AuSAE have now released dates and speakers for the first round of Networking Luncheons for 2017. The topic for this round of Networking Luncheons is "Navigating Leadership Through a Changing Environment "

AuSAE's networking luncheons are a great way to connect with others in the industry to discuss high level topics of real importance, develop new relationships and gain critical information. This is a rare opportunity to network with other CEOs and senior management professionals from charities, associations and other non-profit organisations. Ample opportunity will be given for you to discuss issues and network with others.

See dates below for the first round of Networking Luncheons for 2017:

• Canberra Tuesday 21 February - Richard Stokes, Executive Director, Australian Boarding Schools Association 

• Adelaide Tuesday 7 March - Elaine Bensted, Chief Executive, Zoos SA
  

• Sydney Wednesday 8 March - Matthew Fisher, CEO, Chiropractors Association of Australia
  

• Brisbane Tuesday 14 March - Jane Schmitt, CEO, AMA Queensland

• Perth Thursday 16 March - Stephen Brown, Chief Executive Officer, The Western Australian Farmers Federation

• Melbourne Tuesday 28 March - Damian Paull, CEO, Franchise Council of Australia

The Accommodation Association of Australia (AAA) says it would oppose any move to impose a bed tax in popular tourist destinations. Byron Shire Mayor Simon Richardson flagged the idea of the tax, which he said was popular with many ratepayers. Cr Richardson said this was hardly surprising in an area attracting more than 1.5 million visitors per year.

He has called for other councils affected by big tourist numbers to back a renewed push for the levy to fund infrastructure. "I think a bed tax is a no-brainer," Cr Richardson said. "It's happened all around the world [and] it never made the tourism industry fall. "It's something that most visitors fully expect to pay and have the capacity to pay."

But AAA's chief executive Richard Munro described the idea as a risky move."You can't just raise taxes every time and expect people to pay them," he said.

"We're in competitive destinations [and] Byron Bay is a great location but it's not unique and people have a choice. "If you start putting levies on the consumers, you're going to find that people are going to start looking around; people are price-sensitive.

The butcher, the baker, the candlestick maker ... everyone's benefiting from tourism; it's not just the hotels and motels and serviced apartments — everyone benefits.

"It drives the economy, it drives jobs [and] you risk cooking the golden goose, almost. "If you start putting these levies on you'll find that people just won't go." The criticism came as no surprise Cr Richardson who said the tourism lobby was "pretty strong". "There's always a fear that you put in a tax, you're going to scare off visitors," he said. "I brought it up at a local government tourism conference only about six months ago, and the main powers-that-be were very quick to try to suggest that it was a flawed, ill-conceived idea. "Of course it's not; most of the world does it."

This article was originally sourced from ABC News and written by Bruce MacKenzie.

AuSAE has welcomed new members from the following organisations this month. Is your organisation on this list? If your organisation is on this list as an AuSAE organisational member but you are unsure if you are part of the membership bundle, please contact the friendly AuSAE team at info@ausae.org.au.

Not on this list? To join AuSAE today please visit our membership information page here.

GISBORNE District Council team leader for land Kerry Hudson has been digging the dirt on soil around Tairawhiti Gisborne for 34 years. He has now been appointed as the new president for the New Zealand Association of Resource Management (NZARM).

Mr Hudson was the former secretary of NZARM for two years but was elected to the president role in October. His presidential nomination is basically an overseeing role, he said.“There is an executive council from around New Zealand and those people come from regional councils, unitaries and from industry.”

Mr Hudson said the big issue for the Tairawhiti region was soil erosion. NZARM first came into existence in 1953 as the New Zealand Soil Conservators Association. The objectives of NZARM are to represent and promote the views and interests of people involved or interested in resource management, to promote good practice, competence and ethics in resource management, to promote communication and transfer of information between members.

Mr Hudson said he was looking forward to the challenge over the next two years. 

This article was originally sourced from Gisborne Herald. 

Nothing promotes a career center like putting relevant, niche jobs in front of professionals. When it comes time to look for a new job, professionals turn first to associations, which are among the best places to start. That’s because they know employers savvy enough to recruit via their relevant association channels are looking for exactly the type of skills possessed by your pool of members.

With the holidays upon us—a time when folks focus on next year’s goals and dreams, you should already be proactively promoting your career center to help support your members’ professional advancement. Ultimately for you, marketing your career center to members is vital to your association’s economic success. Without candidate engagement, employers who pay you to expose jobs to highly-qualified talent, won’t get the ROI they’re expecting.

