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Uncomfortable Truths About Association Management

Michael LoBue writes: In the two recent comparing organizations based on their management models — AMC-managed vs. standalone — a number of uncomfortable truths emerged. The discomfort appears to be with some standalone organizations.

The second of these two studies completed last month, compared deficit operations over 2006, 2007 and 2008 was mentioned in the April 2010 issue of Association Trends magazine. The reference to the study was based on complaints from an unspecified number of standalone organizations because I sent letters to selected officers of those organizations sharing the results and suggesting that they might want to consider the AMC model.

Contrary to how the study was characterized in Association Trends, the study was conducted solely to learn more about the differences between these two management models and whether or not measurable results can be attributed to the management models. The study was not conducted nor commissioned by the AMC Institute. It was conceived and undertaken solely by my firm. The decision to use the results to reach out to standalone organizations came after discovering some important findings.

To clarify:

• I did send letters directly to board leaders from a majority of the standalone organizations in the study that experienced deficits in 2008; and
• I did not send letters to the executive directors of these organizations, but some did receive the letters, apparently from disgruntled board members.

Here are the comments printed in Association Trends:

• "Several executives claimed their board members we ‘steamed’ that elected leaders’ names were so readily available on the 990s and that someone would have the ‘audacity to contact me directly’ rather than going through the association."
• "One CEO said, ‘If an AMC owner contacted me to offer help, knowing I was struggling, we might have worked something out that was mutually beneficial. But going around me to my board, $*&^%@)#!'"
• "Another targeted executive agreed that he might use an AMC for project work and consider recommending the AMC form of management as an option but, ‘the guy who sent these letters is off my list forever!'"

This direct mail campaign will probably not go down as one of the better marketing programs we’re tried as a firm. It was not our intent to annoy or stress these organizational leaders any more than the economy may have already done. On the other hand, these reactions may validate something worth noting — that the findings in the studies, which sadly were not mentioned in the Association Trends’ article, are revealing some uncomfortable truths about how AMC-managed organizations enjoy benefits over standalone organizations. These benefits include:

• Higher net profitability ratios;
• Higher operating efficiency ratios;
• Lower operating risk ratios;
• More diverse revenue profiles;
• Higher percentages of revenue spent on meetings, trade shows and educational activities for their members;
• A third less paid, on average, for staffing, occupancy and capital resources; and
• Less likely, by a wide margin, to have experienced deficit operations during the recession.

Contrary to the very personal reaction that our letter campaign may have generated in some recipients, it was not a personal or professional attack on anyone. The data from these two studies speaks to the management models, not the executives involved. The results suggest that even under the stewardship of extremely competent management, the standalone model has limitations overcome by the AMC-model.

It might surprise some of those board members and executives to learn that I not only sit on two nonprofit governing boards today, but I have been serving on at least one board for most of the past 25 years. Indeed, it is out of this deep experience as a fiduciary that I spent hundreds of hours on these two studies. We all need to improve our decision-making; we need to make more decisions based on evidence. Our organizations are too important to ignore any edge we can gain.

It would be a shame if leaders of standalone organizations dismissed the findings in these studies merely because it might contain some uncomfortable truths. Yes, AMCs stand to gain if these studies contain truths, but that’s an irrelevant fact. All that should matter to the leaders of standalone organizations is whether or not these studies contain useful findings. Findings that help them make better decisions for their members — regardless the management model.

Summary of Operating Ratio Study of AMC-Managed & Standalone Organizations (Aug 2009) click here…
Summary of April 2010 Study of Deficits and Surpluses click here…

Are AMC-Managed Organizations Recession Resistant?

Michael LoBue writes: I just completed writing a report on a research project examining how the current economic climate affected AMC-managed and standalone organizations. Based on analyzing two comparable groups of membership-based associations, AMC-managed organizations appeared to be avoid the harsh aspects of the economy, whereas standalone organizations were hit very hard.

Standalone organizations employ their own personnel, shoulder the full costs of occupancy (own or rent office space) and spend their scarce revenue on capital goods.

The study examined whether organizations ended their fiscal years in surpluses or deficits. The fiscal years examined were 2006, 2007 and 2008 — fiscal year ending December 31.

The results were quite compelling — standalone organizations were nearly twice as likely as AMC-managed organizations to have ended 2008 with deficits. The chart below displays the three-year comparison of the two groups of organizations based on these two management models:

For an overview of the article and a link to the full report click here….

