This blog post first appeared on the AVA website here, written by Marcia Balzer, National Public Affairs Manager, Australian Veterinary Association.  

I was very lucky a few weeks ago to present at the annual conference of the Australasian Society of Association Executives, the industry body for those of us who work in not-for-profit organisations.

For the first time, I told the full story of the AVA’s unique member-centred advocacy program that commenced in April 2013. It was an opportunity to step back, take stock, and see how far we’ve come in the two years since we started our brave new experiment.

The Need

During the preceding years, members and non-members had become increasingly vocal about their expectations that the AVA should speak up for the profession and advocate more effectively for change. Two member research projects in 2012 highlighted that being an effective advocate was the most important job we had. But it also showed that neither members nor non-members thought we were doing a great job at it.

We had a number of things going for us at the outset:

• a set of decent policies and position statements
  
• a democratic process to maintain and develop policies
  
• employees responsible for advocacy in states and nationally
  
• a professional communications team
  
• a track record providing technical animal health and welfare advice on request
  
• experience collaborating across the organisation to advocate during major issues such as Hendra virus outbreaks and natural disasters.

But we lacked a cohesive or strategic approach, which meant there were gaps. Big gaps. We struggled to get to grips with big issues affecting the profession such as workforce planning and economic sustainability. In the other areas where we did work, it was hard to identify the impact we made, and whether we were having any impact at all. The result of that, of course, was that our members were even more in the dark - our advocacy work wasn’t pulling its weight in recruiting and retaining association members.

For the full blog post by Marcia please click here.