The soul of an association is its membership. Without their membership, the associations would cease to exist. One of the most important functions of an association is communication, both up and down the organizational structure. The national headquarters has a need to communicate with its state and local chapters and members, and members must communicate with the chapters and the national headquarters. One of the best ways to communicate is through conference calls, including audio, web, and video conferences. Over the past decade, several specialized applications have been developed using conferencing services to achieve association goals, improve the quality of communication with their members, generate new revenue and reduce costs. Here are six specialized conferencing apps that associations can implement now.
Administrative Meetings. Associations can use plain old audio conferencing to hold administrative meetings up and down the association hierarchy. The national headquarters can hold conference calls with state and local chapters and all organizational levels can hold conference calls with members. These calls can be recorded and saved for later playback by conferees, who missed the call, or by participants who just want to replay the call for specific reference. A new feature with saved recordings is that a link to the recording can be sent to the moderator of each call in the post-conference report email. When the link is clicked, the audio recording automatically plays, whether on a desktop or mobile device. The moderator can share the email with the link to all call participants so that anyone can listen to an instant replay of the meeting at any time. Conference service operators can also be used in these administrative conference calls to implement question and answer sessions and polls.
Individual billing. Conference service providers generally send a monthly invoice for all conference calls to the moderator or accountant who pays the association’s bills. However, some of these conference calls, such as lobby calls, may be made up of conferees who are from other associations, which can cause a problem for the moderator, who set up the conference call. This moderator would receive the single bill for the call and would then have to bear the cost of the entire call or split the costs of each of the other participating associations and charge each of them. This is time consuming and a real pain in the shorts. A new application for associations and other nonprofit organizations is called individual billing. With this new application, the service provider can split the bill based on the total minutes each organization spent on the conference call. The service provider can then send the specific individual invoices and collect them from each organization. This completely eliminates the need for association staff to waste time splitting bills, billing and collecting.
Subconference. Subconferencing is an operator-assisted feature that allows you to split the main call into subgroups that can be split into separate conference calls. After the subgroups have finished their specific business, they can call the operator, who can then put everyone back on the main conference call. An example would be a national association that would start the big conference call with all the participants from all over the United States. When the moderator of the call was ready, the operator would be summoned and then the call would be divided into four subgroups, one subgroup for each section of the country. Once the subgroups have finished conducting their regional business, the operator will rejoin the subgroups in a big call again. Subconferencing is a feature or application that must be scheduled with your service provider in advance so that an operator is available and trained to handle the call.
continuing education. Many professional associations have a requirement to provide continuing education in the profession they represent. Additionally, many of these professionals must take as many continuing education classes each year to fulfill their continuing certification in the industries in which they work. Initially, these classes were taught in person, which required time and travel. Next, these classifieds began receiving help through conference calls. As conferencing technology has developed, these classes have now moved online and are using web and video conferencing. Typically, associations have to develop the curriculum content, do all the marketing and promotion, take all the registrations, run the webinar, send the invoices, collect the money for the courses, and then send the certificates that Verify course completion. . One of the new conferencing applications, developed by conference service providers, allows the association to focus entirely on the course content and who will deliver the class, and allows the service provider to do all the registration, marketing, sending collateral materials, conduct the webinar with professional operators who supervise the class, collect all the money and send the course certificates. At the conclusion of the webinar, the service provider would provide a billing summary to the association along with a check for the difference between the total class revenue minus the service provider’s costs. Every webinar should be a revenue generator for the association.
Market research. Another application developed by service providers over the last decade is focus group interviews conducted through audio or video conferencing. In the past, focus groups were conducted in person and involved the rental of a facility and the necessary travel expenses to get to and from the event, both for the moderators and possibly for the research subjects. With the advent of conferencing technology, these focus groups can now be accomplished through the use of audio or video conferencing services, greatly reducing facility rentals and eliminating travel expenses. These sessions can be recorded and recorded for future playback by researchers.
affinity programs. Affinity programs are designed to give certain associations an additional source of income. Many associations generate additional income by providing and selling products and services to their members. Some conference providers have established affinity programs that allow the service provider to market conference services to members of the association. Basically, the association gives the service provider permission to market its services to members and helps promote the services through the association’s publications and communications to members. The service provider then develops the program materials, markets its services to members at a discount, and then remits a monthly royalty to the association’s headquarters based on the income generated by the program. An affinity program can provide a large influx of new revenue to an association, provided the membership is a suitable user of the conference services.
There you have it, six applications that have been developed for associations to help them achieve their goals, generate new revenue and reduce their costs.