Anything Goes — especially jumping to unsubstantiated conclusions

Michael LoBue writes: Stanford University’s Center on Philanthropy and Civil Society recently published a study entitled “Anything Goes: Approval of Nonprofit Status by the IRS.” They pose marginally good questions — but, their synthesis of the data is not just weak, it’s dangerous!

Below are the four top questions they address in the paper. It’s not clear whether they formulated the questions before or after collecting the data — either way, the questions themselves convey a strong bias not the least bit supported by the data. Their questions are below with the authors' answers, along with completely plausible alternatives to their biased answers.

1. Do we need 50,000 new 501(c)(3)s every year? Do we have too many nonprofits?

They offer no basis for answering this question other than the increase in tax exempt application filings. Implicit in their question is that historical trends represent the right amount of tax exempt organizations for our economy. They don’t even attempt to suggest possible factors that might have caused this interesting spike in nonprofit, tax exempt organizations. Here are two easy ones:
• Welfare, as we knew it for decades, essentially ended just before the rise in tax exempt filings began. Given the very nature of charitable nonprofits, which is the focus of their analysis, could the documented rise be an expected private response to address the needs that were previously addressed through government welfare programs?
• Or, perhaps it’s related to the growth of the Internet? Ironically, other academic departments at Stanford have contributed significantly to the commercial establishment and growth of the Internet that is decentralizing markets and society. Perhaps this increase is a byproduct of the Internet’s impact on our society - empowering individuals and private groups to take control of their lives and communities?
2. Need an organization demonstrate anything beyond the so-called “non-distribution constraint” — no profits to shareholders — in order to obtain nonprofit status? Does the charitable sector not have any substantive content to it beyond not-for-profit?
    
   Here the authors are essentially advocating for some charity police. Hmm? Maybe a presidential tzar position like: Overlord of Charity Correctness”? The answer to their question is “NO”, the non-distribution constraint is fine as it is — or at least it's a minor problem compared to other priorities.
   • Part of what is so elegant about the system as it has developed over the 20th century is that it is completely market-based and not political or ideological in any way. To even consider having some “worthiness test” makes as much sense in the U.S. as selecting a state religion. The way it is today is consistent with our pluralistic society.
3. Have Americans conflated the undeniable importance of freedom of association with an entitlement to tax benefits?
    
   This question, to quote comedian Louis Black: “just takes my breath away”!
    
   The implication of the question is clear — the authors see some 501(c)(3) filers as tax dodgers and cheats. However, their supporting evidence is woefully lacking. They state on page 3 of their report:

   ”In 2008 Americans donated more than $300 billion to 501(c)(3) organizations, costing the United States Treasury an estimated $50 billion in foregone tax revenue.”
    
   (We’re then directed by footnote to a specific table on page 308 of the 430-page 2010 Federal budget document — I went there and didn't find "an estimated $50 billion in foregone tax revenue" for this category. I did find, rounded to the nearest billion:

   • $47b for charitable contributions other than education and health
   • $5b for deductibility for charitable contributions (health)
   • $5b for deductibility for charitable contributions (education)

   They may have actually underestimated "their problem" by as much as 20% — but it doesn’t matter, because the basic claim is bogus unless it takes into consideration at least the following:
   1. Evidence that the dollars donated to charity would not have been exempt from taxes for other reasons;
   2. Add in tax flows from the operations of the tax exempt organizations (e.g., payroll taxes, benefits, other taxable activities engage in by the organizations);
   3. New taxes resulting from the sector’s success; (e.g., re-development projects, education and job retraining programs, etc.) and
   4. Cost savings in the form of lower taxes needed in the future because of the sector's preventative role, in the sense that "an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure".
   The authors of this study are suggesting that the $50 billion quoted is the result of some cost benefit analysis and the net LOSS is $50 billion to the US government. Not only have they potentially misstated the cost, they haven’t factored in the benefit side. After they leave their offices to meet with others on campus to learn more about the Internet and how it might be democratizing societies, they should stop by the Department of Economics and learn something about cost benefit analysis.


4. Is the IRS the best agency to issue determinations of nonprofit status?
   First off, this is a poorly worded question. The IRS does not determine whether an organization is a “nonprofit” or not, but whether or not its activities are “exempt for taxes”. Indeed, they describe this process in their study. Whether a legal entity is for profit or nonprofit is a determination made by our 50 states and, upon occasion, Congress. So we need to be clear that this is all about tax status — about the money!
    
