Baseball fans lobbed some very pointed questions to the General Manager of the Chicago White Sox at SoxFest this weekend. The stridency of some of these folks was evident as they commented on player trades and team planning for this year.

It’s amazing that people display so much emotion about something that has no real impact on their lives – sports. It’s too bad they can’t have this same personal interchange with pharmaceutical companies, insurance carriers, food distributors, or automobile manufacturers – those with a direct impact on everybody’s finances and health.

Associations can benefit from personal contact with members in “town hall” meetings or other face-to-face information exchanges. Members can gripe, praise, or ruminate about member benefits, board decisions, advocacy efforts, and anything else the organizations is involved in.

Members will provide very useful input into association decisions and will be grateful for the opportunity to voice their concerns.

The Academy award-nominated movie “Juno” boasts an unusually clever script and a soundtrack offering a remarkably relevant selection of music.

Association executives should take note that the film is presented from the point of view of a sixteen year-old. The language, the depiction of student personalities, the perspectives of life issues, and the character’s opinion of events that pre-date her, are those of a high-school junior, not an adult trying to appeal to someone of that age.

Too often, adults admire young people who are just like them. They seek input from young people who mimic adult values. They often fail to, or refuse to, solicit feedback from the mainstream of America’s youth.

When marketing your association to younger people, make a serious effort to connect in ways they’ll understand and accept. Their language, dress, values, modes of communication, working styles, and attitudes about the world (and you) are likely to be very different from all that preceded them.

Your ability to incorporate their desires into your plans may determine the future viability of your organization.

Many associations adopt conflict of interest policies for their Boards of Directors, striving to ensure that association activities do not benefit individual board members. Government agencies often have stringent conflict policies to guarantee the objectivity of their research.

Conflict of interest policies should also govern staff people. It should be very clear to anyone who has contact with the association that staff does not use its position for personal benefit and that no outside entity will win association business by offering favors to its staff.

Staff should not solicit perks from vendors or sponsors, should not accept gifts of any kind, and should not accept personal favors in lieu of payment to the association (e.g. waiving of advertising fees). If gifts cannot be tactfully rejected, they should be handed over to the association to be raffled or auctioned at a fund-raiser or earned by volunteers. Providers of the “gifts” can then be thanked for their donations.

Association staff may claim that gifts and favors are routine in the industry they represent. If that is true, the association should practice more ethical behavior than its members.

You should never be surprised by an unexpected expense that your association is obligated to pay.

That’s what happened to one executive quoted in Scott Briscoe’s January article in Associations Now (“Life is Good When Contracts are Managed”).

The article discusses the importance of contract management and devising methods of ensuring the association enters into appropriate agreements, understands its contractual obligations, and fulfills its commitments.

What surprised me was that associations sometimes “forget” what they are obligated to pay. Even though some vendors may invoice late – one year late is not unusual – you should always have that amount budgeted and identified in financial reports as an accounts payable.

That is a basic financial control that even the smallest, least experienced association should employ.

The CEO, CFO, or other staff person responsible for financial oversight should be aware of everything the organization commits to spending. Something as obscure as credit card fees can throw a year-end financial statement out of whack and wipe out a modest surplus if the expense was not recorded in a timely fashion.

Knowing where money comes from and how it is spent is the most important task for the executive of any organization.

Remember this Native American saying when communicating with members:

Tell me and I'll forget. Show me, and I may not remember. Involve me, and I'll understand.

Kristin Clarke summed up a lot of frustrations people have had with unresponsive charities in her blog posting at Acronym. I, too, have had disappointing experiences with charities.

When my son was ten years old, he wanted to contribute to a very well-known charity. I wrote a check and attached a note explaining this was his very first contribution. I instructed the reader how to address the acknowledgement.

Weeks passed with no response. I called someone I knew at the charity and told them to send my kid a thank you. After a couple of weeks we received it - addressed to me!

I called again and demanded a thank you be sent to my kid. It finally was.

Another time my wife and I wanted to make a contribution to a charity in the name of a victim. The charity said it didn't do that. How much trouble would it have been to send a letter to the person's family informing them of the donation?

Charities should ALWAYS accommodate donors. Send thank you notes promptly and do whatever can be done to receive and acknowledge a donation.

Association executives often practice a “hand-off” policy regarding selection of Board members. They feel that volunteers should choose volunteer leaders and that staff biases should not influence the process.

However, staff members – CEOs in particular – often know more about prospective Board members than anybody else. They also are charged with managing the organization, and an ineffective or dysfunctional board can make management much more difficult and the association far less viable.

Al Rickard, CAE, of Association Vision, offers tips, in the December issue of Associations NOW, on how to ensure the organization’s board selection process works properly. Staff can play the role of a vital resource in the nominating process and can gently prod association leaders to act appropriately when dealing with leadership issues.

The job of the CEO (or Executive Director) is to see that the organization does everything it needs to do and does it well. Selection of Board members is a very important aspect of that job.

Millions of people refer to Wikipedia for information about a whole lot of subjects. Unfortunately, most think they are logging onto a factual site when they are really logging on to an editorial site.

Allowing anybody to post information makes a wiki less reliable, not more reliable. Many postings reflect individuals’ opinions, not determined fact.

For example, I recently logged onto a page listing prominent American elected officials of a particular ethnic group from the early 1800s to today. Included on the list was a current Chicago alderman whose inclusion was completely inappropriate. Obviously, he, or one of his partisans, made the entry.

A “knowledge” site should not be a battleground for competing interests that seek to advance their individual positions. I should not have to play detective and add to, delete, or modify other people’s entries.

If your association establishes a wiki and invites members to post information, make it clear that postings are opinions, not established fact. Even if you think you are assembling the knowledge of your profession or industry, it still is opinion – not fact – and should be viewed with skepticism.

I am far more inclined to trust information posted by authoritative sources than by anonymous users who, in pre-computer days, might have posted their thoughts on bathroom walls.