Welcome to Rethinking How Associations Work

Associations continue to serve important purposes. They help people share knowledge, build relationships, solve common problems, establish standards, and advance professions, industries, and causes.

The question I want to explore here is whether the models we inherited remain the best ways to fulfill those purposes today.

Over time, associations built membership structures, conferences, committees, chapters, publications, credentials, governance systems, and other programs to carry out their work. Most of those mechanisms developed for valid reasons. But the conditions that shaped them have changed, and I think more association leaders are starting to ask whether some of those structures should be preserved, redesigned, or replaced.

That is the purpose of Rethinking How Associations Work.

The recurring question behind this series is simple:

If we were creating an association today, how would we design it?

This site will feature practical long-form articles and shorter posts exploring that question across membership, conferences, governance, volunteer structures, education, revenue, organizational capacity, and change.

The first full article, “The Purpose Is Not Outdated. The Operating Model May Be,” will be published on August 11.

If this is a question you are thinking about too, I hope you will subscribe and follow along.

— Barry