last thing you want is to be surprised by a strike. You may even consider including force majeure language in your contract that allows you to cancel without penalty in the event of a strike.

Catering Costs

Popular and well known cities offer a lot of amenities and are attractive to attendees; however, there is more competition for event space, so you often won’t have competitive hotel or meeting room rental rates. Also, cities such as New York, San Francisco, and Boston can have much higher rates for coffee, labor, and etc. For a meeting we held in New York City, coffee was $110 per gallon, plus tax and service charge (plus plus). Compare that to Los Angeles where a gallon of coffee was $68, plus plus, or Salt Lake City, where coffee was $40 per gallon plus plus.

Since catering costs vary so widely and are subject to change, it’s important to know what you’re getting into. Ask to see catering menus, and ask about standard price increases. As you review proposals, you may be able to convince a venue to hold catering prices at current rates for a meeting a few years in the future, which can represent real savings. A venue with low food and beverage prices but a high minimum can pose a challenge that can have you scrambling to add service to your planned events, in order to avoid paying the difference. Make sure that your planned events will adequately cover the minimum by laying out some sample menus.

Weather

Another important factor to consider are weather patterns at the time of your meeting. You’ll most likely do a site visit at a time other than when you would be holding your event, so make sure to check historical weather patterns for the area so that your attendees are less likely to get stuck in a blizzard or washed away in a hurricane. And do your own research; don’t just take the CVB’s word for it.

Travel

When selecting your venue, it’s important to consider the ease of travel by air, train, car, public transportation, etc. When choosing between two good proposals in different cities, it can be helpful to take a look at where your attendees will come from. You might want to draw a circle on the map with a 200-500 mile radius and see how many of your potential attendees would be within a day’s drive of your proposed city and check nearby parking rates.

WiFi, Union Contracts, Catering Costs, Weather, and Travel are important factors when deciding on a venue. Though this is not a comprehensive list of all the factors to consider, you now have some tips to help you keep costs low and attendance high. Please let us know your tips and stories in the comments!