As the world shrinks and demographics shift, associations need to take steps to best reflect the populations they serve.

Demographic changes are "going to impact the investments that we make in terms of the people and the products and the services that our organizations undertake, and it's going to, as a result, impact the return that we get," said Vicki Deal-Williams, FASAE, CAE, chief staff officer for multicultural affairs at the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (ASHA) and chair of ASAE's Diversity and Inclusion Committee. "If we start to invest now and make some changes methodically and institutionally, then we're going to be able to have more of an influence on that income and the ROI."

To be prepared for a new population of members and other stakeholders, associations need to start making adjustments now. "If you have a strategy, if you have a policy, if you have a philosophy, those are all great starting points. If you have one initiative or program, that's a good starting point," Deal-Williams said at a July program, "Proactive Perspectives on Diversity and Inclusion: Through the CEO Lens," hosted by Vetted Solutions. "Bottom line: You've got to get started, but if you always do what you've always done, you're going to get what you got."

ASHA has a long record of commitment to diversity and inclusion, but it recently evaluated its own D+I status. Upon completing an assessment, Deal-Williams found that ASHA's volunteer leadership appointment process, in which the board selects leaders for councils and committees, needed some attention.

The problem was that while the board wanted to appoint diverse volunteer leaders, they weren't doing it. "They had the right intent, but the outcomes weren't really what we wanted," she said. "The impact wasn't there."

Bottom line: You've got to get started, but if you always do what you've always done, you're going to get what you got.—Vicki Deal-Williams, FASAE, CAE, American Speech-Language-Hearing Association

Deal-Williams developed a questionnaire and gave it to board members to answer. The process helped leadership acknowledge that a commitment to D+I wasn't enough; they needed to find a way to actually increase diversity on ASHA's committees.

To begin, board members pledged to hold each other accountable, to be willing to appoint diverse individuals who may not be as experienced as others, and to tap into available resources to find more diverse candidates. They created standards for an ideal pool of candidates based on specialty or job function, race and ethnicity, gender, age, and geographic location.

Next, the board worked with multicultural constituency groups like the National Black Association for Speech-Language and Hearing and the Native American Caucus to identify more candidates. They also brought staff liaisons and committee chairs into the process, instructing them to seek out diverse candidates for their groups.

With new directives, change may come more slowly than expected. One ASHA board member was upset after the first year because the composition of the volunteer leaders hadn't changed as drastically as she'd hoped, Deal-Williams said. She reminded the board member to look at how small changes were moving the organization in the desired direction. It was after two year-long cycles that ASHA finally began seeing larger changes in the makeup of its volunteer leadership.

Associations should implement processes to initiate change wherever it is needed, Deal-Williams said, whether in recruiting volunteer leadership, communicating with members, or planning meetings and events. And even if certain groups aren't represented in every aspect of the association's work, what's important is how well the organization reflects the population as a whole.

Although ASHA has been undertaking D+I initiatives since 1968, the job isn't done, Deal-Williams said.

"We still don't have all the answers. We still don't have everything in place," she said. "There are different people in place, there are different people being impacted, so we have to stay on our game. We have to continue to change."