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Center for Association Leadership, FAQ page ASAE members primarily represent trade associations, and individual membership organizations or professional societies, organized under Section 501(c)(6) of the tax code; and philanthropic organizations, organized under Section 501(c)(3). In 2009, there were 90,908 trade and professional associations, and 1,238,201 philanthropic or charitable organizations. Associations are organized for all types of purposes, but there are some recurring benefits they typically provide their members, including: Education / professional development Information, research, statistics Standards, codes of ethics, certification Forum (face to face or virtual) to discuss common problems and solutions Service / mission oriented - volunteerism and community service Provide a community, network, "home", identity, participation What is the role or connection between ASAE, and the association community at large? A: ASAE is often thought of as the gateway to associations, because it is the largest organization of its kind working to advance and promote the association profession. ASAE represents more than 21,000 association executives and industry partners representing 10,000 organizations. Our members manage leading trade associations, individual membership societies and voluntary organizations across the United States and in nearly 50 countries around the world. The promise ASAE makes to members is to provide exceptional experiences, a vibrant community, and essential tools that make them and their organization more successful.

ComsterCollege.com article by Lauren Bayne Anderson, June 16, 2011. Excerpt Here are some benefits to joining a professional organization: Jobs Many professional organizations help their members find jobs, or at the least, offer up job listings that other members may be offering. Mentoring Mentoring is the cornerstone of many professional organizations when it comes to working with younger members. You may never get in the room with someone at the top of your field, for a very long time. But professional organizations have the ability to pare you with someone much more experienced. Professional Development Many organizations offer professional development via courses, workshops, publications, and information on their website shared only with members. They also keep members up to date on industry trends and how to deal with them. Some organizations (take the National Association of Black Journalists for example) offer news and print coverage of their annual conferences, run by students-which is an excellent opportunity to gain experience. Networking Most organizations have an annual conference. This is an opportunity for you to mix and mingle with others in your field in both professional and leisure settings. There is also often a job fair where you can make contact and stay up to date with the very people who hire - even if they're not hiring right now. In fact, some people find recruiters follow their career and stay updated when you stop by their booth at the job fair. They may be keeping an eye on you until they are ready to finally offer you a job. Scholarships For the youngest of members (high school and college), scholarships may be the primary reason to join a professional organization. Many offer scholarships to the new members studying to enter the field.

article by Stephanie Vozza, Fast company, LinkedIn Seven habits 1. Organized people seek out tools 2. Organized people set priorities MITs 3. Organized people have less stuff 4. Organized people choose simple solutions 5. Organized people practice maintenance 6. Organized people regularly purge 7. Organized people project themselves into the future

post by Brian Hurley in Technology Innovation Management Review on how business ecosystems are led by keystone organizations in networks that provide opportunities for suppliers, customers, partners, and competitors. August 2009.

article by Robert Elsenpeter, Star Tribune, 2008. Expand Your Network Many admins are already members of the International Association of Administrative Professionals (IAAP). And while that is a group worth joining, there are other organizations - like Toastmasters - that can help your professional life. "Attend community groups and industry association meetings," says Kathy Northamer, vice president of OfficeTeam in the Twin Cities. "Make presentations on your area of expertise. Volunteer with a nonprofit. You'll not only gain new contacts, but acquire experience and work samples you can use to build your career." Different organizations can offer different opportunities. But there is one thing they all have in common and it's something beneficial for the admin. "Networking, networking, networking!" says Northamer. "The more contacts in your network who know you, the more likely you will secure leads, interviews and interesting job offers." Reasons to Join a Professional Organization: Personal and professional development resources. Networking opportunities. Professional certification that can help your career. Service and support from the national organization. Opportunities to develop one's leadership skills. Discounts on related products and services. Regular organization conferences. Member publications.