   Given that the IRS does NOT determine the basic nature of legal entities, 51 other jurisdictions in this country are already engaged in this practice, a strong argument can be made that sufficient checks and balances already exist in the system. I would contend that the IRS is the right agency to determine tax status. I do agree with the authors that Congress should increase funding to help the Service process applications in a more timely manner — although I would not argue that it is among the most pressing problems in the nonprofit sector.

Is there abuse in the system? Of course there is — it would be naive to think otherwise. However, this study has added nothing to our understanding of the nature and extent of the abuse. Listing < 1% of the organizations approved for tax exemption in 2008 as "unworthy" in the authors' view is hardly compelling evidence of serious abuse. Quite the contrary, it suggests that this is a model process worth emulating, by industry as well as government.

Message to PACS — we all can use a better set of metrics for evaluating the benefits of the work of the nonprofit sector. If you’re not already aware of the University of San Francisco’s Institute for Nonprofit Management (IoNM) and their regional report series, I suggest you study them. They are excellent in both their analysis (normative characterization of the sector based on data) and synthesis (thoughtful recommendations for the relevance of the data).

Here is a research project that might be a better use of your time than trying to find and mock new organizations — take the IoNM's profile of the nonprofit sector in San Francisco and, using IoNM's model, profile nonprofit sectors in at least four other US cities similar in size to SF, and compare them. Why San Francisco? It's unlikely that any other metropolitan area in the US has the concentration of nonprofits as San Francisco: 1 nonprofit charity for every 183 city residents! IoNM has performed some comparisons within California, but I'm not aware of any such comparisons across the nation.

In closing, my fear is that your work will be misrepresented and misused, which to some extent has already happened by Stephanie Strom in her December 5 article entitled “Charities Rise, Costing U.S. Billions in Tax Breaks.” Oh my, what would Glen Beck do with the mis-information in your report? Come on - don't we have a right to expect more out of Stanford University for its tax exempt status?

Why I'm Deleting My Twitter Account

Michael LoBue writes: I can’t remember when I signed up for my Twitter account — probably 6 months ago when a colleague in the association management space assured me that it was “where it’s all happening”. It is where it’s all happening; the train wreck of thought!

Intuitively I couldn’t quite accept that much of anything could be communicated in 140 characters unless a deep context already existed between the communicating parties. If other means of online communications didn’t exist (e.g., email, group lists, blogs, SNSs, etc.), then there might be some value to it; but I couldn’t see the there, there.

This morning I read Why Email No Longer Rules in the WSJ. Jessica Vascellaro contends that “services like Twitter, Facebook and Google Wave, with their constant stream of interaction among users — for better or for worse” has knocked email off its top perch. I think for worse – much worse!.

I reviewed a wonderful little experiment commissioned about one of our firm’s clients, the Institute for Innovation & Information Productivity (IIIP).

This study sought to understand whether attention deficits and associated performance drop-offs were statistically significant and if they varied with age or gender when an office worker was interrupted with email and text messages. Subjects were given a cognitively challenging task to perform, and then were interrupted with email and text messages to test their abilities to recover focus and complete the original task. Here’s what the researcher, Dr. Martin Westwell of Oxford University’s Institute for the Future of the Mind discovered:

• There was a significant difference between age groups on performance with cognitively demanding tasks under conditions of high interrupts.
• Younger people (18 – 21), lost their cognitive advantage over older counterparts when interrupted continuously during cognitively demanding work;
• The older group (35 – 39), saw no significant performance degradation under conditions of high interrupts and cognitively demanding tasks.

When I spoke with Dr. Westwell about this research, he went on to say: “The drop off in performance was akin to suffering from a concussion resulting from an injury in a contact sport such as football!” Find full report here...

The point is, email is bad enough in the hands of someone with little discipline — Twitter is like crack-cocaine to an addict. If you’ve read this far — well beyond 140 characters — and you think there’s some merit to this position, then you should read Mark Baurerlein’s The Dumbest Generation.

This post also appears on AssociationVoices.

AMC-Managed vs. Standalone Organizations - 'No brag, just facts'

Michael LoBue writes: In a soon to be published white paper, that I authored, comparing the profiles of AMC-managed and standalone organizations, two major conclusions are clear.

