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where do you start when the Assocation has no written policies or processes

Martin

I recently made a career transition from public relations to association management. I am somewhat intimidated though, because my association is fairly young and underwent rapid growth tripling in size in a little over a year. I'm taking over for someone who was learning the job as she went along and I'm somewhat shocked to see that there aren't really any processes in place that are written down anywhere. I feel I have a wonderful opportunity here to put a structure and procedures in place but don't know where to start. 

 

Help!

 

Marty in Maryland

Replies to this Topic

Chris

I'm a pretty old YAPster, and have been at this for qutie some time, if you want to give me a call at AOTA I'd be happy to discuss your issue(s)

Best,

 

Chris Bluhm

Brian

If you're starting from zero in terms of policy, conflict of interest, whistleblower, record retention and anti-trust policies are a good place to start. You'll also want to create a financial and banking policy to go along with documentation of your groups internal financial controls. And create an insurance policy to state what kinds of insurance the group should maintain (D&O, general liability, conference/event cancellation, etc.)

These are minimums when we bring clients on-board, start-ups or 100+ year old associations.

Keep it simple while covering the bases. Write your policies so they are livable, guiding documents, not just another folder full of complex, bureaucratic, biz-speak non-sense, which will just sit on a shelf.

Martin

thanks for your time today, Chris- we'll be in touch. You are a fount of information!

Martin

And Brian, those are all good areas to think about, and I believe some of those may be "instituted" in a formal and even written sense, but my immediate issues revolve around membership. I just became the membership director for a veterinary trade association (not the AVMA!, they are the big boys, we're the new kid on the block and aren't trying to compete with them, we're more of a community for progressive vets) and while I'm wading through a backlog of paperwork, and then will have to work on retention, growth  and expanding the suite of services and benefits, I need to institute written and formal processes and procedures.

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