Technology in associations

Technology is an 800 lbs. gorilla in the room when it comes to most non-profit organizations.

Today, I'm at the ASAE Technology Conference in Washington, D.C. I sat in on a town-hall meeting with association technology professionals. One comment stood out. A technology consultant said we're past the point where we can think of technology as something that is a necessary evil or just necessary. It factors into everything we -- as a business -- do. We can't live without it, so it's time to embrace it.

We use technology to provide added value to the members we serve. And the pieces of technology we implement must add value -- benefit -- for those constituents.

Although Drake & Company allows it's clients flexibility in implementing new ideas and innovating with new technology, all associations need to play a more active role in technology innovation, otherwise the traditional, old school association may not fare to well in a Web 2.0/3.0 world.

The current wave is social networking like Facebook, MySpace and LinkedIn. Those groups boast more members than almost all of our associations. Associations have not yet learned how to leverage those technologies.

Yet our potential members are using them to replace the value proposition traditional associations had created -- networking, knowledge sharing, communication and collaboration, to some extent face-to-face meeting (i.e. Meetup.com).

Associations still have some time to find value with improved technologies, but we, as association professionals, can't sit back and wait until we see a proof of worth or an ASAE case study.

In these tight economic times, we need to explore, learn about and determine how to leverage new technology, tools and innovations in places where current and potential members are using it.