First, there is no difference between the types or organizations managed by AMCs and those that "own their resources". An organization that owns its own resources is one that employs its own staff, leases (or owns) its own office space and spends its scarce revenue on capital goods (e.g., furniture, furnishings, IT resources, etc.).

Second, AMC-managed organizations out perform standalone organizations across conventional operating metrics like:

• Operating Efficiency
• Net Profitability
• Leverage (a measure of risk)

Oh, and let's not forget that standalone organizations pay, on average, a 50% premium to "own" those resources that, on average, produce lesser results! How this translates into "fiduciary responsibility" is lost on me...

The white paper will be posted on the AMC Institute website for downloading, but I would also be happy to email a copy of it to anyone that is interested. Just send me an email request at: LoBue@LM-Mgmt.com.

This is not to suggest that all standalone organizations up to $5M in annual revenue, the threshold up to which the comparisons were done, are irresponsible for using the standalone model of management. But, we now have hard data that governing boards and management can use to ask: "Is the premium we're paying for our management model providing the right return for our unique needs?"

The real value of the comparisons in the white paper is that organizations can begin to explore this question beyond half-truths or simply because the standalone model is what they've been use to.

The comparisons in the white paper do not give us the most important analysis all organizations need to conduct, which is how an organization's programs connect to the impacts outside the organization that each was formed in the first place to have. But, it's a start!

AMCs More Like Agents Than Partners

Michael LoBue writes: An all too common characterization of the relationship between an AMC and its client organizations is that of a “partnership”. As “feel good” a notion as this may be, I contend that it is fantasy more than anything else. There’s a danger being too literal when borrowing a concept — after a fashion we begin to believe our own spin. I admit that our firm has used it before, but always with some discomfort; we won’t make this mistake again.

Partnerships
A partnership is defined as:

“A partnership is a type of business entity in which partners (owners) share with each other the profits or losses of the business undertaking in which all have invested.”
(Wikipedia)

There’s nothing about the relationship between an AMC and its client organization that meets the above definition. AMCs don’t cover the risky ventures and bad debts of a client organization, anymore than a client organization co-signs on leases or capital improvement projects of its AMC. We certainly shouldn’t share in the earnings of client organizations.

Clearly both parties in the AMC-client relationship have risks and rewards resulting from the provider-client relationship, but aside from enhanced reputations, there isn’t anything they really share. And, shouldn’t that be enough? AMCs certainly value their reputations as much as any other business asset. An organization can grow, but there’s no guarantee that this growth represents expanded revenue for the AMC — it all depends on the nature of the growth and whether it increases demand for the AMC’s particular offerings.

Before someone interprets this position as: “he’s saying there’s nothing in the AMC-client relationship that leads to common goals”, let me be clear — there’s plenty to bind the two parties together for mutual benefit, but we should not kid ourselves into thinking it directly involves shared investments and returns. If I’m right and this relationship is not a partnership, characterizing it as such can lull both parties into thinking it is and inevitably lead to making lesser choices over the course of the relationship.

An Agent Relationship
A more likely candidate is that of an agent relationship. AMCs work on behalf of their client organizations to find and take advantage of opportunities for the clients. If the AMC is successful in this role the client benefits by having more impact in its profession or market, revenue continues to flow to the AMC, perhaps even increasing from the client’s successes, and the firm’s reputation is enhanced as a trustworthy and results-driven AMC.

There’s one other aspect of “agency” that I like; I think it’s more likely to focus on finding the client organization real successes — ones that make an impact in the organization’s profession or market segment, than merely generating busy work.

More on 'AMC Clients Measuring Up...'

Michael LoBue writes: Last month I shared the comparative analysis between AMC-managed clients and standalone organizations in terms of key performance indicators. This post contains a slightly more refined grouping of the standalone organizations — the following will be included in a soon-to-be released white paper discussing about 13 different comparisons.

Net Profitability
Figure 5 below reveals that in the case of organizations up to $1M in annual revenue, AMC-managed organizations enjoyed a nearly 10-fold increase in their profitability vs. organizations under the standalone model, which was barely profitable at a half of a percent. This gap closes considerably for organizations between $1M and $5M in annual revenue, but AMC-managed organizations still enjoy a 33% greater rate of profitability at 8.4% vs. standalone organizations at 6.3%.