Continuous acquisition and application of knowledge, skills, and beliefs by individuals, teams, and the whole enterprise is an essential aspect of high performance organizations. However, barriers to this learning are common in organizations. These barriers must be overcome in order for organizations to have long term success. Stephen Gill has identified 12 common barriers to learning in organizations: Program focus; Limited resources; work-learning dichotomy; passive leadership; non-learning culture; resistance to change; not discussing the un-discussable; need for control; focus on short-term, simple solutions; skilled incompetence; blame-not gain language; selective attention.

excellent discussion of networks and social learning in organizations with references to Hart, Jennings, Cross, and Internet Time Alliance among others, 2010

Boston Club report, 2013, of Boston area women and nonprofit organization representation "For over 20 years, The Boston Club has worked collaboratively with local and regional nonprofit organizations of all sizes to identify and recruit qualified women for positions as directors, trustees, and overseers. During that period, we have placed over 175 women on nonprofit boards. We also have conducted over 30 programs about nonprofit board service, with topics ranging from the basic questions a board candidate needs to ask, to the latest issues of governance affecting nonprofits. Through these initiatives, we have met hundreds of nonprofit executives, board and nominating chairs, and women who serve on their boards. We are continually amazed and energized by the missions and breadth of work conducted by nonprofits, their contributions to the economy of Massachusetts, the vital services and programs provided to our citizens, and the dedication their boards exhibit. But even we could not answer the question: how many women serve on nonprofit boards in Massachusetts? Until now. Why is this information important? Nonprofit organizations play a major role in the economies of many towns and cities in the state, generating $234 billion in revenues in 2010. In 2010, nonprofit jobs represented 16.7% of the total employment in Massachusetts 1 . We are known worldwide for our universities, hospitals, and cultural institutions, most of which are nonprofit organizations. Fifty-seven percent of women in Massachusetts are in the workforce. For The Boston Club, which has long tracked the number of women in leadership positions in publically owned companies, the question of gender diversity in the leadership of nonprofit organizations is part of our mission. We believe that the advancement of women to significant and visible leadership roles in all types of businesses will have lasting and meaningful impact on business performance and the economic health of our communities."

This 'manifesto' was offered in response by Paolo Bruttini to Jarche's adherence to networks for organizations operating today with different type of leadership. October 2014 Jarche concluded in his post: Networked leaders foster deeper connections, developed through ongoing and meaningful conversations. They understand the importance of tacit knowledge in solving complex problems. Networked leaders know they are just nodes in the knowledge network and not a special position in a hierarchy. What does a post-hierarchical organization look like? It will be one that provides a sense of belonging like a tribe, but with more diversity and room for personal growth. It will have the institutional structure to manage the basic systems so people can focus on customers and community, not merely running the organization. It will have market type competition, but without a winner-take-all approach. Finally, it will promote cooperative actions that add to the long-term value of the ecosystem and community, not just short-term collaboration to get the next project done or achieve some arbitrary quarterly results. Making the networked organization more resilient will help everyone in it, not just a few central nodes. The networked organization takes the long view.

Article on Leaning into Discomfort: Social Sector Leadership inthe 21st Century, NPQ (Nonprofit Quarterly), May 7, 2012 Excerpt from interview with Nancy Northup, Center for Reproductive Rights: ""In fact, leaning into discomfort, I think, is critical, to make sure that what we are doing-both externally, as we work to establish reproductive rights around the world, and internally, at the organization level-is bold enough. The organization had better be feeling discomfort if it's leaning into new strategies and ways of working. "You have always to ask, Am I pushing for the change that's really needed? On all of those levels, you have to continually refresh and check and make sure that you're getting the most power for the mission by being as uncomfortable as possible. Because change is hard, and the reason why you have to look at all those different levels-yourself, your organization, and then the world-is that if you're not willing to hold the tension of change as an organization, how can you begin to understand what you have to risk and what others have to risk to make change happen in the world?"" Excerpt from interview with Ai-jen Poo, National Domestic Workers Alliance: As Poo observed, "Domestic workers work in isolated workplaces. They don't have any job security whatsoever, and there are no labor standards or protections, except-for now-in New York, because of us. But really, there's nothing mediating the relationship between a worker and an employer-your workplace is somebody else's so-called castle. It already takes a lot of courage to assert your rights and dignity, and to make sure that you get paid on time, and to make sure that you can get home on time to your own children. And all of these challenges that are just day-to-day challenges of living in that environment already demonstrate a tremendous amount of day-to-day courage." Excerpt from interview with George Goehl, National People's Action �

Digest of ideas by Gwen Teatro, You Are Not the Boss of Me, reprinted 9/7/14, originally written in 2010. Very interesting look at the Fifty Discipline by Peter Senge. "There was a time when everyone was jumping onto The Learning Organization bandwagon. This usually happened when times were good, when organizations felt a little more ebullient...Budgets were cut....wisdom and decisions would only come from the few and learning for the many was a luxury no one could afford." Learning Organization components 1. Vision--shared--may start with one person, it must be embraced and shared by all. Can be simple, i.e., Zappo's Delivering Happiness 2. Team learning--in an age where shared leadership is or will become critical, the need to understand the dynamics and functional operation of teams is pretty great--how team members communicate with each other, how they manage conflict, and how they examine their successes...and their failures 3. Personal Mastery--taking the time to study and understand our reality and our purpose 4. Mental models--dangers of clinging to and operating from narrow perspectives--assumptions and biases in our thinking 5. Systems thinking--paying attention to the connections between and among a variety of elements that make up the whole.

blog by Jarche, 11.02.14 on creating the AAA organization (Action, Alternatives, and Awareness) Action that is focused within the organization, communities of practice to identify and review the alternatives, and awareness that one gets from diverse networks.

Really wonderful article on nonprofit leadership development and how the lack of it leads to much external executive hiring and high turnover in these roles

Organizations Directory 7 Billion Actions is a call to action for corporations and NGOs. All around the globe, organizations have answered this call by mobilizing their employees and partners to get involved. Organizations of all kinds, in every part of the world, are creating innovative programs that address issues associated with a world of 7 billion.

I like the array of logos they used to announce the organizations . . . wonder how they decided who went where . . . on the first screen, I immediately saw two orgs I have been affiliated with, and wondered if there might be more but didn't see any I had personal experience with. Were they linked to their sites? I didn't check. Also, for courses, I wonder if we need tags and more of a profile other than a logo and name for folks to find what they need fast.

Blog on professional development, 12/7/09 "In the newer flatter models, there are still leaders and followers but not so many layers in between, and that ratio seems to be evening out and actually shifting towards more leaders than followers. In others words, when an employee feels empowered and is driven to leverage all the tools available today for better decision-making (the collective human knowledge is now free and accessible), then really, organizations need to set goals and truly get the heck out of the way. The flatter models are working and they are working great. In addition to being flat, they are also virtual and function-based as opposed to departmental or vocation-based. So, whoever has the expertise necessary to achieve a goal is sought after and their knowledge is harnessed. In some cases, this functional expertise could very well be outside the traditional walls of an organization. As we start 2010, let's be open to performance instead of accountability, to flatter models instead of traditional hierarchies, and to achieving greater success by empowering those who we compensate to perform."

from Networkweaver.com Communicating in networks are not the same as communicating in organizations: in a network people are not in a single organization and are used to communicating on different platforms in different ways; they don't know how to initiate online conversations; network activities are usually only a small part of an individual's work; they don't know the people in the network; groups can be silo'd; they need to know how the network is doing and if it is indeed acting in a "networked" way

Blog post by Jeff Cobb, February 2010, Tagoras site, on pricing elearning. Explains price, cost, margin, value relationship. Excerpt: "What then are typical price points for e-learning in the association market? I am tempted not to cite any because the only other price points that should matter to an organization are potentially those of competitors. (And as Apple, for example, has demonstrated so well, even competitor pricing should be given only so much weight.) Additionally, our research suggests that only 20 percent of associations have any sort of formal process for setting price - which makes me wonder how much thought is being put into value, margins, and volume. Still, it can be helpful to have some sort of benchmark, however, general, against which to gauge your organization's pricing. We go into much more detail about pricing in our Association E-learning: State of the Sector report, but the average price per e-learning content hour in the association sector - based on our survey of nearly 500 organizations - is $56.79. Per credit hour the average is $73.97. So, for example, based on these figures, the average fee for a 90-minute Webinar that offers CE credit would be around $110. Conclusion I began this discussion by focusing on value, and it seems important to note as I conclude it that the price point is not only dependent upon perceived value, it helps drive perceived value. Part of what gives a Mercedes or a Louis Vuitton handbag its sheen of value is the high price point associated with each. To a certain extent, of course, the price is driven by underlying cost. But it is also true that these companies simply have the audacity - the organizational self-esteem, you might argue - to set a premium price. And people gladly pay it. Few associations, I find, are willing to take such an approach with pricing their e-learning, and perhaps few would succeed if they did. But my suspicion is that most organizations are pricing at a lower l

