5 certainties of being affiliated to Lejeune Association Management

5 certainties of being affiliated to Lejeune Association Management

Associations, foundations and other non-profit organisations may choose not to run the management and operation of their organisation on their own, but to outsource this to a specialised professional company. And we are certainly not just talking about the membership administration, the bookkeeping and the business address. If that were the only issue, other solutions would also be conceivable. The support of an association management company like ours goes much further than that. We act as a strategic partner and advisor, as a communication agency, as an event and project manager, and as a provider of physical and digital association facilities. Below, we list five certainties.

1) No worries about employing personnel

AMCI's Top 10 shows that for many boards, having no or little staff is the number one need for hiring a specialised agency. This certainly seems to be true for trade associations that are run by business executives. The old adage ‘I wish you a lot of staff!’ applies precisely here. Directors and committee members are elected to contribute to the realisation of common goals of their organisation. HR is just one of the means to achieve those goals. The volunteer-board member is usually not eager to act as an employer next to his or her daily activities, with all the hassle that this entails. Lejeune Association Management takes over this role from your association. 

2) Advocacy is possible because your association is well organised

The importance of good representation and standing up for your industry proved to be very important during the Covid-19 crisis. We saw many representatives from vital sectors, such as the medical sector, but also representatives from the sectors that suffered the greatest financial blows in this crisis, such as the hospitality and travel sectors. They were visible and seen as the experts, or in marketing terms, thought leaders in their field. The fact that these sectors are organised into associations is their great strength. They talk to their supporters, they investigate bottlenecks, share knowledge and come up with solutions. As a result, the members of the association are of interest to the policymakers. With the right content or communication strategy and PR policy, they also reach the right audience through various media. In this way they create support in our society.

This is exactly the strength of the associations that are represented by Lejeune Association Management. 25 different associations in different sectors. All experts in their sector. Not always with the scope of the large umbrella organisations, but that is also not always necessary to achieve specific goals. There are, however, a number of sectors that are seen as vital in the corona crisis, such as: the packaging industry, the tapes & labels industry, and the recycling sector (metal, paper & board, textiles).

Read more about this in the three sequential parts, with our professionals we published in 2020.

3) Part of the association community: the power of the linking pin, also between organisations

 The in-house specialism that Lejeune has is continually growing and this is shared among the different associations. Developments go fast, it is important to make connections between associations.  Learning from each other, where synergy can be gained, especially when it comes to organisations with sectoral overlaps. We cannot explain it better than one of our clients did recently.

In an interview about the textile sector and recycling, our client VHT’s co-chair Mariska Zandvliet said: ‘It is very valuable to join Lejeune together with several industry associations, which are active in the waste streams. The synergy is nice and we can exchange experiences about how things work at other associations. Also when it comes to knowledge of producer responsibility, as we already see in the packaging industry. As an organisation, we are now busy with the professionalisation process and it is good to know that we always have a safety net for extra support, if necessary.’

4) Supporting the virtual association

 What the pandemic has taught us is that a lot can be achieved under pressure. Associations have been 100% virtual for more than a year. Even online association voting has been made easy. Association meetings are a powerful medium to establish and maintain personal contacts between members, to communicate with them by sharing information, to exchange experiences, to transfer knowledge and to decide on joint programmes and initiatives. The pandemic has accelerated the 'virtual association'. What the aftermath of 9/11 meant for digital communication and teleconferencing, Covid-19 is now doing for video conferencing. Whereas after 9/11 in 2001, association professionals and executives were tied to their office workstations, during the near 'déjà vu' of 2020, the home office takes central stage, where meeting spaces (both home and online) must be shared with other parties, and in today's world of hacked and twisted information, this brings challenges to data privacy and confidentiality. From Lejeune, we have planned, set up, monitored, moderated and minuted over 1,000 digital meetings for our clients through Zoom alone. We went from almost zero to 500,000 minutes online in 12 months. There have also been several occasions when our office has been transformed into a professional studio with a green wall. In the future, these experiences will be of great importance in offering our clients even more professional online meetings. Hybrid meetings will certainly play a major role in this, but also a digital working environment that facilitates continuous online collaboration outside of meetings and events. 

5) Compliance, support in complying with laws and regulations

 Besides the fact that governments imposed more and more rules in recent years, it is important for every organisation, including trade associations and non profits, to work according to the standards and rules drawn up by the organisation itself, not only to guard the integrity of the organisation, but also to comply with legal and social requirements, in short with the term 'compliance'. Since 1 July 2021, in The Netherlands the new Act on Management and Supervision of Legal Entities (WBTR) is in force. At Lejeune, we support and advise our association boards on how to work with the applicable laws and regulations. We inform our associations, but we also drawn up general guidelines for good governance and a related code of conduct for good governance.

 If you want to know more about Lejeune, please contact one of our team members. They will be happy to tell you more.