Welcome to fusionSpan

This blog was originally published on September 18, 2013. Are you ready for a new Association Management System (AMS)? If you just answered ‘YES’ or ‘MAYBE’ then read on… Finding the right AMS for your organization can be like Prince Charming finding Cinderella. Sure, you…

At fusionSpan, 2015 was an exciting year with a lot of growth, but that doesn’t mean we didn’t have time to take a break and celebrate the year. We took an afternoon to have ourselves a little celebration before the holidays. Hope everyone had a…

Elizabeth Weaver Engel, CEO and Chief Strategist at Spark Consulting, and Guillermo Ortiz de Zarate, Director, Information Systems, NCARB. This week I got to sit down with Elizabeth Weaver Engel (@ewengel), CEO and Chief Strategist at Spark Consulting, and Guillermo Ortiz de Zarate (@GuillermoOZ), Director, Information Systems, National Council…

Part 2 of fusionSpan’s conversation with Elizabeth Engel and Anna Caraveli about their recent white paper: Leading Engagement from the Outside In: Become an Indispensable Partner in Your Members’ Success. Here we dive further into what steps association’s can take now to become more member…

Yesterday was the official release date of Microsoft’s newest operating system: Windows 10. It’s fast, has a ton of a new features, and makes excellent use of hardware resources. I’ve been messing with this newest addition in a lab environment over the past month or…

API: Application Programming Interface. A vague phrase that offers little insight if you’re not a computer science major, yet if you’ve spent any time around system vendors or website developers they’ve likely thrown the acronym around as if its taught in the third grade of every…

I recently had the opportunity to present at AUDC in Austin, TX during their Ignite session. The Ignite session requires individuals to present 20 slides, each slide appearing for only 15 seconds, resulting in a five minute presentation. Given the speed of the slides, presenters were…

There has been lots of buzz lately in ASAE’s Collaborate community regarding Salesforce based AMS/CRMs for associations. Since we’ve got our fingers on the pulse of new trends in the association world, we thought we’d share our thoughts and let you hear from an expert…

In February of last year our good friend Alexi Turbow began a 3 part blog post series entitled “Why The Press Release?“. We know you all have been on the edge of your seats waiting for the next installment, so here it goes! There are…

Dear Betty: Should everything we offer (webinars, events, discount cards, publications, etc.) be included with membership? Or should members have to pay an additional fee for some of our programs, products, and services? Should everything also be available for a fee to non-members? Or should…

Dear Betty, At the request of our Board, our association recently worked with a consultant to evaluate our membership structure. The consultant strongly recommended increasing our dues rates. I’m worried about the impact this will have on our retention rate. How do I explain an…

OK, so I put some buzz words into the title of this post that will hopefully act as “link bait” for the association community, but hopefully they are not 100% off-target. It seems that every week (at least), there is another book, blog posting, magazine…

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…

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…