(NEW QUIZ!) What's your Association Archetype?
Take the Associations Archetypes Quiz here>>
One of the challenges of leading an association is that there's always too much to do, and never enough resources or time to do it all.
That's why we have strategic plans, governance boards and apps galore, right?
But despite all those structures to keep us focused on the right things, we often glaze over some fundamental questions. Like this one:
What kind of association do we need to be to create the value our members want and the impact the world needs?
At a recent strategy day I facilitated for Independent Schools of New Zealand (ISNZ), my Association Archetypes model was the crowd favourite. It highlighted the one big shift ISNZ needs to make.
Like any model, it's not the truth. But truth can emerge from the model.
The four association archetypes
The Provider
This is an association focused on producing valuable things for members. These associations love creating resources, courses and tools. Their membership portal is a thing of beauty.
Look at their staff list and you'll likely find a nice pool of educators and administrators.
(Many associations are set up to be this archetype, but it's the one most under threat from AI.)
The Authority
This is an association focused on being the trusted voice for their sector. Think advocacy, certifications, standards, representation, thought leadership.
Who do they employ? Researchers, comms and PR people, government relations folks.
(Water NZ is doing an outstanding job of this right now. Has their CEO Gillian Blythe cloned herself? Quite possibly.)
The Convenor
This is an association focused on bringing members together to connect, discuss and support each other.
These associations often employ lots of engagement and events people. You'll see lots of branch events, networks, online interest groups and so on. Value is generated in the relationships between members, within the association's shared context.
The Activator
This is an association focused on enabling contributions from within their sector. Their default way of working is the good old working group!
These associations are often volunteer-heavy, with staff mainly working as coordinators (or as we like to call it: professional cat herders).
Does your archetype match your ambitions?
Of course, your association probably does a little bit of all four roles. That's not the point of this model.
The point is to ask yourself two questions:
- Which one are we right now? (Think about your staff and where your money goes. Or where your CEO spends the bulk of their time.)
- Which one should we be? (Think about which would best achieve your strategic ambitions.)
Hopefully your answers are the same for each question.
If not, then: Euston, we have a problem.
One which, if left on its own, will mean you'll get to the end of the year and find yourself questioning if it was all worth the effort and stress, because you will have been working really hard in an association that's optimised for the wrong job.