Why Data Analytics?

Data helps associations better understand their members. We can use data to find efficiencies, lower expenses, validate trends, communicate effectively, and drive innovation.

On September 27, AMC CEO Steve Smith and DEI & Membership Engagement Manager Linda Sterling will lead a session at Association Forum’s Summit on Welcoming Environment on how to be a more effective and authentic ally to BIPOC (Black, indigenous, and people of color) colleagues, association members, and board volunteers.

We’re thrilled to be recognized for the second year in a row with a Diversity in Business Award from the Daily Herald.

Association governance change is fraught with the wall of membership or House of Delegates (HOD) approval. A task force spends months working on a strategic governance issue, researching solutions, gathering data, and reviewing leading practices before presenting their recommendations to the board.  After a healthy discussion, the board approves the recommendations. In some cases, the board can then amend the bylaws and staff are then able to implement the change in their procedures.

We’re excited to announce that Zinat Ali and Katherine Ast have been named as co-leads of AMC’s DEI Advisory Group. Formed in 2019, the DEI Advisory Group was created to expand opportunities for education, dialogue, and understanding about diverse experiences and perspectives within our workplace.

We’re pleased to announce that Matt Croll of Vector CFO will be working with us as a Chief Financial Officer (CFO) consultant.

AMC CEO Steve Smith will share insights on how to be a more effective ally and advocate to BIPOC colleagues, leaders, and members who face obstacles, injustice, and racism daily at the AAMSE Annual Conference on July 28. Co-presenting the session “Conversations in DEI: Allyship and Advocacy," Steve will draw on his experience as past chair of Association Forum's Welcoming Environments Committee and executive leader of AMC’s DEI Advisory Group to highlight ways to be a more present, visible, and committed ally in professional medical societies, workplaces, and communities. 

Five AMC leaders in governance, board development, and DEI will be sharing their expertise this August at the ASAE Annual Meeting, August 20-23, 2022.

How many times have you heard an association executive say that they are having trouble finding volunteers for leadership positions?

Senior leaders Wendy-Jo Toyama and Han Zetterstrom will be sharing their expertise on data-based decision-making for associations and boards at the AMCI AMC’s Engaged Conference on July 20.

AMC leaders in ethics, board-staff partnerships, and governance will be sharing their expertise this July at the ACCESSE22 Leadership Conference. Hosted by the Council of Engineering and Scientific Society Executives (CESSE), ACCESSE22 is a 3-day conference that combines leadership development, peer-to-peer connections, and expertise in managing science, technology, engineering, and math societies.

Balancing a mission-driven board while ensuring financial sustainability for the association can be a challenge during the best of economic times. But add in a pandemic and ever-increasing inflation, and it can seem like an insurmountable uphill climb.

We’re proud to congratulate Amy Sherwood, CAE, AMC executive director, for being selected as the recipient of the 2022 Inspiring Leaders Award by Association Forum.

Wendy-Jo Toyama, CEO and executive director of AAHPM, and Debbie Trueblood, senior consultant, have been selected as the keynote speakers for this year’s Forum Forward in June. In their session titled Institutionalizing Inclusion and Operationalizing DEI as a Value, Wendy and Debbie will share strategies for how associations can budget for DEI, incorporate it into their strategic plans, and implement DEI practices in their organizations.

Like many relationships in life, the board-staff relationship can be really great, with the board and staff working as a cohesive and collaborative team. Or, they can be more challenged, potentially leading to feelings of distrust and disillusionment and suboptimal performance.

We are delighted to announce that Debbie Trueblood, MSW IOM CAE FASAE—senior consultant at AMC—is being recognized as a Fellow of the American Society of Association Executives (FASAE). 

Many associations have recently begun their diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) journeys, or double downed on their DEI efforts in significant ways. This has been a long time coming and is an important evolution of the value associations bring to our industries and professional communities.

We are very pleased to announce that Susan Farrell Stock, MPS, has returned to AMC in a new role as  Chief Operating Officer (COO).

We’re excited to announce that Carol Pape, CAE, has been hired as an executive director and will serve two of our client partners: the Academy of Breastfeeding Medicine (ABM) and the International Transplant Nurses Society (ITNS).

We’re proud to announce that we have been awarded a 2022 Presidential Citation from the American Academy of Hospice and Palliative Medicine (AAHPM).

Here we go again. As associations plan their conferences for 2022, many are experiencing 2020 COVID déjà vu.

Move forward with an in-person format? Switch to virtual as positive case counts tick up? What will the COVID landscape be like when the conference actually kicks off months from now? The uncertainty abounds.

This past week AMC celebrated our second annual diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) week. Though DEI is a focus all year long, DEI Week gives us the chance to participate in multiple events each day to celebrate what makes us all unique, take a deeper dive into learning about DEI and fostering an inclusive culture, and step away from our day to day to have some fun.

We’re thrilled that AMC marketing staff enabled two of our association partners to win Gold Awards in the 2021 Association Trends Trendy Awards!

We are very pleased to  announce that Hans Zetterstrom will join AMC in the role of Chief Information Officer (CIO) on December 1, 2021.

Colin Powell, a retired four-star general, former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the first Black U.S. Secretary of State, died earlier last week at the age of 84, leaving an important legacy of leadership.

We’re excited to announce that Lauren Krauth and Michelle Whitworth have been selected as Forty Under 40 honorees by Connect Association and Association Forum, respectively.

