Valley PR Blog

Are Associations Relevant Anymore?

By Linda VandeVrede on October 28th, 2007 In Social Media

Bulldog Reporter has some great contributed essays from time to time, and I really liked the recent one by Art Stevens, who is managing partner at StevensGouldPincus and immediate past president of PRSA-NY.   As a delegate to the recent PRSA assembly, he wrote an interesting column about PRSA being at a crossroads.  He mentioned a number of factors that I think were right on the money, in particular, the competition from so many other communication organizations, and the stifling accreditation requirement to be eligible for leadership.
We’ve seen how traditional forms of communication have faced challenges today because of the segmenting or niching, if you will, of target audiences.  Reaching the “many” with a blanket message hasn’t become as important as reaching the “one” with a specialized conversation.  Similarly, the traditional associations and groups that we belonged to in the past are having trouble evolving to this “one on one” format.  I asked Art if he thought professional associations will become irrelevant, and he doesn’t think so.  He does believe that “momentum will gather on the need to eliminate the APR requirement for national office and board positions.  If and when that happens, the 80% of PRSA that is not now being represented will be.”  Indeed, the APR requirement silences the conversation of the majority of members - very backward thinking, in my mind.

I’m not sure what the future of associations like PRSA will be.  I have found that the PRSA Counselors Academy has one of the most helpful and exciting conferences that I have ever attended.  It’s a specialized subset of the national association.  I don’t attend most of the local AZ chapter meetings, however - I used to think that was because I didn’t want to drive “all the way downtown” - but I find myself driving each month to the Phoenix Social Media Club meetings at jobing.com headquarters without any complaint. 
Associations will always be important.  But more more, that association with others is taking place online.  On FaceBook, I am a member of segmented online groups, where location and geography are irrelevant.  Where else could I so easily find other Edith Wharton fans, or members of the Red Sox nation - for free? 

Criteria for belonging to an association should be whether it 1) provides personal professional development, as Art points out in his column, or 2) whether it satisfies a personal interest.  More and more, those associations are geography - irrelevant.  Ironically, the only physical meetings that I get the most out of now, it seems, are the social media meetings — the opportunity to connect face-to-face with people I previously knew only online.   It’s free, I learn really cool things at each meeting, people don’t dress to impress, and there’s no rubber lunch chicken in sight!

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