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Member Recruiting: the once and future challenge for AACT
I'm writing this message, my second to final message as President, as a combination wake up call and cautionary tale for the members of AACT. The reality is that we, as an organization, are losing members. This saddens me greatly because one of my goals as your President was to increase membership and here we are losing members each year. The numbers don't matter as much as the fact that some folks each year are opting to not re-join AACT and new members are fewer and farther between than I had hoped. While it would be nice to find something or someone to blame for this situation; I can't seem to pin it down to one specific unmet need or shortcoming. I think the problem is multi-factorial and includes the economic pressures that have beset both individuals and institutions over the past few years. I feel a bit better about this (I think) as I have come to learn this attrition of members is not exclusive to AACT.
I was recently invited to a meeting of the ACGIH (American Conference of Governmental industrial Hygienists) held in Chicago. The ACGIH has been a stalwart leader in worker safety and health. They have been in business of over 60 years as a member-based organization, boasting more than 3000 members worldwide. Their mission involves advancing occupational and environmental health and protecting workers. Examples of their work along theses lines includes their annual editions of the trademark regulatory standards known as TLV's (Threshold Limit Values) and BEI's (Biological Exposure Indices) as well as work practice guides in a variety of ACGIH signature publications. ACGIH invited a number of organizations to meet to discuss what they viewed as a matter of survival for their organization. They have lost over 30% of their members in the past 10 years and their revenue base has been under extreme stress. ACGIH believes they may be facing extinction if they are unable to reverse these effects. While AACT's extinction is not on the table at the moment, I can tell you that based on the experience of ACGIH, we could easily take a walk in their shoes if we are not extremely careful. The caution here is that ACGIH has many more members than does AACT and they have multiple evolved revenue streams. And yet, ACGIH is facing possible dissolution. The trend does not auger well for a smaller and less financially diverse organization such as AACT.
The last best solution for this problem, in my humble opinion, involves recruitment of new members at the grass roots level. I view this in the simplest terms and I see the answer as follows. If every single dues paying AACT member would recruit just one new member this year, we are out of the woods. We all know at least one person who would benefit from, and enjoy being an AACT member. I urge you all to approach that one person and encourage them to join AACT. Tell them about the benefits of membership and tell them about NACCT. If each of us recruits just one new member we won't be condemned to suffer a continued slow attrition in membership that could threaten the very existence of AACT. This is not a goal for the future or only a stated part of our strategic plan. It is, in fact, a survival imperative for AACT.
Respectfully,
M. Greenberg, MD, MPH
President, AACT |
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