Many medical associations are still run in the “traditional way” – volunteer driven, and mainly focused on organising a conference and publishing a journal. Members and other stakeholders get little actual value from their involvement.
Volunteers focus on management rather than strategy, missions (if existent) are on paper only and are rarely consciously pursued, and revenues from activities are often stashed away in bank accounts for “rainy days” rather than invested in programmes that can help pursue an association’s mission. Only a few organisations have started to understand the fact that they can have a much greater impact, like contributing proactively (and not by chance) to new discoveries, treatments, education, awareness, shaping policy, etc. Activities like conferences and journals are tools for the pursuit of a greater mission, not the mission itself. Members should be at the centre of their attention: knowing them, understanding them and catering to their changing and specific needs. Such a shift in focus typically comes about thanks to the involvement of dedicated professionals who plan and execute the organisation’s activities in close partnership with volunteer leaders.
How MCI can help:
• Act as the (ideally core) Professional Congress Organiser (PCO) when running their meetings to improve quality, consistency and allow for the ability to consider and proactively shape the long term developments arising from a meeting, its content and related partnership/sponsorship programmes. In this way, associations grow to become more progressive and professional.
• By becoming an organisation’s Association Management partner, thereby liberating volunteer leaders from the weighty burden of running day-to-day operations. MCI’s Association Management professionals focus on all aspects of the association and the management of its programs and activities following business practices, ethics and governance procedures, as they are known in the forprofit world. Their permanence, typically spanning various terms of office of different elected leaders, adds continuity and stability.
Ultimately, when organisations become professionally managed, their impact on the community starts to increase, they begin to focus on strategy rather than tactics, and they start to take a professional, pro-active and long-term approach to their activities. In this way, they grow in relevance and are better able to guarantee a much greater return for all stakeholders – especially the members.