Do you work for your association’s members? Make sure to keep them happy. They keep your association afloat and active.

How to ensure your association is tuned in to its member needs, and more, in today’s Lunchtime Links:

Who’s running the show? To meet your members’ requests, your association must understand how they think and what they need, as the AssociCom blog puts it. Keeping up with an online community is a great way to do that. Not only will providing an online community give your association an active voice in the conversation, but it will also inspire more and more members to be a part of it as well. “There are likely hundreds of … ways that you can use an online community to make your association, guild, society, or any other group more responsive to its member’s needs and interests,” according to the blog. “This is because your members can now express themselves, explicitly with comments and implicitly by what they watch, collect, and join.They can do that without extra effort and while controlling their privacy. They will want to do that if their association is paying attention and being member-centric.”

Get organized, get it done. How do you start your day? Whether you make a to-do list or check in on big projects, you most likely start by planning your day, week, or month. It’s a valuable organizational tactic for prioritizing tasks and keeping your productivity high. BizBash caught up with a few event-planning leaders to talk their about organizational routines. “To quickly evaluate tasks at hand, anticipate the need, determine the urgency, and then execute,” said Velma Brooks-Benson, special events manager, Girl Scouts of Great Los Angeles. “We engage more than 40,000 girls and nearly 25,000 adults, so we adjust our event plans daily to accommodate our membership.” What are some of your tactics for staying organized and productive?

Measure behavior, not outcomes. Your association may measure success by looking at membership growth and retention, counting conference attendees, or assessing your bottom line. If your measurements show improvement, congratulations—but do you know how you got there? According to Eric Lanke, CEO of the National Fluid Power Association, you need to study how you reached that growth instead of just celebrating the growth. “It forces an examination of the behaviors that are desired and effective, and creates a reward system that is more closely aligned with activities that are actually under the control of the association and its staff,” he writes.

What interesting reads have you found today? Let us know below.

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