‘No shortage of new ideas;' executives have to find ways to stay focused, save projects for future or shift resources from existing programs

Shields

Roach

Stefaniak

Delivering your association's deliverables with a small staff may feel like constantly pulling a rabbit out of a hat—it can be quite a trick every time.

So new ideas to expand your group's activities—as much as they may add value to members—meet the harsh reality of limited resources. Your staffers aren't truly magicians after all.

"Our biggest challenge is we have more ideas than we have bandwidth to fill," Jeff Shields, CEO of the $2.3 million-revenue, Washington, D.C.-based National Business Officers Association told CEO Update. "We are constantly needing to prioritize. We can't go after every big idea we have."

Betsi Roach, executive director of the $2.8 million-revenue, Chicago-based, Legal Marketing Association said she has to manage member expectations.

"[My members are] marketers, they are bright, creative and inquisitive. They want to be on the cutting edge," Roach said. "There's no shortage of new ideas for things to do."

"I'm sitting there throwing ideas out on the table and the rest of my team is looking at me and saying, ‘Yeah, who's going to do that?'" said Rob Paterkiewicz, executive director of the $2 million-revenue, Chicago-area, Selected Independent Funeral Homes.

Outsourcing not magic solution

Even hiring a consultant—if you have the budget for it—requires staff time for oversight.

"This is another reality of small organizations: You also have to manage projects even when outsourced," said Thomas Stefaniak, executive director of the $1.2 million-revenue, Lanham, Md.-based, Society for Vascular Ultrasound.

But all four chief executives have ways to prioritize the most important projects and hold other ideas for the future.

Revenue growth enabled the four-staff SVU to hire a research consultant in August, but the move was delayed until other projects were completed, Stefaniak said.

"We had our annual conference not long ago and launched a new website [in early September]. We pushed back the research initiative to when there could be more active oversight from me and other people on our staff," he said.

At the 12-staff Selected Independent Funeral Homes, good ideas aren't just dropped off the table because staff is too limited.

Many of SIFH's members are family-owned businesses going back generations, and they often work with business consultants for advice on things like finances and operations.

SIFH would like to get into the advice business, too, but "we don't have the staff resources to be able to have a person doing that," Paterkiewicz said.

Yet as part of its strategic plan, the group has scheduled time to consider the feasibility of the idea. "We can look for ways to evaluate and study it down the line rather than just write it off," he said.

Keep members focused on plan

Roach at Legal Marketing doesn't even have her own staff—the work is outsourced to Chicago-based association management giant SmithBucklin.

While 19 different SmithBucklin staff work on LMA's behalf, the hours they put in are equivalent to about six full-time employees, she said.

She said sticking to the strategic plan helps the group prioritize its activities.

"The trick is to keep [members] focused on what we decided the previous year as our priorities for the current year. We tell them we can talk about reallocating funds and resources but once we point that out, they say, ‘OK, stay on track.'"

The board leadership plays a role, too—new board presidents don't come in with their own pet projects.

"They don't come on with their initiatives, they realize they are shepherds of the organization's strategic plan. It's not about their individual priorities, it's about what the board deems as their priorities," she said.

But a strong rebound from the recession has put in reach a long-sought goal: offering certifications in the field.
"We finally have the resources to explore that," Roach said. LMA could tap SmithBucklin's expertise in certification programs and simply ask for (and pay for) another person to be assigned to the LMA account for that purpose, she said.

For Shields and the 11 full-time-equivalent staff at National Business Officers Association, better ideas sometime supersede existing programs.

"We put our [fall] Strategic Leadership Forum on hiatus this year to provide greater time and attention toward the development of our online education program," Shields said. "The SLF generally attracted 50 attendees. We fully expect our online education programs to connect with a much larger audience in a way that is more affordable and accessible for our membership.

"As a small staff association we really have to shift our resources because we can't do both," he said.