And, nothing markets a career center like putting relevant, niche jobs in front of professionals. They see the jobs in your messaging and click to find out what other jobs are available. Your members are then constantly reminded to use your site when they are hiring within their department or having a bad day at the office and consider moving on. Non-members also see that employers want to hire your members, giving them another reason to think about joining as a member.

5 questions to answer.

To successfully market your career center, answer and act upon these five questions:

1. Do you share jobs from your career center through your newsletters?
   
2. Do you print out flyers and share them at your onsite events?
   
3. Do you communicate to your members how many employers and job seekers you have looking for the right candidates and job opportunities?
   
4. Do you tweet on Twitter and share on Facebook the various jobs that will help your members know you have a job board available to them?
   
5. Do you have dedicated emails of open job opportunities regularly sent to your members?
   

If you aren’t doing these things, easy ways to increase engagement with your career center and get folks using it are passing you by. The good news is that these tactics, for the most part, can be automated. You can distribute jobs via widgets, RSS feeds or other automated methods.

Living in an age of information overload, I don’t want to just add more information to your day. So, I leave you with this thought: Apply the information you have learned; go, look at your career center and then think about where else you can promote jobs. You have a valuable, relevant resource to offer your members. Make sure you are successfully sharing it today!

This article was originally sourced from Your Membership and written by Tristan Jordan.

We talk a lot about member engagement: How to boost it, how to appeal to different people/generations, how to take advantage of seasonal ups and downs, etc. But let’s take a step back for a second: How do you define an engaged member?   Is it someone who…

• Attends every meeting and event
  
• Volunteers for nearly everything
  
• Reads every article/blog post you publish
  
• Shares your content on social media
  
• All of the above
  
• None of the above
  

Think of it like this: If you were to envision your most engaged member - the one you KNOW is going to renew next year - what would that look like/who would that be? Chances are, it’s someone you see often. Someone who attends every meeting and event, volunteers for nearly everything, etc.

But what about the members you don’t see? Are they automatically unengaged or less engaged? Not necessarily. In fact, some of your most engaged members may actually be those behind the scenes. They may be the members who are reading every single thing you publish - on social media, on your website, in your online social community, etc. They may not be sharing it, but they’re reading it, and that counts for something.

Here’s an example: I read Associations Now every day. Sometimes I share the articles, but sometimes I just take the information in. Either way though, it’s a part of my daily routine. Wouldn’t it be nice to become a part of your members’ daily routines? You might already be. Your members might not be showing up to all of your meetings and events, but if they’re thinking of and turning to your association daily, that’s a pretty lofty achievement.

The point here is this: Rather than thinking about membership engagement in terms of those we can or cannot see, why not think about it in terms of value? A really engaged member is someone who finds something in your organization (whether it be an event or content) invaluable. Still need help engaging your organization’s membership? Check out our free guide, Membership Engagement for Small-Staff Associations, below!

Membership Engagement - Download this guide here. 

This article was originally sourced from Member Clicks and written by Callie Walker. 

Some people say great leaders are born. Others say great leaders are made. Either way you spin it, though, there’s always room for improvement. Not sure how to become a better leader? Take notes from the best! Here are five habits of highly effective association leaders:

1. They know how to delegate. - A big part of leadership involves delegation - knowing how to divide tasks, who to assign tasks to, etc. But while all leaders delegate, the best ones delegate as they go. They make adjustments as needed. If someone is drowning in work, a good leader will step in and see how he or she (as well as others) can help. Workloads should be somewhat balanced, and a good leader understands that.

2. They see the big picture. - We all know how easy it is to get lost in the day-to-day shuffle of things - checking emails, running reports, completing projects/tasks, etc. And because new projects/tasks are always popping up, it’s sometimes easy to forget why we’re even doing them. But a good leader can see the big picture. They understand how all the little tasks add up, and consequently, they can help keep others focused.Plus, if something doesn’t go exactly as planned (for example, a goal isn’t met or event attendance is low), a good leader can put that into perspective. They can remind people of the big picture and re-instill hope among the team.

3. They understand communication (how and when to do it). - The best leaders are those that understand communication. They know how to communicate with people (face-to-face vs. email, light-hearted tones vs. serious ones, etc.), as well as when. They know when to provide feedback and when to “sit back” and let others take the reigns. (This is actually one of the best skills professionals of any industry/job level can possess.)

4. They inspire action. - Good leaders inspire others. They work hard to the point where others want to work hard. They’re also extremely passionate - and that passion spreads. Good leaders don’t sit back and expect others to do the work. Instead, they’re the model for how the work should be done.

