by Jacqui Nelson
I had a good day on Monday at the MemNet conference. It’s always interesting to hear the sorts of challenges that our professional association clients’ face, even those that don’t pertain to learning. There were informative talks on data protection, organisational lifecycles, webinars and how to conduct a useful member satisfaction survey. All topics close to the heart of any professional body.
Professional Associations and membership bodies are an interesting sector. And it’s a sector that sometimes doesn’t recognise itself as such. By definition professional bodies are strongly associated with a particular profession, whether it be librarians, auditors, dental nurses, accountants, and sometime we forget that those that run professional bodies are themselves a rather specialist profession.
Historically in the UK its not a ‘profession’ that has had much recognition, due largely, I think to the fact that professional bodies have tended to be run by an interested member and not someone who specialises in running professional bodies. In the US for some time now, running professional bodies has been seen as a specialist job, not one to be left exclusively to the members. And I have a sense that this might be changing in the UK too. Slowly the ‘sector’ is beginning to recognise that, no matter what profession you represent, there is a core set of skills and knowledge that is required to run a professional body, and that there is some benefit it sharing good practice.
This is born out by the success of organisations such as MemNet. As an organisation, it hasn’t been going for long but is obviously filling a gap in the market to provide high quality, relevant information to professional bodies and provide a chance for the to meet up and network.
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