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Feature
Chapter/National Relations: Pulling Together or Pulling Apart
ASSOCIATIONS NOW, October 2008

Chapters and national organizations have similar goals, but their strategies and priorities can often diverge. Those who have been there say that the right communication makes all the difference—and the wrong approach to communication can break a relationship.
By: Kim Fernandez

While most national associations say their local chapters are vital to their members, the relationship between the two isn't always smooth. But troubled waters can be calmed (and potential storms can be prevented).
(Titled "Pulling Together or Pulling Apart" in the print edition.)

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One of the goals of a newly established national association is often to draw in enough members to justify launching local chapters. Usually organized by geographic region or state, these chapters are then charged with carrying out the mission of the national group and providing members with the opportunity to network and grow their businesses or professional skills in their own communities.

It's a good goal. Along with providing local events and area-specific information (think state regulations) to members, these geographically based chapters also give associations and industries the grassroots needed to get their messages out on a local level.

In fact, when these groups are planned and executed with a lot of forethought and the complete understanding of all involved, chapters or components can be an invaluable tool to growing the association and serve the industry in ways an umbrella group cannot.

Those who run successful national associations with a significant number of local chapters say that, when structured carefully, the relationship between the two can be beneficial to both. But, they say, constant communication is essential, both to keep everyone working toward the same ends and to avoid misunderstandings that can sour the relationship and bring forward momentum to a screeching halt.

Structure

Jim Simpson, director of membership operations for the Air Force Association (AFA), says that the expectations that run between the national organization and its chapters are key to the way the two groups will work together.

"In my experience with this and similar organizations, there are two basic end-of-the-spectrum models," he says. "The first has a national association and chapters across the country that are more or less independent. They share a name, but the chapters collect their own dues and they may or may not return part of those dues to national. They're essentially independent entities."

Both Sides Now

Sometimes communications between components and national associations can feel like two people tugging at opposite ends of a rope—not nearly as effective in moving forward as you might hope. But chapter staff agree that there are ways to turn the rope around so that you're pulling together.
According to Trudy Aron, CAE, executive director of the American Institute of Architects Kansas Chapter, "Thank you goes a long way." She also emphasizes the importance of understanding that chapter priorities don't always allow for immediate turnaround of a sudden request from national.
Peggy Hoffman, president of Mariner Management & Marketing (an AMC specializing in management of local, state, and regional associations), says the opposite can happen too—a chapter can have an urgent need for something that national doesn't see as a top priority. She adds that often national and individual chapters have different strategic agendas. If the two sides don't meet on common ground, or make the assumption that the agenda is the same on both sides, miscommunication and frustration are common results. "Understanding the agendas and understanding the timelines—I know that that's a tough thing for national offices, but it probably is the root of most communications disconnects," she says.
Hoffman suggests a few simple ideas that can greatly smooth the path:

National organizations should update their contacts for chapters more than once a year; communications going to a volunteer who has resigned or to the wrong address aren't helping anyone.
Chapters should communicate proactively with national staff and make sure they know who their most effective contacts are in the national office.
National and chapter leaders should consider creating RSS feeds for important web pages, like the page listing chapter volunteer contacts or the chapter leaders' page on a national website. In many cases, the website is updated even when someone forgets to notify their contacts at the national or chapter level about a particular piece of news.
Make sure your communications go out through more than one channel. "A lot [of national offices] want to do everything on the website and by email. The problem with that, I have found, is that my local leaders don't spend nearly as much time on the web or email as I do," says Hoffman. "I know with my chapter leaders, when I want to communicate with them urgently, for about 90 percent of them I pick up the phone."
When they do use email, national organizations communicating with multiple chapters could get good results by adding a quick survey to the end of their messages. Hoffman recommends asking recipients to rate the message on three things: "Is this message relevant to you?" "Is it timely?" "Is it actionable?"

"How often do we really bother to ask how effective our communications are?" asks Hoffman.

