Last week, the ABC board of directors, executive staff, and a handful of ABC committee chairs participated in the strategic “thinking” retreat in Dallas to develop the next strategic plan for your association (see page 6). You will have an opportunity to review the draft plan in the coming weeks, prior to the Annual Meeting in Palm Springs, Calif., but before we get to that, I wanted to reflect on a point that was discussed at the retreat.
ABC has discovered through SEQuaLS (ABC’s membership satisfaction survey), that our members are satisfied with ABC’s overall performance (see latest report at http://bit.ly/2012sequals). However, we have had trouble linking higher levels of satisfaction with the value of ABC membership. Certainly, it is not an easy task to monetize every win, every accomplishment, and every “near miss.” It is even more difficult to track and assign value to every interaction that ABC member employees have with ABC. At least, we thought so until recently.
Once the strategic plan started to take shape, and the goals began to align with ABC’s core values (Advocacy, Data, Education, and Innovation), assigning value to our activities did not seem like such a daunting task. Each strategic goal will be complemented with a series of tactics, which will lead to a defined outcome with- you guessed it – an assigned value for the membership. Every member center will receive an annual “Membership Value Report Card,” customized to each blood center, detailing the work that ABC has done for them, whether on the Hill, before regulators or vendors, or assisting their staff with routine and day-to-day requests. “Value” may not always be monetary; it may take the shape of number of interactions between ABC staff and blood center staff, types of activities undertaken on behalf of a particular member, topics discussed with key legislators, or media mentions.
In the end, members will have a summary of the activities done on their behalf, and most importantly, the outcome and impact on their bottom lines. By demonstrating the value of our work, we hope to reconnect value to satisfaction and be able to authoritatively say that “a satisfied member is one that finds the value in our work.”
Matt Granato, MBA, Executive Vice President, Operations;mgranato@americasblood.org