For an association, the annual Membership survey can be terrifying can’t it? Whilst we have continual feedback from members through indicators such as new membership growth, retention rates, click through rates and event attendance it’s not until we ask the deeper questions, and to really listen to the answers, that we begin to understand if we are delivering that holy grail of “member value”.

AuSAE is the Association for Associations - so we should be great at this right?

The reality is we have exactly the same “pain points” as each and every one of you but our advantage is we are amongst friends and in the very unique position to bring the sector together to share common challenges and create collective solutions.

“The role of a leader is not to come up with all the great ideas. The role of leader is to create an environment in which great ideas can happen”, Simon Sinek.

This is our mission. To co-create a community where you participate, how and when you choose, where you feel at home and amongst friends. We haven’t got it right just yet, but we’ve made a great start and we’re listening.

Thank you to our members who recently took the time to tell us their thoughts in our 2017 Member Survey (conducted by our valued partner Survey Matters)  Let us share some of the results with you:

Key highlights from the 2017 survey include:

• 74% of you think our overall performance is above average with 54% rating it as good or excellent.
• Our Net Promoter Score (NPS) is a high 24% meaning that you are happy to recommend us to your peers.
• New Zealand members report a very high level of satisfaction with a NPS of 47%.
• 85% of members report a high level of satisfaction with our networking events, and 71% of members sighting “to network and connect with others” as the key reason for joining.
• 52% of you agree or strongly agree that AuSAE understands the needs of its members.

Some of the nice things you said:

“It gives me the opportunity to connect with people in my profession (associations) rather than my industry (healthcare).” VIC

“Good quality networking lunches - people turn up open to meeting strangers and talking about real issues” ACT

Some of the “areas for improvement” we have taken on-board:

“Communications to be a little more targeted. Sometimes it feels like information overload”, NZ.

“I would like access to an improved library of tools/templates which small associations struggle to build/maintain (governance, strategy, risk, comms, project management, contracts” ,QLD.

“There are a number of competing NFP associations offering the same thing. There needs to be a point of difference”, NSW.

Key areas we’ll be working on:

• Doing more to ensure we understand your key professional challenges.
• Evolving our look and feel to reflect who we are (This month’s new Insider format is just the start!).
• Changing our communications to ensure they are shorter, relevant and targeted – and not all about our events.
• More targeted events to engage every member at every stage in their career – look out for some new events in the coming months.

We are committed to “getting out there” and building a great association and invite you to join us. As CEO, I encourage you to connect with us and provide feedback at anytime. Please contact me on 0458 000 155 or toni@ausae.org.au – I’m here to listen.