AFA, he says, illustrates the second category.

"Our chapters are chartered," he says. "They're created by us, and they're obligated to follow and try and support our national strategic objectives. They have their own objectives as well, and those are in line with our strategic plan. We support our chapters and return part of the dues of every member to those chapters."

AFA currently has about 210 geographically defined chapters organized in 14 regions across the country. Some of those chapters cover several states, and some cover only part of a state or just a city. Each chapter must report back to national several times a year. AFA's 125,000 individual members join the national association first and are then assigned a local chapter, where they are free to participate or not.

Others say a less structured relationship works well. Cathleen Bourdon, associate executive director for communications and member relations at the American Library Association, says that while the association calls the library associations in 50 states and a handful of American territories "chapters," they're not legally bound to ALA in any way.

"We find it brings some interesting challenges when the chapters are totally separate organizations, but it brings some real opportunities, too," she says.

State and regional library associations recruit their own members and share neither rosters nor membership dues with the national group. But each state has an elected "chapter counselor," who serves as a voting member of the ALA governing council. Bourdon says that role demonstrates the value that the national association places on its unaffiliated chapters.

Challenges

Regardless of how the chapter-national office relationship is structured, the potential for misunderstandings exists. Bruce Wardle, president and CEO of Association Management Group, says he's seen his share of blow-ups between chapters and national organizations in more than 25 years of association work.

"I've seen the very good, the bad, and the very ugly," he says.

"There are some very good things that chapters bring," he continues. "The biggest is the ability for people in a specific region to come together and network and build relationships and discover business opportunities in their immediate local vicinity."

On the other hand, some kind of competition between the local and national association isn't unusual. When that happens, he says, the results can be disastrous: "A local association might offer educational programming or conferences that compete directly with the national or international organization. That creates animosity that doesn't need to be created."

Money, too, can get in the way. Wardle says he's seen more than one situation where a local chapter did not send to the national office whatever portion of its members' dues that it was supposed to turn in to maintain the affiliation.

His preference, he says, is to structure the relationship so that members start with the national organization. They and their dues then trickle down to local chapters.

"It's not a controlling thing," he says. "It's just appropriate business practice. The membership resides with the national or international organization. They do the recordkeeping because they have the resources to allow them to have the sophisticated software that will maintain membership records and do so transparently. Chapters can then go in and see complete rosters and membership databases."

The Air Force Association has members join at the national level and then filter down, as Wardle suggests. At the same time, AFA asks chapters to participate in things such as local education initiatives and other nationally supported projects designed to further the association's mission of advocacy for aerospace power. But these are requests, not mandates.

Barbara Zlatnik, director of member resources for the International Facility Management Association, says that her group's members also join at the national level. IFMA requires new members to belong to one of its 123 local chapters for their first year of membership; after that, they're free to keep their membership solely on the national level.

"Only about five percent of our members currently do not belong to a local chapter," she says. "And some of those simply don't have a chapter in their area."

AFA boasts similar numbers. "Ninety percent of our members currently belong to their local chapters," says Simpson. "It's a carrot-and-stick-type thing." Chapters receive part of the national dues of members who affiliate—and, it stands to reason, more active chapters (which, conceivably, are more valuable to their members) will draw more national members to also affiliate with them.

"We ask our chapters to do what they can at the local level to support our mission," Simpson says. Chapters send quarterly reports to the national office and send an annual plan and list of officers. Based on those quarterly reports, the national office knows what's happening in cities and states across the country.

That said, AFA does not force its chapters into participating in any single program. "Like any organization structured this way, we have some chapters that are barely hanging on with those kinds of activities and don't do much, and we have other chapters that do a great deal—they're active in their communities, they support their local Air Force base, and the actual functioning is high."

Buck Buckwalter, executive director of AFA, says it's a two-way relationship: AFA staff makes a concerted effort to communicate regularly with the chapters.

