CEO John Graham outlines new pricing plan for XDP, touts growing number of younger ASAE members

CHICAGO—The theme for #ASAE18 is "Get Focused," and CEO John Graham focused on generational change and taking risks in his opening remarks Sunday. About 6,000 people are gathered in Chicago for the ASAE Annual Meeting & Exposition, which runs through Tuesday at McCormick Place convention center.

Graham noted the importance of youthful association staff, citing an estimate that those born after 1996—Generation Z—will make up 30 percent of the workforce by 2025.

Making ASAE more inclusive for younger professionals was one goal of adopting a hybrid membership model in 2016, Graham said. ASAE now allows organizations to join and pay a flat annual rate based on staff size. Since then, the number of ASAE members has doubled.

"ASAE traditionally has focused on CEOs and senior-level association leaders," he told attendees. "We will never lose that focus, but we also believe that focus should be expanded to a much larger and more diverse cohort. Our new membership model is beginning to pay off for our community: More than 43,000 association professionals are now members of ASAE, most of whom represent younger generations."

Graham also introduced a new pricing model for the association's Experience Design Project meeting next April.

"If you register in advance, you pay nothing now," Graham said to applause. "And after you attend XDP next April, you pay us only what you think the event was worth."

"Focusing on your success sometimes means ASAE will take risks and experiment so you don't have to," he said. "Helping you deal with a rapidly changing association events industry is exactly why we launched (XDP) two years ago."

Opening keynote speaker Yancey Strickler, cofounder of crowdfunding platform Kickstarter, detailed the ills of corporate "financial maximization"—blaming it for four decades of stagnant wages for most Americans while the top 10 percent get ever richer with corporate CEO pay packages and stock buybacks

He said other values should be more important to society.

"We do our best work when we are not driven by money," he said.

Kickstarter, of which he is former CEO, eschewed a big-money IPO and instead organized as a public-benefit corporation, meaning legally its purpose is to aid society in addition to thriving financially.

Strickler said the association community can play a role in fostering a better society.

Referring to the audience, he said, "This group of people especially is really important in this, because gathering based on nonfinancial interests is going to be critical to the future, to gathering around other concerns, other things that bind us together. We have to have a collective effort to have any power."