Guiding Associations

Acumen Blog

5 Tips to Reading Financial Statements for Your Association

by Betsy Smith, CPA, MST | Feb 22, 2019 | Acumen Blog, Budget & Finance, Leadership

Do you find yourself wondering where you should focus when looking at your organization’s financial statements? Your role as a board member includes a fiduciary duty of care to oversee operational results and to communicate those results to stakeholders. Here are a...

How to Measure Success for Your Association

by Elizabeth Schlicht, CAE | Feb 5, 2019 | Acumen Blog, Leadership

Associations tend to be all over the board on how they use data and what they measure. In fact, you can get in just as much trouble trying to cope with too much data as you can without having enough data. Over the years we’ve come to learn that most associations have...

Why a Clean Database Benefits Your Members

by Elizabeth Schlicht, CAE | Jan 23, 2019 | Acumen Blog, Membership

Association Database Management An association’s database serves as a foundation to support many important functions of your organization, including membership benefits management, member prospect management, transactional records, event registrations, committee and...

Transition Turnaround with an AMC

by Association Acumen | Jan 11, 2019 | Acumen Blog, Leadership

When the National Vehicle Leasing Association (NVLA) came to Association Acumen in 2014, the independent leasing community had been severely impacted by the Great Recession. Their net assets had dwindled and their marquee fund-raising event for the next year had not...

Enhance Your Education Program

by Lori Conaway, CAE | Aug 5, 2018 | Acumen Blog, Meetings & Conferences

Drawing from my 10+ years of experience coordinating, managing and directing educational programs, I am excited to share ideas that will enhance your clients’ educational programs and offerings. Formalize the Process for Educational Content Development...

CAE Prep Course: The Game

by Sandy Koehler, CAE | May 14, 2017 | Acumen Blog, Acumen News, Leadership

The Game is a tool that serves as an introduction or refresher course for association management best practices and key concepts and can also be used in preparation for professional certification exams. Using a colorful card deck and trivia format, The...