5. They practice the golden rule. - When it comes to effective leaders, the best of the best do this: They treat others the way they want to be treated, and 10 times out of 10, that’s with respect. They don’t put others down or tune people out. Instead, they build people up and take feedback/opinions in. And truth be told, if you want to have an impact on your staff and organization, this is the number one way to do it.

Being an association leader is tough. Not only do you have your staff members to manage/please, but you have your members to manage/please as well. Need a little help? Check out our Ultimate Guide to Membership Management below. It’s filled with best practices for membership recruitment, engagement, retention and more!

This article was originally sourced from Member Clicks and written by Callie Walker. 

77% of people say that when they’re attending live events they often (or always) use their smartphones for business. Another 13% say they sometimes use their smartphones, while only 10% say they rarely or never use their phones. That means that 90% of your event attendees are on their smartphones. So where are you?

If your organization isn’t putting event information where its attendees are, on mobile, then you’re not engaging conference-goers effectively. You’re losing them to work email and random YouTube videos that they’re just using to kill time between sessions. You may even be frustrating attendees who are actively searching for your event information on their phones.

Mobile Event Experience Research - The numbers above are taken from a study titled Great Expectations: The Evolving Landscape of Technology in Meetings, completed by American Express (AMEX) Meetings & Events division. AMEX surveyed hundreds of meeting planners and event attendees to find out how technology is impacting meetings today.

What they found is that nearly every attendee is on their mobile device while at live events, making it critical that you provide mobile event tools to keep attendees informed and engaged. That’s fairly intuitive, though. We know we love our gadgets. What’s more surprising and helpful to associations and businesses are the other findings from AMEX’s study. Instead of needing multiple, complex mobile event tools, AMEX’s study found that event attendees only wanted to be able to do three main things on mobile. Here are the three features that your mobile event experience must have to be successful.

Top 3 Features Event Attendees Want on Their Mobile Device:

Feature #1) Agenda and Personal Scheduling - Give your event attendees access to event agendas and personalization tools.Agenda and scheduling tools were by far the most important mobile event features to attendees. In AMEX’s study, 79% of attendees stated that access to a meeting or event schedule was extremely important.

75% responded similarly for access to session descriptions and 64% wanted the ability to create a personalized agenda.

Make sure your mobile event tools include comprehensive agenda options including:

• A full event schedule
  
• Session descriptions
  
• The ability for attendees to add and remove sessions from their personal agenda
  

To provide an even better experience, you can also include speaker bios, which 51% of attendees noted as an important mobile feature.

Expert Tip: Agenda tools are unique in that attendees will likely access them from a variety of devices, including work computers as they prepare for your event.

To give these attendees a truly unified digital experience, make sure your agenda tools are the same across all devices and work on all operating systems. That will allow attendees to review their schedules from computers, tablets, and smartphones without having to learn a second set of tools.

Feature #2) Updates - 69% of event attendees said one of their top priorities was easy access to updates from meeting organizers. That makes event updates the most popular mobile tool after agenda options.Make sure your attendees can access event updates quickly on mobile devices. A likely reason why attendees are so interested in updates is their busy schedules. If anything changes with your event or its agenda, attendees need to know so that they can update their own schedules to arrive at the right session at the right time.

Give your attendees fast, easy access to updates so that they can quickly scroll through the changes that are relevant to them. Then, make sure that your agenda and scheduling tools are in the same mobile toolset so it’s painless for event attendees to adjust their schedules based on updates.

Feature #3) Networking - According to AMEX’s research, 63% of event attendees want the ability to network and share contact information with new connections they meet at the event. 60% also want a directory of attendees. To further put those numbers into perspective, remember that AMEX isn’t the only organization whose research has highlighted the importance of networking tools.

The 2016 Membership Marketing Benchmarking Report also found that networking was essential for members. In fact, it was the number one reason why people join membership organizations in the first place. All of that makes providing networking tools essential for both membership organizations and businesses, whose customers are often interested in making connections that will improve their careers. To meet attendees’ expectations, create a mobile event experience that makes it easy for people to connect with peers and experts. You could provide options for attendees to automatically send their contact information to peers, or make that contact information easily accessible after the event ends, for example.Use your event's mobile tools to provide lasting networking benefits.

Many event apps and microsites do this by sharing attendees’ profiles, complete with contact information, professional titles, and photos to help attendees remember one another.

Expert Tip: How often have you met a colleague at an event and never contacted them afterward? To make networking an even greater benefit for your attendees, help them overcome this problem by providing lasting connection options. One way to do this is to integrate your mobile event experience with your private customer or member community.