"Our leadership does a good amount of visiting with chapter folks," he says. "I've been to three different regional conventions and events in the last four months. I try to get to 30 or more every year."

There's also a certain amount of understanding when communication lines get crossed or things don't work out as hoped on the local level.

"There's almost no amount of coordination you can do that's enough," says Buckwalter. "We have a staff of 60 here and we don't always talk to each other properly. Getting everybody on the local level online all the time is a little difficult."

Others agree with that. Marilyn Simon-Gersuk, vice president of community service for The ALS Association, says that the relationship between her national office and its chapters isn't always perfect. For that reason, she views it as an evolutionary thing.

"We are now looking at how we are structured as an organization and what is the most effective and efficient model," she says. "We were originally set up basically the way we are now. We're working with an outside consultant, doing an analysis of the current structure, and working to take that to the next level."

"It's not perfect," she says of the chapter-national office relationship. "Our former CEO used to say that he was looking for the quintessential system. But it's a constant evolution."

Zlatnik agrees. "We have definitely had flare-ups on certain issues over the years," she says. One of those issues came up several years ago, when IFMA began allowing its members to opt out of chapter membership completely, even during their first year with the association.

That didn't go over so well. "There was quite a bit of angst at that time from our chapters," Zlatnik says, and the decision was reversed two years ago.

"Our chapters feel, and I feel as well, that they are the backbone to ICMA. We reversed that decision to make sure that members experience the chapters for one year. That helped mend the relationship with the chapters and helped turn things around."

Opting Out

While most associations agree that having local chapters is vital to growth and grassroots advocacy, there are some that simply decide to not start state or regional groups. The American Small Business Coalition is one such group; it exists only as a national entity.

"The association is going on five years old and deals with helping companies develop business with the government," says Mark Amtower, immediate past chairman of the group's board of advisors. Made up of 400 business members nationwide, the association debated launching local affiliates earlier this year, but ultimately decided against the move.

Part of that decision, he says, was based on the group's relatively small, still-new membership. "You're going to have to rely on volunteers," he says of chapters. "And always, regardless of their desire, they're always going to have a lot of other things that take precedent. As a result, there will be things that don't happen."

ASBC, he says, has struggled with the decision for more than a year. While they know members could certainly benefit from having established, chartered groups on a local level, they also fear that those same members are simply too busy to get those chapters going without more help. And there is no budget to hire staff to get things rolling.

"We've had inquiries from people in Chicago and Denver and on the west coast," he says. "People call and say they know they could start a chapter there and that they'll volunteer. And it's always difficult to say no to volunteers."

Instead, the group is investigating establishing its chapters online, in the form of social networking sites. "We want to let people identify themselves if they want to get involved on a regional basis, and perhaps start something in the cyber world and supplement that with live events."

Amtower says he's a member of another national organization, and that every few years, someone suggests starting up a chapter in Washington, DC, where he lives.

"Every time, we've never gotten beyond that first organizational meeting," he says. "After that meeting, things dribble away quickly because people lose interest. Nobody can agree on a venue, what time of day we should meet, and everybody has other things to do."

ASBC didn't want that to happen. If chapters are rolled out, Amtower says, it'll be done at a time and in a format that doesn't rely so much on asking already-busy people to add something else to their schedules.

"I don't think a lot of chapters are in our overall plans," he says. "If there's sufficient interest in certain cities—Philadelphia, New York, Chicago, San Francisco, Denver—there could be enough money not to open offices in those areas, but to have a board member or staff person go out there and help people coordinate somewhat-regular events."

Wardle says that kind of thinking—putting chapters off until there are the resources to back them—is a good thing.

"Any enlightened organization should have a charter or an affiliate manual," he says. "There should be an agreement and requirements in place. If you're going to be a chapter of the International Widget Association, you should be incorporated and you should have policies and procedures in place with a proper legal structure."

Kim Fernandez is contributing editor to Associations Now. Email: kim@kimfernandez.com

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