What’s your association’s core competency? It could be something like “supporting manufacturers in the widget industry” or “providing education and advocacy for doodad practitioners in California.” Whatever it is, plug it into a search engine: Is your association at the top of the results? Maybe. Are you the only result? Probably not.
Bruce Rosenthal, a partnership and sponsorship consultant, suggests this exercise to get at a key challenge for associations today: Groups that were once the sole resource for a particular community now have a lot more competition. In a recent white paper, The Value of Conducting an Association Competitive Analysis, he and Mary Byers, CAE, lay out some of the situations where associations might compete. It’s not just other associations: Education providers, AI-driven search tools, for-profit organizations, social media, and more all can siphon off member attention and dollars.
"People think that if a sponsor is not renewing, they must be cutting their marketing budget," Rosenthal said. "You might ask those sponsors because my guess is they’re not cutting their marketing budget. They’re cutting you out of their marketing budget."
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