Guest Author: Tim Ebner, Associations Now
To revamp its membership and marketing efforts, the CFA Institute recently made an organizational change to support local societies using a new membership activation program. It was a new way of working for an organization with a tradition of top-down operations.
Michael Collins is a relative newbie when it comes to association management and leadership. He spent the majority of his career working in the private sector at Fortune 500 companies like J.P. Morgan, Rockefeller & Company, and Computer Sciences Corporation. Today, he’s 18 months into a job as chief marketing officer at the CFA Institute, a large global associations of investment professionals. The institute has 142,000 members in 159 countries and territories, including 136,000 members who hold its prestigious certification and 147 member societies.
One thing CFA Institute’s local societies sorely needed was marketing support. In a member survey, the association learned that most independent societies had a hard time communicating member value. While the institute is widely known in the investment profession for its rigorous certification and exams, many members felt less engaged, valued, and represented when it came to member services like career development and networking at the local level.
