As I’ve worked with association execs adopting lean startup methodology to help them develop their ideas for new programs, products, or services they could offer to their members and other audiences, one thing that often trips them up is creating a *minimum* product.
We know how to create a vision and sell it. We do that all the time, most frequently between the board and senior leadership (one has the vision and pitches it to the other).
Viable products are also no problem. We know how to make stuff for our members. We also do that all the time.
The hard part is not throwing too much stuff in there, not, to use a common MVP metaphor, giving people a Mercedes when what they actually wanted was a bike.
Once you’ve gotten through your lean canvas and are starting the Build-Measure-Learn cycle, the first step is to think about the features your MVP could have, broken into the smallest possible components.
Let’s say your idea is to create training in meeting regulatory requirements. That’s not federal rules and state rules and contracts and IP and disclosures and ethics all in one. Each of those is a separate feature. In fact, some of those might break down even further. (“IP” is a big topic. So is “ethics.”)
When it comes to your MVP, you need to think small, not big.
Remember, you could be going in the wrong direction. Your target audience may not want this at all, or they may want kind of what you’re proposing but not exactly. If you put too much stuff into your early tests not only will you have invested more resources than you should in an unvalidated idea, you’ve also made your own job of trying to more closely approximate what your audience needs by way of a solution to the problem you’ve identified that much more challenging.
Keep it simple, keep it small, track your metrics, and keep it moving, on to the next iteration of your idea.
Want to learn more? Join me, Jamie Notter, and Tiffany Dyar for a free webinar, Lean Startup at 10: Navigating Disruption and Opportunity in Today’s Association Landscape, next Wednesday, September 10, at 2 pm ET, hosted by the nice folks at Professionals for Association Revenue (PAR). Learn more and register here.
Are you ready to use lean startup methodology to create new value for your members and other audiences, but find yourself stuck?
Maybe it’s your culture.
On Wednesday, July 16, Jamie Notter, Chrissy Bagby, Tiffany Dyar, and I presented a webinar for UST Education: Lean at 10: Lessons Learned.
Jamie and I kicked things off by briefly touching on:
What is innovation?
What is design thinking?
What is lean startup?
What is culture?
Then we moved into the meat of the conversation, discussing how the American Association of Veterinary State Boards and the National Registry of Emergency Medical Technicians have used lean startup methodology to create new value for their audiences while also managing the cultural challenges that accompany any big change.
We addressed questions like:
What are the challenges associations face in developing their ideas?
How can lean startup methodology help?
How do you effectively harness your team’s creativity and resourcefulness to ensure that you’re delivering a solution your audiences will need, use, and pay for?
What is the role of organizational culture in working in new ways to gain new insights?
What tools exist to help association execs guide their teams through the culture change they’ll need to embrace to be effective?
Shelly Alcorn and I recently had the opportunity to be interviewed by KiKi L’Italien for Association Chat on association leadership strategies for climate chaos.
We talked about our new whitepaper, The Time Is Now: Association Resilience and Adaptation and the Anthropocene Climate Disruption; shared some stories of associations that are doing good work in this area; discussed how we ourselves stay motivated to work for change even in the face of bad news and seemingly daunting odds; highlighted the fact that (to quote Global Optimism) “stubborn optimism is a deliberate mindset;” and revealed the bigger project Shelly and I are in the process of launching related to this work, the Association Climate Action Coalition.
Maddie Grant (PROPEL), Jennifer Yarrish (AARP), Paul Roetzer (Marketing AI Institute), and I recently had a great conversation about associations’ role in the ethics of generative AI and in regulation of the technology for UST Education.
Topics we addressed included:
What are the critical ethical concerns related to the creation and use of generative AI tools?
AI has been all around us for years. What’s different about the generative AI tools that are now available to us?
What’s happening with regulation of generative AI tools? What are the concerns about regulating? What are the concerns about NOT regulating?
What role should associations be taking with regards to ethical use of generative AI for our internal operations? For member-facing programs, products, and services? For the professions and industries we serve?
What role should associations be taking with regards to regulation of generative AI?
What are some of the positive possibilities that are facilitated by the rise of generative AI technologies?
