Professional Organizations Suck!: Change The Model

Most professional organizations suck, they are costly and don’t deliver enough value to their members. Please tell you that you don’t hesitate when you sign and annual dues check thinking “what has being a member done for me?” I am not picking on any one organization in fairness pretty much all of them have major short comings.

I think though many professional associations suffer the same short comings (in no particular order):

• If you not a member of their organization then your not “dedicated” to your career
• Their meetings are endless self promotions and lack clear and interesting presenters
• The members from the biggest companies get the most attention
• Offer certification and classes that don’t really “matter”
• Lack vision and innovation to help their membership and industry improve

Change The Model:
Honestly it is not the fault of most professional organizations that they suck, it is really the fault of the business model that they are currently using.  They rely on their membership for dues that operate the organization, the problem with this is then they only end serving a small portion of their industry ( i.e.: engineering, legal, marketing, manufacturing, etc.) . Luckily for them the web has brought new opportunities for generating income that could help them better serve the industry as a whole.

Ideas for creating new revenue:

Become An Information Hub – Aggregate the most important news and information in your industry much in the same way Alltop and Orginal Signal do.

Host Online Events - Your tool like webinar’s or live video to education your membership and open up additional revenue streams.

Regardless of the solution many professional organizations need improvement while relying less on the dues based business model.