Kevin's Update - The 2012 Association Forecast: Provocative Proposals for Future Change

This month we are excited to partner with Shelly and Mark Alcorn to make The 2012 Association Forecast: Provocative Proposals for Future Change available to you. Any publication with “Provocative Proposals” in the title is bound to generate its fair share of passionate discussion and exchange of ideas. This one will not disappoint!

When we launched the Association Resource Center last fall, Shelly was one of the first thought leaders to jump on board and share her content with you. Since that time we’ve grown to know and love her, as she has continually demonstrated her unwavering passion and dedication to the association community.

Never afraid to rock the boat with ideas that both challenge and demand response, Shelly was destined to pour her passion and great ideas into a book - and of course, we wanted to work with her on that in any way we could. We are proud that she would choose to partner with us to launch this exceptional eBook and we’re thrilled to give you the very first look at it today.

We can't wait to see where the conversation goes from here... Let us know what you think!

All the best,

Kevin

Affiniscape April Product Release

On Saturday, April 21st, we completed our scheduled April 2012 Product Release. This release includes some exiting new features such as:

• account transactional history
• the ability for members to enter CEs
• and the ability for an organization to see it's children's invoices in the portal.

For full details on all the new functionality, visit the April 2012 Release Notes page.

Affiniscape Training

We are thrilled to welcome Katie Cullen to the training team! Many of you already know Katie from her roles in implementation and project coordination.  She is a natural trainer whose primary goal is to help you to more effectively use Members360.  Next time you are attending a webinar with Katie, please be sure to welcome her to the team!

Webinars, webinars, and more webinars!  Please be sure to check out all of the webinars the training team is offering! We are excited about all of the new functionality available with each realease and we want to help you use it!

Race For Relevance Sequel - Call for Case Studies

Harrison Coerver & Associates is currently working on a sequel to their bestselling book, Race For Relevance. They are looking for association case studies of excellence in selected areas of association strategy.

Is your association currently:

• Capitalizing on a core assocation strength?
• Rigorously concentrating resources on key areas?
• Developing service & program portfolios that complement and reinforce each other?
• Purposefully abandoning obsolete programs or marginal services?
• Eliminating waste and redundancies for improved performance and efficiency?
• Using continuous improvement processes or "lean" operations approaches?

If your answer is yes to any of these, please submit your association case study in narrative form, including your association's full name, annual budget amount, number of staff members, and number of members.  Submissions should be no longer than 750 words, and sent to mbyers@marybyers.com. For more information, please visit the Race For Relevance Facebook page. The deadline for submission is May 30, 2012.