Did you miss it? Never fear! The recording is now available at the UST Education website (our webinar host).
Would you like to learn more about how you can improve your information literacy and become a more discerning and knowledgeable consumer and sponsor of research?
Caveat Emptor co-author Polly Karpowicz and I recently had the opportunity to sit down (virtually) with Jeff Cobb (Tagoras) for an episode of the Leading Learning podcast, where we discussed some fundamental issues in research study design, like primary versus secondary research, qualitative and quantitative research, mixed research methods, the ethics of using people in research, and bias. We talked about the importance of information literacy and how you can increase yours. We also covered topics like data validity, reliability, and statistical significance, and Polly and I shared some valuable tips for the responsible consumption and production of research.
Want something live, where you can hear directly from some of our case studies and have the chance to ask your questions?
February 23 – Caveat Emptor (UST Education) with Mallika Bender of the Casualty Actuarial Society – register HERE (it’s free!)
March 1 – Caveat Emptor (Association Insights in Old Town) with Mallika Bender of the Casualty Actuarial Society and Marc Beebe of IEEE – register HERE (it’s also free!)
Research is formalized curiosity. It is poking and prying with a purpose.
When you’re sponsoring a research study, one of the biggest decisions you’ll have to make is what method(s) to use.
What are your choices?
Quantitative v. Qualitative
Primary v. Secondary
You also have some decisions to make about data collection. The choices there include:
Formal v. Informal
Active v. Passive
All of these choices have associated pros and cons.
For instance, surveys (quantitative primary research where the data collection is active and formal) provide numeric answers that can be described by levels of statistical significance and degrees of confidence (see yesterday’s post for more on that). That’s obviously a pro.
On the con side, because surveys provide reassuringly specific answers, it’s tempting to over-rely on them. They’re also more susceptible to design flaws that can introduce bias – and once the survey’s deployed, you can’t correct those errors without invalidating all the responses that have already come in.
Join me and the nice folks from Grype Digital on Tuesday, October 12 at 3:30 pm ET for Explosive Growth for Associations Through Better Membership Management, the second episode of their second season of video podcasts.
On the pod, we’ll talk about things like:
Levels of engagement (not everyone wants to be maximally engaged, and that’s OK!)
Understanding your members’ motivations (hint: YOU HAVE TO TALK TO THEM)
How to cater to a broad spectrum of members (each member generally joins for 2-3 things – the key is to figure out WHICH 2-3 things)
What happens when your membership plan becomes reality?
Join me and Dana Anaman (National Association of Professional Insurance Agents) Wednesday, September 30 at 10 am ET as we take you through our journey to increase membership for the National Association of Professional Insurance Agents. We’ll discuss how we approached membership recruitment, onboarding, engagement, retention, and renewal – the full membership lifecycle – to increase membership.
In this session, you’ll learn:
How we created a membership plan for PIA and what we thought was going to happen
What really happened when PIA began implementing this membership campaign
What PIA learned and how we’ve pivoted as a result
In my last post, I shared the link to the webinar my Steal This Idea! co-author Sohini Baliga and I presented for Wild Apricot on March 21. Sohini and I got to as many questions as we could at the end the webinar, but as usual, we missed a few, so we’re answering them below:
How can wildlife conservation related organizations tap into millenials if we are asking them to be a hero for another species?
EWE: This provides a great opportunity to tell a story of an endangered animal (or species or wild place) in a way that’s compelling and, in that story, explain how your donor/member can be the hero who saves that animal (or species or wild place) by her donation.
What if your membership is a low fee like $25/year?
EWE: Well, at least you’ll probably never hear the objection: “Dues were too expensive”! Seriously, though, that hopefully means you have a lot of people in your membership file. The trick now is to start looking for the ones who do more than just pay their $25 a year – or who want to do more than that.
How have you had best success at gathering stories from members/donors?
EWE: Talk to them. That can be individual and formal (like a phone interview), group and formal (like a focus group), or individual and informal (like a conversation at an event). Pay attention to when he starts talking faster, or a little louder, or in a higher pitch. Watch for when her eyes light up and her face gets more animated. That means you’ve struck gold – you’ve discovered something that member is passionate about. Then it’s your job to look for ways that member’s passions tie to your organization’s mission, and explain to her how involvement in your organization will make a difference to that issue she’s passionate about.