Interesting explanation of business model for how nonprofit and forprofit MOOC partners--edX, Coursera, and Udacity--will make money along with the universities. Implications for other, smaller online learning partnerships? Excerpt on two models (large-scale efforts) According to Mr. Agarwal, edX offers its university affiliates a choice of two partnership models. Both models give universities the opportunity to make money from their edX MOOCs-but only after edX gets paid. Related Content What You Need to Know About MOOCs Document: The Revenue-Sharing Models Between edX and University Partners The first, called the "university self-service model," essentially allows a participating university to use edX's platform as a free learning-management system for a course on the condition that part of any revenue generated by the course flow to edX. The courses developed under that model will be created by "individual faculty members without course-production assistance from edX," and will be branded separately in the edX catalog as "edge" courses until they pass a quality-review process, according to a standard agreement provided to The Chronicle by edX. Once a self-service course goes live on the edX Web site, edX will collect the first $50,000 generated by the course, or $10,000 for each recurring course. The organization and the university partner will each get 50 percent of all revenue beyond that threshold. The second model, called the "edX-supported model," casts the organization in the role of consultant and design partner, offering "production assistance" to universities for their MOOCs. The organization charges a base rate of $250,000 for each new course, plus $50,000 for each time a course is offered for an additional term, according to the standard agreement. Although the edX-supported model requires cash upfront, the potential returns for the university are high if a course ends up making money. The university gets 70 percent of any revenue gen

blog by Harold Jarche on the Connected Workplace, 4.15.2013 Excerpts: "Implicit knowledge is best developed through conversations and social relationships. It requires trust before people willingly share their know-how. Social networks can enable better and faster knowledge feedback for people who trust each and share their knowledge. But hierarchies and work control structures constrain conversations. Few people want to share their ignorance with the boss who controls their paycheck. But if we agree that complex and creative work are where long-term business value lies, then learning amongst ourselves is the real work in organizations today. In this emerging network era, social learning is how work gets done." ..."Personal knowledge management (PKM) skills can help to make sense of, and learn from, the constant stream of information that workers encounter from social channels both inside and outside the organization." ..."Collaboration skills can help workers to share knowledge so that people work and learn cooperatively in teams, communities of practice, and social networks." ..."Leaders need to understand the importance of organizational architecture. Working smarter in the future workplace starts by organizing to embrace networks, manage complexity, and build trust."

article by Martin Dewhurst and Paul Willmott, September 2014 on new leadership skills required in age of new information technologies Machines force executives and senior leaders to: 1. open up their companies through crowdsourcing and social platforms within and across organizational boundaries 2. create data sets worthy of the most intelligent machines 3. "let go" in ways that run counter to a century of OD 4. executives...able to make the biggest difference through the human touch. ...questions they frame, their vigor in attaching exceptional circumstances highlighted by increasingly intelligent algorithms ... tolerating ambiguity and focusing on the "softer" side of management to engage the organization and build its capacity for self-renewal. 5. turbocharged data-analytics strategy, a new top-team mind-set, fresh talent approaches, and a concerted effort to break down information silos...transcend number crunching..."weak signals" from social media and other sources also contain powerful insights and should be part of the data-creation process. 6. ...early movers will probably gain insights of unstructured data, such as email discussions between representatives or discussion threads in social media. 7. ...dashboards don't create themselves. Senior executives must find and set the software parameters needed to determine, for instance, which data gets prioritized and which gets flagged for escalation. 8. ...odds of sinking under the weight of even quite valuable insights grow as well. Answer: democratizing it: encouraging and expecting the organization to manage itself without bringing decisions upward. ...business units and functions will be able to make more and better decisions on their own. 9. 8 will happen even as the CEO begins to morph into a "chief experimentation officer," who draws from acute observance of early signals to bolster a company's ability to experiment at scale. 10. need to "let go" will be more significant and the discomfort of s