We’re pleased to announce that AMC has been selected as the new management partner for the American College of Veterinary Pathologists (ACVP). We began providing management services to ACVP on October 1, 2021.

Since March of 2020, association board leaders have been confronted with leadership challenges that few could have anticipated when elected to serve in volunteer positions. From conference cancellations, member distress, and financial uncertainty, to virtual meetings, burnout, and even grief, association boards and staff have to lead differently.

We’re excited to announce we have earned re-accreditation by the AMC Institute, the global trade association representing the association management industry.

It happened again. I was participating in a board of directors’ meeting and directors were discussing a critical issue. Discussion was flowing. Directors were offering good ideas, observations, and opinions, and suddenly everything stopped. This board was trying to run their board meeting using Robert’s Rules of Order, and one of the directors had just made not one, but two motions, one of which he explained “...was a main motion and the other one a subsidiary motion.” 

We’re pleased to announce that Allison Lundberg, CAE—who serves as the manager of marketing and communications for our client partner the American Academy of Hospice and Palliative Medicine—has been elected to the board of the American Association of Medical Society Executives (AAMSE) in the role of director. She will serve on the board in that role until 2024.

We’re proud to congratulate Wendy-Jo Toyama, MBA CAE FASAE, on being recognized as a Fellow of the American Society of Association Executives (FASAE). Wendy is a member of AMC’s executive team and serves as the CEO of the American Academy of Hospice and Palliative Medicine (AAHPM).

We're excited to announce we've been recognized with a Diversity in Business Award by the Daily Herald Business Ledger.

To succeed, associations depend on good governance practices and association staff are critical to implementing and promoting them. Drawing on its rich history of establishing frameworks in which boards of directors are able to function at a high level, AMC has developed Governance Essentials, a half-day workshop that provides  core governance practices with a focus on the "nuts and bolts" of good governance.  

Two AMC DEI, association leadership, and membership experts will be sharing their expertise at the  American Association of Medical Society Executives (AAMSE) Annual Meeting this week.

Excellent editorial work is invisible to readers, but errors are not

I often joke that to be an editor is to have an invisible profession—after all, the editor’s role is only apparent to everyone else when it is done poorly.

Join AMC Senior Consultant Debbie Trueblood, MSW IOM CAE, on July 15 at 1 pm CDT for a session on Association Ethics Best Practices: Handling Difficult Conversations with Members.

We are excited to announce that Debbie Trueblood, MSW IOM CAE, has joined our team as a senior consultant for AMC Consulting Services.

You hear a lot about “Zoom fatigue” these days and the draining effects of being on video meetings for hours a day. As offices in our area consider reopening and ending capacity limitations, some are relishing the novelty of being able to return to holding meetings in person with their teams and staff. “Teams need to be together in person to truly connect” is often cited as a reason for returning to in-person meetings. Do people connect better in person? Sometimes. Do in-person meetings create an inclusive and equitable space? Not for everyone.

We are excited to announce that we have been selected as the new management partner for the  Society for Cardiovascular Magnetic Resonance (SCMR) and will begin providing operational and  management services to the Society on July 1, 2021.

Priya Parker, author of The Art of Gathering, highlighted a tweet in her March newsletter that helped to further articulate one of the troubling reasons about the possible move back to in-person meetings. The tweet referenced how disabled people have been asking for years for remote conferences so they can participate and how they have been told no, it’s too difficult to do, at least until the pandemic made remote events a necessity for everyone.  In her newsletter, Priya challenges us to “build our gatherings around the needs and insights of the marginalized.”

How do we take stock of the past 525,600 minutes or a year like the one we’ve just experienced?

In March 2021, the murky waters of COVID-19 and its crippling effect around the world began to clear. With levels of infection rates going down, indoor activities re-opening, and optimistic vaccination announcements, summer looks like it could return to some semblance of normalcy.

In 2017, I approached Mark Engle, DM FASAE CAE, Association Management Center (AMC) principal to learn about the board selection process (BSP) research that he and Professor William Brown, PhD, Busch School of Government and Public Service at Texas A&M University had conducted. The research explored board competencies and processes that lead to exceptional and high-functioning board of directors.

In the first post of the How Can I Write Better Headlines series, I talked about things you SHOULD do to write great headlines for association audiences and beyond. Telling you what works is helpful, but you also need to know which headline errors to avoid. So, think of this as the “what not to do” in headline writing.

Headline writing is an art. You can even win awards for it. (As the managing editor of the Awards and Personalization Association, I’m well aware that there are awards for expertise in just about everything—but headlines might be a new one for you.)

On February 25, governance experts Mark Engle and Erin Volland will lead an interactive virtual workshop on Governance Essentials™, walking association professionals through the foundational practices needed to ensure good governance in their association. Sound governance practices are critical for high-performing organizations but are rarely taught to association staff, leaving them to learn as they go.

2020 was defined by many things—for associations and the staff who support them, the ability to pivot and adapt to the unforeseen were top among them. As 2020 began, AMC staff were busy preparing for the typical  20+ events we manage each year for our association partners.

We are proud to announce our new partnership with the American College of Academic Addiction Medicine (ACAAM) and the American Board of Addiction Medicine (ABAM). As of January 1, AMC began providing management services to ACAAM and ABAM.

According to recent industry data, the COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated trends that were already in the works (Association Laboratory). Will advancing towards a competency-based board be part of this trend? The pandemic has certainly forced many associations to review their volunteer leadership structure, particularly around their decision-making process and the distribution of authority to make key, timely decisions.