We are a membership association of cause-oriented organizations. But we don’t have a cause ourselves. Will there be materials in this webinar that will help me?
EWE: Sohini and I would like to think so. When you’re a federation of organizations, it can be hard to make that direct, personal tie with people. I’m about to use an example that’s a bit politically charged, so stick with me. In the aftermath of the 2016 election, Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton founded an organization called Onward Together. It uses her high profile and large audience to raise money for small, scrappy nonprofits that are doing excellent work, but that may lack the audience base to effectively raise money themselves. Can you highlight the stories of the organizations you serve?
We are thinking about doing a major gala. What is the best way to get corporate table sponsorships if you don’t know people within the individual businesses?
SB: The first thing to consider is that corporations look at the bottom line, and want bragging rights – it makes them look good. Now, put yourself in a corporation’s position. You’re not just spending money because it feels good – you have to pay employees and benefits, investors and backers want to see returns on their investment, and you need to be able to stand behind your spending decisions. All of them. So what’s going to make you give? What’s going to make you say, “Sure, I’ve got bills, but you can not only have a big chunk of change, you can put my name up in lights so others come asking me for the same thing”? What will make you say yes? What will make it hard for you to say no? Therein lies your answer – make your best case; make the story of the gala compelling; make it really hard to say no. Make them an offer they can’t refuse.
This is where I will say that nonprofits should not skimp on fundraising staff and professional executive development. A good, connected development officer is worth every penny of salary. And it is their job to make those sponsorships happen in tandem with a board and executive staff that is not shy, and can make the ask clearly, comfortably, and elegantly. There are grants available for hiring fundraising staff and professional development at all levels of the nonprofit world. The bigger the budget, the more they exist – because everyone understands that you have to support staff so they can do their best. It’s not a perk; it’s an investment that allows nonprofits to continue growing and serving their core mission.
What is the best way to get feedback from members? Surveys at events, letters, or…?
EWE: Yes. You want to turn your organization into a sponge for information. That means you want to collect data on your members and other audiences formally (like surveys and interviews) and informally (like conversations and responses to emails). You want to collect it actively (asking people to answer questions) and passively (paying attention to what they do and tracking what behaviors you can without turning into Big Brother and creeping people out).
Collecting the data is only the first step, though. You also have to share it with your colleagues. You’d be amazed at what your “line” staff in customer service knows that you don’t know, because they talk to your stakeholders all the time. Likewise, you’d be amazed at the insights your newer or more junior staff might have into some of your “C-suite” information, because they have a fresh perspective and aren’t jaded by “we’ve always done it this way” and “we tried that five years ago, and it didn’t work.” No information hoarding!
I have a large number of small dollar donors that I want to cultivate to be higher donors. I would like to meet with them to know them better. How should I go about doing that?
EWE: Ask them. I am a donor to Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company (one of our case studies). My relationship with them started by going to one show. I liked it, so I went to more. I liked them, so I became a season subscriber. I realized I supported their mission, so I started donating. Now I’m donating much more, on an annual basis, than I was then. The Woolly development staff started building that relationship by calling me up to ask if I would like to meet for coffee.
Any suggestions on where to start with an all-volunteer organization?
EWE: It’s tough when you have no paid staff. Sustained projects, like fancy integrated multi-channel campaigns, are really hard to do. You need to assess what, for your organization, would constitute low-hanging fruit. Can you easily identify who your super-members are? Can each volunteer take responsibility for calling one of them in the next two weeks? Do you have young people in your volunteer base? Can you get them talking about what sorts of engagement activities they would find appealing? Does your organization have a compelling story, where it’s easy to frame the member as the hero? Could you send out one email that does that? Figure out what the easy thing is, do it, (hopefully) experience some success and learn some things, and build from there.
Missed the webinar? Wild Apricot’s got you covered.
Special for those of you who prefer to learn from methods OTHER than reading: Two are videos; one is a podcast. We embrace all types of learners around here!
