Specialized conference apps for associations
The lifeblood of an association is its membership. Without your membership, the associations would cease to exist. One of the most important functions of an association is communications, both up and down the organizational structure. National headquarters have a need to communicate with their state and local chapters and with their members, and members must communicate with chapters and national headquarters. One of the best ways to communicate is through conference calling, including audio, web, and video conferencing. During the last decade, several specialized applications have been developed using conference services to achieve the objectives of the associations, improve the quality of communication with their members, generate new income and reduce costs. Here are six specialized conferencing applications that associations can implement now.
Administrative meetings. Associations can use plain old audio conferencing to hold administrative meetings in the association hierarchy. The national headquarters can conference call with state and local chapters, and all organizational levels can conference with members. These calls can be recorded and saved for later replay by conferees, who missed the call, or by participants who only want to replay the call for specific references. A new feature of saved recordings is that a link to the recording can be sent to the moderator of each call in the post-conference report email. When the link is clicked, the audio recording plays automatically, either on a desktop or mobile device. The moderator can share the email with the link to all call participants so that anyone can listen to an instant replay of the meeting at any time. Conference service operators can also be used in these administrative conference calls to implement question-and-answer sessions and polls.
Individual billing. Conference service providers typically send a monthly bill for all conference calls to the moderator or accountant who pays the association’s bills. However, some of these conference calls, such as lobbying calls, may be made up of conferees belonging to other associations, which may cause a problem for the moderator, who set up the conference call. This moderator would get the single invoice for the call and then have to pay the cost of the entire call or divide the costs of each of the participating associations and collect from each of them. This is time consuming and a real pain in the shorts. A new app for associations and other non-profit organizations is called individual billing. With this new application, the service provider can split the bill based on the total minutes spent on the conference call by each organization. The service provider can then send the specific individual invoices and collect them from each organization. This completely eliminates the need for association staff to waste their time dividing invoices, billing and collecting.
Subconference. Subconference is an operator-assisted feature that allows the operator to divide the main call into subgroups that can be divided into separate conference calls. Once the subgroups have finalized their specific business, they can call the operator, who can put them all back on the main conference call. An example would be a national association that would start the big conference call with all participants from across the United States. When the call moderator was ready, the operator would be summoned and then the call would be divided into four subgroups, one subgroup for each section of the country. After the subgroups have finished conducting their regional business, the operator would rejoin the subgroups into one large call again. Subconferencing is a feature or application that must be scheduled in advance with the service provider so that an operator is available and knowledgeable to handle the call.
Continuing education. Many professional associations are required to provide continuing education in the profession they represent. Additionally, many of these professionals must take as many continuing education classes each year to meet their continuing certification in the industries in which they work. Initially, these classes were held in person, which required time and travel. These classifieds then began receiving help through conference calls. As conferencing technology developed, these classes have now moved to the Internet and are using web and video conferencing. Usually the associations have to develop the content of the curriculum, do all the marketing and promotion, take all the registrations, run the webinar, send the invoices, collect the money for the courses and then send the certificates that verify the completion of the course. . One of the new conferencing applications, developed by conferencing service providers, allows the association to fully focus on course content and who will be teaching the class, and allows the service provider to do all enrollment, marketing and Sending collateral materials, conducting the webinar with professional operators supervising the class, collecting all the money, and submitting the course certificates. At the end of the webinar, the service provider would provide a billing summary to the association along with a verification of the difference between the total class revenue minus the service provider’s costs. Each webinar should be a revenue generator for the association.
Market research. Another application developed by service providers over the last decade is focus group interviews conducted via audio or video conferencing. In the past, focus groups were conducted in person and involved the rental of a facility and the travel expenses required to get to and from the event, both for the moderators and possibly for the research subjects. With the advent of conferencing technology, these focus groups can now be achieved through the use of audio or video conferencing services, greatly reducing facility rental and eliminating travel expenses. These sessions can be recorded and recorded for future replay by researchers.
Affinity programs. Affinity programs are designed to provide certain associations with an additional source of income. Many associations generate additional income by providing and selling products and services to their members. Some conference providers have established affinity programs that allow the service provider to market conference services to association members. Basically, the association gives the service provider permission to market its services to members and helps promote the services through the association’s publications and communications to members. The service provider then develops the program materials, markets its services to members at a discount, and then remits a monthly royalty to the association’s headquarters based on the revenue generated by the program. An affinity program can provide a significant influx of new income to an association, provided the membership is a suitable user of conference services.
There you have it, six applications that have been developed for associations to help them achieve their goals, generate new income and reduce their costs.