When your online community is connected with your event’s mobile tools, attendees won’t just have one another’s contact information, they’ll be connected in the community they use every day, week, or month. They’ll be able to see their event connections online, review what activities they’ve performed, and interact with them through discussion forums, blog posts, and private emails. That makes it less likely for new connections to forget one another, providing lasting networking benefits for your event.

Takeaway: Mobile Event Features that Attendees Want - Your event attendees won’t automatically love any mobile tools you give them. They have their own priorities and concerns, so you need to dig into what your customers or members are really interested in. Event agendas, updates, and networking tools are some of the top options.

Event attendees expect you to provide these types of mobile tools. They expect you to look into their needs and preferences, providing what they care about most. However, that doesn’t mean that you can’t go above and beyond. Attendees want information and tools that help them get value from your event, but if you can find ways to transform that value into long-term benefits then you’ll really blow your attendees away. Build out your mobile tools with that in mind. Ensure that your mobile event experience meets your attendees’ expectations and gives them a little something extra. It’s one of the best ways to not only make your event’s mobile experience useful, but to ensure that your event as a whole is successful.

This article was originally sourced from Association Universe and written by Julie Dietz. 

Your company’s website is sort of like its virtual storefront—so when your website gets a facelift, it can almost feel like you’re moving into new digs, or at the very least getting a major renovation. That’s something you obviously want to approach strategically, and doing so means communicating your vision to the designer, while also making sure you have the right expectations about the finished product.

If you don’t have much experience talking to Web designers, you may be unsure of what to ask. Allow us to recommend a few basic, important questions to get you started. What Should You Ask Your Web Designer?

What’s my role in the process? Your designer will need to solicit your opinion or obtain information from you at various points, and if there is any delay in your response, it could stall the whole project. Make sure you have a good sense of what’s expected of you.

What are the most common hold-ups in the process? Along the same lines, you might ask your designer where projects usually stall, and how you can avoid that happening.

What resources can I provide up front? Most designers will be happy to receive marketing materials, brochures, links to old websites, etc. to get some sense of your style and your branding choices.

What’s the process for adding new content to the site? What do you do when you have another part of the page that you need to add, and how much will it cost you?

Will the site be hard-coded? What you’re asking here, basically, is whether the site will be done in old-school HTML format. Be warned: If the answer is yes, you will have to depend on the designer to make site updates for you!

How can I update the site? Make sure the designer shows you around the CMS dashboard, allowing you to easily make small tweaks or additions to the site as needed.

Will the website be responsive? A responsive website is vital for mobile friendliness. Make sure you confirm this with your designer.

What are all of the costs associated with this site? You’ll want to know up-front the costs associated with the domain, hosting, etc., all of which may be in addition to the fee charged by the designer.

How will we discuss revisions? You may have some tweaks you want to make to the designer’s initial mock-up, so clarify how that will go down—how you’ll communicate, how promptly you can expect those changes to be implemented, etc.

What are the content needs? Your designer will probably need you to provide written content for each page—but how much? And are there any SEO requirements for your content to meet?

This article was originally sourced from Business 2 Community and written by Amanda Clark. 

If you’re feeling the year-end holiday stress, just remember that your members feel the same way. So respond accordingly. Also: Don’t cut corners, but don’t give away too much, either. This time of year—the days immediately before the holidays hit—might feel like your busiest. Do you remember when associations used to reliably enjoy a “slow time of year”?

National Fluid Power Association CEO Eric Lanke does. “One of the painful realities of losing the slow time of year for associations is the negative impact it has on [an organization’s] ability to engage productively with its members,” he writes in a blog post this week. “Because we association staff are not the only ones who have lost our slow time. Our members have lost it, too, and they likely lost it long before we did.”

And that means your members have less time to volunteer. The lesson for execs: Your staff needs to keep a sharp member focus and make time to ensure members have meaningful volunteer experiences. Check out Lanke’s post for more thoughts. It’s a bad idea to keep cutting corners. It’s an equally bad idea to set expectations so high for your organization that there’s no turning back when you reach the summit.

Both are bad places to be, marketing guru Seth Godin explains, and can lead to a death spiral of sorts if you’re not careful. “The productive professional realizes that keeping promises is often enough,” Godin writes. “Randomly exceeding those promises is magical. But the key is ‘randomly.’ Unexpected delight is priceless, and something you can deliver on.”

This article was originally sourced from Associations Now and written by Ernie Smith.