Operating Efficiency
Operating Efficiency is charted in Figure 6 below. According to the ASAE Operating Ratio 13th Edition, this ratio “tell us how many dollars in revenue are being generated by each dollar of assets employed in running the organization.” This comparison reveals that in the case of organizations up to $1M in annual revenue, the operating efficiency ratios are comparable between the two management models. However, in the case of for organizations between $1M and $5M in annual revenue, AMC-managed organizations at 1.3% are enjoying a 38% better level of efficiency than standalone organizations at .94%.

Leverage
The last metric in this series of key performance ratios is Leverage. This is often used when evaluating an organization’s need and/or ability to borrow funds. Given that most associations would not seek to acquire debt to support operations, like a profit-driven organization might, leverage then can be a useful proxy for general operating risk. In this case, a lower ratio is probably more desirable. This ratio is derived from dividing total liabilities by total fund balance; thus, the higher the ratio, the less able the organization is cover its commitments.

Figure 7 below reveals that for organizations between $1M and $5M in annual revenue, those AMC-managed organizations enjoy a slight, but probably insignificant edge over standalone organizations. Whereas, for organizations under $1M in annual revenue, those managed by AMCs appear to operate with 25% lower risk profile than organizations using the standalone model (.25% vs. .40%).

Model for Audience Engagement

Michael LoBue writes: Yet another shoe seems to have dropped for the crumbling industry we’ve known for almost two centuries as “newspapers”. Well, it’s actually larger than just print newspapers; it’s also crumbling for some of the recently popular electronic media formats. The fact that newspapers and some traditional TV news formats are crumbling is not news — what is at least noteworthy is that we’re beginning to see the new, successful form emerge. I think this is instructive for associations and how we communicate with our target audiences.

Let me repeat — nothing fundamentally new here, except that we are seeing some trends emerge from what has seemed like a tsunami of information cascading at us from all directions (e.g., print, broadcast, website, blogs, etc.).

TMZ chief is speaker at Cal journalism school
On Thursday (3/12) The San Francisco Chronicle reports on the visit of the guru of celebrity news to UC Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism. While the faculty at this prestigious journalism school don’t seem to get it yet, their students appear to recognize the entire model of reporting news has already changed and Harry Levin’s TMZ model seems to be one of the more effective models.

Washington Post Folds Business Section Into Front
This story could have been filled with “Latin filler text” as I think it missed the real story. The story is NOT that the Post needs to cut costs. The story is that this is yet another example of the print media alone isn’t cutting it; there’s not enough of a market to sustain either the “print-form writing style” in newspapers, or the print-form by itself.

Stay with me…this is a build…

TMZ’s Financial Page
Whoa – TMZ, the leading paparazzi channel that got its start focusing on the Thirty Mile Zone in Hollywood is now using its investigative style to report on the intersection of politics and the economy.

TMZ is not the first to use this form of engaging dialogue vs. the over-powdered, teleprompter reading talking heads — TMZ takes Jon Stewart’s “The Daily Show” style even further.

What does this have to do with associations and how we communicate with members and non-member target audiences? Everything! We need to complement our traditional “publish” model where we’re feeding audiences bits of “history”. Even if the news or information was created just this morning, it’s still fixed-in-time.

The success of TMZ and The Daily Show is not that they are telling us what we want to hear; but they are engaging news-makers with questions that we’d want to ask – questions that stripe away the highly controlled message the news-makers wants to tell us. I realize that traditional journalism has been about just this — but they have allowed their medium to control their reporting — their days of reporting history are over!

If you’ve never watched TMZ, you should. Not because the subjects are all that interesting, but for the style they use. It’s very dynamic; you feel that the story is unfolding in real time. If you’re not convinced, then watch ET (Entertainment Tonight) and you should see the extremely dramatic contrast.

The successful communication channels of the association world will be the ones that capitalize on this model. One obvious feature is to allow visitors to go beyond just reading the pronouncements of the experts, and be able to engage the experts in a dialogue.

This is also cross-posted on AssociationVoice’s blog site….

Clients of AMCs Measure Up Just Fine

Michael LoBue writes: Recently I’ve been comparing the “performance indicators” between AMC-managed organizations to standalone organizations. The comparison is between certain common indicators found in the ASAE’s 13^th Edition of the Operating Ratio Report (ORR — 2006-2007 data) and the AMC Institute’s Client Operating and Financial Benchmarking Survey Report of 2007. While not all of the data are in complete alignment across the two studies, I think three of the indicators do lend themselves to valid comparisons.

