Too many association executives are experimenting with the chemistry of talents and skills of their middle level management and ignoring the driving force moving their organization closer to its mission: membership growth.

The association world has an evil living within it.

You’ve seen them before. Staff position titles like:

Director of Meetings and Membership

Manager of Membership and Publications

Assistant Director of Membership and Communications

Membership and Marketing Manager

IT’S ALIVE!!! and eroding the growth of your organization.

As a membership professional, these titles send chills down my spine and make the hairs on the back of my neck raise with goosebumps. It’s likely that the Certified Meeting Professionals (CMPs), editors, and public relations professionals in the world also shiver in response to seeing these show up on job boards.

It’s a scary practice and association executives, that have positions like this in the middle of their org charts, need to take a step back and decide what’s important to the success of their organization. Small staff associations are particularly susceptible to this practice as a method of cost savings.

How important is membership to the success of your membership organization?

If you’re running an association that is reliant on dues revenue for more than 30% of your overall budget, then you need to have a position dedicated to that area of the organization. Not someone that is also tasked with planning meetings, developing press releases and tweets, or writing or editing articles for the organization’s periodicals. Even a position that is focused on a combination of membership and marketing is detrimental to the growth of your organization. Marketing non-dues products, programs, and services is different than marketing membership products.

If you’re running an association that is reliant on dues revenue for less than 30% of your overall budget, then you need to have a position dedicated to that area of the organization. You may be saying that there’s not enough revenue in that area to justify a full FTE for membership. That’s exactly why you need a full FTE in that area. That area will not grow without constant and sustained attention.

Membership is about an ongoing relationship that needs tending and nurturing daily, weekly, and monthly. It’s not a part-time activity. Members also fuel sales and profits in the non-dues areas of the organization and if the membership isn’t growing, it’s not likely that the non-dues programs, products, and services are growing enough to sustain operations for your organization to reach its potential.

Yep. That’s right. It’s my belief that a membership-based business model should have at least one full-time position 100% dedicated to membership with a membership professional in that position.

Would you hire a certified IT programmer to also manage your meetings and events? Would you hire an accountant and ask them to edit the monthly journal? Would you hire a marketing professional to manage your office facilities? Then why hire a membership professional to also direct your PR and communications, meetings & events, or be in charge of product sales and promotions?

What message are you sending your members when they see titles like the ones mentioned above and interact with these staff members in these positions. It’s a sign that the organization’s leaders don’t take membership seriously. That members are secondary. That members aren’t valued. That dues – the lifeblood of most organizations – is seen as insignificant. Maybe even taken for granted.

This practice of combining areas of expertise into a single position is best left to the lower levels of administration that support the work of multiple teams. Positions with titles like coordinator, program assistant, and associate. In these entry-level positions it helps those individuals gain experience in multiple areas to identify what may be their calling in the association industry.

If you have one of these “Frankenpositions” in your org chart or are boiling one of these job descriptions over a Bunsen burner to hire someone new, take some time to rethink your decision.

Hire a membership professional and you’ll see what a difference it makes in achieving your goals to grow your organization.