How Can Professional Membership Associations Provide Meaningful Value for their Members?: Creating Models of Affiliation and Engagement

What do individual association members think about their association membership? What do they value and what do they want to see associations provide in the future? This case study uses face-to-face interviews and focus groups with 12 international Ph.D. students enrolled in a Public Administration and Management program at a major university in Texas to provide answers to these questions. The research offers an understanding of how people from diverse cultures view professional associations. The Ph.D. students were also asked about the importance of their association as a means for building ties and making connections with others, and about volunteering. We do not attempt to generalize our findings to other students or association members but case study research may yield information useful for theory building. We hope that our inquiry will be helpful for associations as they seek to create innovative models of engagement for members in an increasingly globalized world

Organizational Determinants of Political Involvement in Trade and Professional Membership associations

Trade and business associations and professional membership societies like many other political interest groups in the United States advocate and lobby their interests in the policy arena. Yet, we lack the understanding of how organizational capabilities shape different forms of political engagement in trade and professional associations. Research on the political involvement of tax-exempt organizations has been focused on charitable nonprofits. Studying the elements that underlie political action strategies and tactics of trade and professional associations would expand our understanding of political engagement in the nonprofit sector. In our sample of occupational mutual benefit associations, both resource dependence and institutional factors such as board size, affiliated foundation, tax-exempt status, business classification, and membership type explained the likelihood of political strategies including advocacy, lobbying, grassroots activity, and having a political action committee (PAC). Organizational size characteristics such as budget, staff, and membership size mattered as well

Organizational Determinants of Political Involvement in Trade and Professional Membership Associations

Trade and business associations and professional membership societies like many other political interest groups in the United States advocate and lobby their interests in the policy arena. Yet, we lack the understanding of how organizational capabilities shape different forms of political engagement in trade and professional associations. Research on the political involvement of tax-exempt organizations has been focused on charitable nonprofits. Studying the elements that underlie political action strategies and tactics of trade and professional associations would expand our understanding of political engagement in the nonprofit sector. In our sample of occupational mutual benefit associations, both resource dependence and institutional factors such as board size, affiliated foundation, tax-exempt status, business classification, and membership type explained the likelihood of political strategies including advocacy, lobbying, grassroots activity, and having a political action committee (PAC). Organizational size characteristics such as budget, staff, and membership size mattered as well