The Data:

Those familiar with ASAE’s ORR know the organizations were studied by type (e.g., trades vs. societies — as were the AMC-managed organizations) and by revenue size (e.g., <$1M, $1M - $2M, $2M - $5M, etc.). The Institute’s study involving 311 AMC-managed organizations is divided into smaller ranges. The comparisons below are between the 71 >$1M AMC-managed organizations to the 73 standalone organizations between $1M and $2M in annual revenue.

Key Performance Ratios	ASAE $1M - $2M (73)	AMCI > $1M (71)
Net Profitability (Total Revenue minus Total Expenses as a % of Total Revenue)	4.8%	8.4%
Operating Efficiency Ratio (Total Revenue divided by Total Assets)	1.3%	1.3%
Leverage (Total Liabilities divided by Total Fund Balance)	0.8	0.3

Conclusion:

• Net Profitability — AMC-managed organizations are almost twice as profitable as standalone organizations (also more profitable for AMC-managed organizations <$1M in annual revenue);
• Operating Efficiency Ratio — AMC-managed organizations are just as efficient as standalone organizations across all revenue sizes compared;
• Leverage — Standalone organizations are almost twice as leveraged as AMC-managed organizations for all revenue sizes compared (leverage in this sense translates into operating risks).

Why Does This Matter?
I think this matters because it brings into focus for association leaders real data that they can use to determine if they are being as prudent as possible in the governance and stewardship of their organizations. This data support what so many of the thousands of association leaders with direct experience using the AMC-model already know — that the model is not just cost efficient, it’s also effective!

This is also cross-posted on Association Voices blog site….

AMC Fee Averages — The World is Flat Argument

Michael LoBue writes: The most preposterous debate within the AMC community in 2008, in my opinion, centers around the average fee AMC-managed organizations pay for the collection of services they receive from their AMCs.

Of course, this issue of the AMC economies of scale value is perhaps the least interesting and least valuable of the benefits enjoyed by using an AMC, but it is the easiest to understand and quite possibly the benefit that will be most sought in 2009 while the economy is in the tank.

As recently as December 23^rd a highly respected member of the AMC community wrote the following response to a question asked on the ASAE AMC List Serv:

Question: Could you please give us an idea of what the average percent of an association budget is the typical management company contract fee?
 
Answer: Frankly, I don't think there is such a thing as average in this business. The range of services, output and work product are so varied in terms of necessary resources , human and otherwise as to make association management aggregated cost data fundamentally flawed when used to establish "average" . Even the ASAE ORR (with a fairly broad sample) falls apart as you slice and dice within scope and organization type. It really is like taking a chain saw to do brain surgery. You can look at subsets of organizational activity such as membership development but the useful analytics are, in the end, more about ROI, dollar based or otherwise. I think seeking average is the lazy way to avoid doing the hard work of establishing value.

First off, the above answer is an excerpt of the entire response, but it captures the respondent’s two major points:

1. the average doesn’t exist
2. even if it did, it would be too toxic for mere mortals to even posses, let alone use

Of Course An Average Exists!
The first point about the average not existing has to be an emotionally charged over-statement by an otherwise intelligent and highly responsible professional simply very concerned that an important piece of information will be misused, resulting in harm, much like his metaphor of using a chain saw to do brain surgery. Of course the average exists, even if proper sampling was not conducted to know the value, it doesn’t mean that it doesn’t exist.

This is where The Flat Earth Society comparison enters. According to recorded history, Aristotle was the first to present evidence that earth was a sphere (around 330 BC). Around a 100 years later Eratosthenes provided the first calculation of the earth’s circumference (Wikipedia).

Here’s my point, to deny the existence of something that so obviously exists is to look no less silly than about 3,000 people who align themselves TODAY with an organization that continues to deny a fact that was essentially settled science more than TWENTY FIVE CENTURIES AGO!

Wouldn’t it be more productive to collect useful information, disseminate it and educate practitioners about the accurate use of such data? Then, based on what’s learned, ask a new round of questions, go back to real organizations to collect more data to answer those questions, and so on? Last month I posted on what is lacking from ASAE’s Operating Ration Report (click here…).

We can do better than having debates about the shape of our industry; we should collect data to help define its boundaries and contours and learn to improve it.

This is cross posted at: www.AssociationVoices.org