Association Laboratory: Helping Association Leaders Adapt to COVID-19

“In times of crisis, making great, not good decisions becomes paramount. Every mistake is magnified. Lost opportunities never return. Association Laboratory stands ready to help you take leadership during this time of crisis.” – Dean West, FASAE, President of Association Laboratory

Association Laboratory is proud to offer a specific set of services designed to help association leaders take control during this time of crisis.

Contact me today at [email protected] if you think we can help.

Planning Not Reacting

Today’s headlines focus on the crisis of the COVID-19 pandemic. The economic disruption. The social disruption. They create anxiety in our staff, volunteer leadership and members. It is critical for leaders to take the initiative during these times to demonstrate that there is light at the end of the tunnel and that the association has a plan to move forward, not simply react to circumstances.

Association Laboratory has developed a unique package of services specifically designed to meet the urgent decision-making needs of associations leaders.

Association Goals

The goal of these services is to help you with following.

  1. Protect Brand Assets Critical to your Relationship with Members – how does your association reduce programs, services or initiatives that are not critical to the membership relationship to save financial and staff resources?
  2. Create New Revenue through Professional Leadership – what is the opportunity for potential commercial and durable content revenue designed to increase near term financial support and develop long term commercial support?
  3. Create Viable Education/Content Strategy – how can you take the educational and content initiatives of the association and extend them more successfully into the digital realm in a commercially viable manner?
  4. Strengthen Digital Relationships with Members – what is the potential and path forward for a commercially viable digital or online membership designed to maintain the critical connection to your most important audiences?
  5. Access Sophisticated Research and Learning Content Platforms – how does your association quickly and inexpensively gain access to state-of-the-art research and learning/content management platforms designed to improve strategic agility and expand revenue funnels?

Association Laboratory will lead an approach with a priority on following.

  • Make Better, Faster and Less Risky Decisions – The recommended process is designed to generate information, insights and strategy using state-of-the-art research techniques with a demonstrable record of improving decision-making and creating more immediately actionable ideas for strategy.
  • Keep Members Involved – The process is designed to incorporate research into the diverse your association’s member audience so that your strategy incorporates the most relevant, current and market-oriented information.
  • Make Decisions as a Team – Selected processes incorporate relevant internal stakeholders so that you can move forward in lockstep with common goals and shared purpose.

Overview of Services

The following briefly introduces a customized package of services designed to help associations adjust to the COVID-19 pandemic and the implications on association strategy.

For more information and a spot quote on financial requirements and time frame contact Dean West, President of Association Laboratory at 312.224.2626 or via email at [email protected].

Protect Critical Brand Assets

Protecting critical strategic brand assets from short term, panic driven damage is critical to successfully surviving and eventually prospering during a crisis.

Association Laboratory has developed a proprietary process helping you identify the programs, services and initiatives most critical to your membership relationship. The Brand Asset ID process uses state-of-the-art techniques to combat cognitive bias and provide actionable data for decision making.

The Brand Asset ID process identifies the programs, services or initiatives most critical to your members so you can sustain the most important programs while reducing or eliminating those least important to save resources.

In addition, it creates executive and volunteer leader consensus on the most immediate challenges and opportunities for the association to address to successfully navigate the COVID-19 pandemic so that you and your leadership move forward together.

Identify New Revenue Through Professional Leadership

It is difficult to protect critical brand assets without resources.

The COVID-19 pandemic gives your association an unprecedented opportunity to demonstrate professional leadership and use this leadership role to identify new revenue sources.

Association Laboratory has developed a precise solution designed to help you identify and tap into commercial relationships to create a portfolio of new or expanded revenue from sponsorship, virtual events and durable content product activities. Take advantage of Association Laboratory’s expertise in research, instructional design and content creation to expand your revenue based and professional and industry leadership.

Online Education Expansion

In Association Laboratory’s proprietary study, The Strategic and Economic Impact of COVID-19 on Associations™, 56% of association leaders indicated their association was expanding investment in online education. 74% of respondents in Looking Forward™ 2020 were concerned about competition for the delivery of relevant information to their members.

Without a compelling online education offering, you place your association at a competitive disadvantage.

Association Laboratory helps you quickly assess the readiness of your market for online education, test the features of an online offer most likely to be attractive to your market and advises you on configuring and pricing your offer to be commercially successful.

Strengthen Digital/Online Membership Relationships

In the Strategy and Economic Impact of COVID-19 on Associations™, 56% of association leaders indicated their association was expanding investment in online education, 52% are investigating virtual conferences and 62% plan on shifting content to digital form.

The relationship with you members will be shifting from traditional membership models to digital/online models.

Association Laboratory has a proven, data-driven and state-of-the-art process to identify and develop a revised membership model based on educational and digital relationships. Customized by audience need and price, your digital membership will give you a new membership model that reflects the changing world in which your members live and work.

Access Association Laboratory’s Research and Learning Infrastructure

In a rapidly changing, even hostile environment, there is a premium on quickly diagnosing potential association problems, identifying opportunities, understanding member audiences and their operational environment, and translating this knowledge into superior outcomes for the association through better decisions.

Unfortunately, the technical platforms for research, virtual conferences, etc. can be expensive and the learning curve to translate your information to these platforms time consuming.

As a full-service research and education company, Association Laboratory is offering access to Qualtrics (our industry leading research platform) and CE21 our cutting-edge learning management system to clients on a case by case basis. Take advantage of our technical capacity and practical staff knowledge to quickly improve your associations capabilities.