AuSAE Member Chat Series – Half an Hour of Power with Lynette Pinder

16 Jul 2020 1:25 PM | Kerrie Green

Welcome back to our AuSAE Member Chat Series – Half an Hour of Power. This week we are delighted to have sat down with AuSAE member, Lynette Pinder, Chief Executive Officer, Australian Institute of Training and Development. In a short 30 minute interview we discussed four key questions with Lynette to reflect on the last four months and look forward to the future post this crisis.

What do the next 6 months look like for your association and your members 

As an association we are trying to focus our collective effort on positive projects and new initiatives. I think it’s important to have a common goal and something for our team to look forward to. We know the next 6 months will continue to challenge us, so seeing new projects come to fruition will have the ability to reenergize the team and keep us moving forward. We are launching a new website, CRM and new brand – these projects were on our plan prior to COVID-19, but have since been accelerated.

As a national organisation, we are mindful of the variations and differences between states and territories and how each are faring in their COVID-19 responses. We are monitoring the situation in Victoria closely and managing the feelings and needs of members in those affected areas. We do need to be very careful with our marketing, messaging and transparency across each state and territory.

Areas of concern 

Our membership is very social, one of their key reasons for being a member with us is the ability to network and meet likeminded colleagues. For that reason, we do have considerable concerns about when we can return to face to face events safely. We are planning for the return, a highlight on our events calendar every year is the Annual Excellence Awards Gala Dinner, we currently have this scheduled for 3 December 2020 in Sydney. With the changes in Victoria last week, we are preparing ourselves and planning for contingencies. As a team we are looking at all possible options whether this be live streaming, hybrid or organising gatherings in each state. Another important focus for us is how we keep that energy and excitement that usually surrounds our big events given the restrictions in which we are operating.

From an organisational perspective, the uncertainty of the future is weighing on us. We are lucky to sit in a strong financial position, but our usual revenue streams are slow, and no one knows when this will return to normal levels or if they will at all. I’m sure all CEOs of Associations are feeling the same and asking the same questions: what does the long term viability of the organisation look like, how long will this impact us, what do new possible revenue streams look like and what do the next 5 years hold for us.

Areas of opportunity 

We do sit in a lucky industry, training and reskilling will be vital as we move through this crisis and into recovery mode. As the world has shifted and changed our members will be more important than ever. As an association we need to ensure we are there for members to support them through this, we have the opportunity to provide purposeful facilitation and networking and deliver real value to our community.

The new world in which we are all operating has allowed us to engage with our international and remote members more than we ever have. I think a real opportunity for our association is continuing this engagement and connection with these members and ensuring we strengthen and harness this membership group.

We are positive as we look towards the future, next year we are celebrating our 50th birthday and we look forward to those conversations around what we can do and provide to members in the next 50 years.

Celebrated moments in the last four months 

We have become known as those crazy people who flipped their face to face conference to a completely virtual conference in 72 hours. I am extremely proud of this moment with the team, it was something to be celebrated. As well as providing members with the value of the conference, another positive to come out of this exercise was the ability to share our learnings with the broader association community. We really were first in to do this, and we were thankful to be able to share the good, the bad and the ugly during this process which we hope helped associations as they moved through their own journey.

As an organisation, we are proud to have kept business as usual as much as possible for our members. I think during a time with so much uncertainty and stress, we really wanted to anchor ourselves as a consistent and familiar friend for our members.



The Australasian Society of Association Executives (AuSAE)

Australian Office:
Address: Unit 6, 26 Navigator Place, Hendra QLD 4011 Australia
Free Call: +61 1300 764 576
Phone: +61 7 3268 7955
Email: info@ausae.org.au

New Zealand Office:
Address: 159 Otonga Rd, Rotorua 3015 New Zealand
Phone: +64 27 249 8677
Email: nzteam@ausae.org.au

Powered by Wild Apricot Membership Software