Joining a professional association or trade group opens up a variety of opportunities. People meet others in their field to discuss common problems and find solutions. They participate in continuing education. The groups also provide a way to network, and membership looks good on a resume.
Yet these organizations are running into trouble. With corporate downsizing a fact of life, many association members are swamped as they attempt to do more work with fewer resources. Memberships are down and group officers are experiencing burnout. There are fewer people willing to step in, and those in charge lament the difficulty of getting someone to write the newsletter, plan the monthly meetings or find a guest speaker for a seminar.
“It was torture,” admitted Patrick Cunningham, president of the Chicago chapter of the Association of Record Managers and Administrators. Members didn’t have the time needed to publish a bimonthly 20-page newsletter or weren’t devoted enough to learn the hefty software package used in keeping track of ARMA’s accounts.
For help, Cunningham turned to Management Services, a home-based business run by Chris Glatz, 34, of Frankfort. Glatz’s company provides association administration and administrative support services to two area professional groups, ARMA and the Northern Illinois chapter of the International Facility Management Association (IFMA).
Members of ARMA are primarily managers of corporate records in paper or electronic formats and especially within the legal and banking professions. “They’re not just file clerks,” Glatz said. “The field is on the cutting edge of computer technology and involves retaining and retrieval of information.” Members of IFMA manage facilities such as convention centers and office buildings.
“The local chapters cannot manage on a volunteer level,” Glatz said. “Volunteerism is a rare commodity. People today just don’t have the time.”
Instead, association management firms handle the day-to-day business of their non-profit organizations. Like special events or reunion organizers, association management firms provide a variety of services, from answering phones and distributing mail to desktop publishing and conference planning.
Glatz understands the pressures from experience. As a records manager for the First National Bank of Chicago, she was also an active member of ARMA.
“There were a lot of membership changes,” she said. “One board would come in and there would be a big thrust to recruit and retain membership. Then a new board would be elected and everything fizzled out. All that work was shot.”
Glatz left her bank job in 1988, following the birth of her daughter, Katlyn, and was looking for opportunities to work from home. She submitted a proposal to the association board in which Glatz would manage the workings of ARMA’s local chapter, overseen by the various committees and officers.
“Initially my job responsibilities were minimal,” she said.
The chapter installed a phone line in her home, and Glatz set up a post office box to collect and handle the association’s communications. She referred calls and distributed mail to the local officers and started managing the group’s membership data on her home computer. She began managing the IMFA chapter in November 1993.
“It could take six months to get membership material out when we worked with volunteers,” said Cunningham, who works as a certified records manager for Household International in Mt. Prospect. “By that time you’ve lost the sale. With Chris, she’s writing out the label while she is still on the phone (with the prospective member).”
Glatz is their key contact. “She has the ability to maintain consistent service to our membership,” he said. “Our membership has stabilized, and I have to attribute that to Chris’ work.”
“I’m not the expert. I’m the source,” Glatz said.
In that, Glatz is on the cutting edge.
“There is a trend toward outsourcing projects and, in some cases, entire departments,” said Tom Gorski of the Washington, D.C.-based American Society of Association Executives. “They typically parcel out a portion of their activities” to mailing houses, meeting planners and desktop publishers.
Association management firms handle all those tasks and more. “They can range anywhere from a one-person office to a multi-person organization,” Gorski said. The ASAE represents 23,000 members in 10,000 associations.
Huge companies like Smith, Bucklin and Associates in Chicago provide the executives and support staff for 90 different national and international associations representing hundreds of thousands of members. Their professional teams can provide services from meeting and convention planning to marketing, communications, statistics and research, said company president Dollard Carey.
While Glatz manages associations on the local level, Smith, Bucklin runs entire organizations.
“What we can offer is the right kind of professional team,” Carey said. “The board chooses the key staff executive, and we provide the specialists.
“There are a larger number of management firms in recent years because these associations today face many challenges. There is a lot of pressure on officers to keep costs down, so they look at other alternatives. What happens in the corporate world is reflected in trade groups and professional associations,” Carey added.
And as companies turn to more outside sources, businesses such as Glatz’s take off.
“Downsizing is very conducive to home-based businesses,” said Debra Schacher, head of the Home Office and Business Opportunity Association in Irvine, Calif. Forty-two million people work at home, Schacher said, and her group has noticed a definite rise in the number of home businesses providing administrative and secretarial support services. “The last three years have seen huge increases in that field.”
The sector has opened up because of the explosion in technology. At-home personal computers and faxes make it easy to communicate, but what people like Glatz are selling are really their organizational skills. “She’s someone we can count on,” Cunningham said.
As president of the 350-member organization, Cunningham adds several extra hours to his work week just responding to mail and returning phone calls. Glatz handles the routine inquiries and acts as a clearinghouse for messages and mail for all of the officers. “We don’t have to do the maintenance,” he said.
In addition to organizational talent, administrators may also provide expertise in planning and marketing. Glatz said much of her work is detail oriented and time consuming. “I do the grunt work, the tedious stuff,” she said. She frees up officers to focus on the more important aspects of professional associations.
“They should be thinking about things like how can we provide education effectively. That’s our challenge.”
