The Conference Coach™

Carolyn Bradfield

It’s amazing to think about the number of associations around the country.  For just about every professional group, for every trade, for every cause, you will find an association.  Associations are quite helpful for their members because they provide information about the industry or membership, training, advocacy, events and access to resources.

Associations are usually divided into management teams, committees or member organizations.  Getting these groups together to discuss their objectives and agenda is often managed over conference calling.  To give you a good example of how associations function, I’d like to go inside one of our customers operation – a bar association for a major city.  Even though the members are all contained within the city, managing schedules and fighting traffic makes live meetings hard, so conferencing is used to get these groups together on a regular basis.

This particular association has an executive director and a management team that run the overall association.  This team meets monthly to discuss budget, initiatives, strategies to increase membership and strategies to serve their membership with valuable services.

Because the practice of law is specialized, this association is divided into “sections”, each of which is devoted to a specific practice of the law such as litigation, commercial real estate, or family law.  Members of these sections meet via conference call quarterly to discuss issues affecting their particular practice of the law and to develop strategies to offer Continuing Legal Education for their particular specialty.

The association also has a number of committees.  Committees are usually formed around a specific event or issue.  For example, a number of committees exist to run charitable events and raise money for causes.  Additionally, this association is politically active, discussing their positions on tort reform and governmental regulations.

Each section and committee has a budget that is set by the association management team and conferencing expenses must be tracked back to the committee or section.  Conference call moderators can input a billing code into the system at the time of the call that will show up on the invoice.  Using the Connect To Copper customer portal, administrators can look at conference call usage reports and add their billing codes prior to the conferencing invoice being delivered.  This makes it easy to separate expense and meet budget requirements.

Conferencing makes meetings, trainings, and committee activity logistically possible and affordable.  Webinars are also used to offer informational and training sessions for the membership creating further value for the association.  It’s hard to imagine how associations would function without this communications tool.

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