The 2015 ASAE Annual Meeting & Expo had no shortage of ideas and opinions on the current state of membership in associations. Here are four takeaways that stood out, including the definition of engagement and the next big threat to membership stability.

The dust is still settling from another ASAE Annual Meeting & Expo. In my five days in Detroit, I heard a litany of ideas, questions, and discussions about association membership, both in Learning Labs and in informal conversation.

It was clear that association membership pros have a lot on their minds. In the coming weeks, I will likely revisit some of the stories and ideas I heard to share them in detail here, but, for now, while many of us in attendance are in the midst of returning home, here are four reactions from some of the ideas that caught my ear:

Members define engagement, not the association. Tuesday’s Learning Lab “Engagement Is More Than a Buzzword” was one of the best deconstructions of a single association topic I’ve seen in a long time, and engagement is certainly a term in need of clarity. Presenters Joe Vallina, CAE, of the American Nurses Association and Maddie Grant, CAE, and Jamie Notter of Culture That Works described the process they’ve taken to define engagement at ANA, but the most crucial insight they said associations must come to understand is that members define what engagement means, not the association.

In other words, each and every member has individual and unique reasons for engaging in an association and preferred methods for doing so, they said. The association must work to understand what those definitions are and aim to serve them, but it doesn’t get to determine the stakes of the game. That’s an important shift in mindset.

To read the other three takeaways please click here.  This article first appeared on Associations Now here and was written by Joe Rominiecki.