How do you ensure accountability within your organization? How can you be sure that all stakeholder needs are addressed appropriately? Governance is one of those intangibles that plays a major role in the success of your Association or non-profit organization.

However, good governance is not a one-size-fits-all solution. Join us for this complimentary 20-minute session where we discuss the do’s and don’ts of effective governance in the world of non-profits, and how you can be a better board member.

If you are involved with any board of directors in the non-profit sector, this is a must-see session featuring Darlene Hyde, governance expert and Executive Director at NAIOP Vancouver and the BC Association of Medical Radiation Technologists.

How do you define your organization's community culture? Your values, attitudes and identity all come together to create the culture that you want to communicate to members and the public.

The benefits of a defined community culture can be plentiful for your organization; greater public awareness and recognition, improved customer service and a more productive team. Leverage this culture by getting everyone on your team of staff and volunteers in alignment. Don't be missing out!

Join Certified Hospitality Sales Professional Lydia Miller for this engaging 20-minute session on defining your culture and effectively communicating it through your staff.

Attend this complimentary presentation in our comfortable Gastown studio with other Association Professionals, or participate from the comfort of your home or office via live interactive audio and video broadcast. Choose your method of attendance on the registration page.

Speaker Bio
Lydia Miller is a Certified Hospitality Sales Professional and professional trainer with over twenty years of sales and marketing experience accumulated from within the finance, performing arts and hospitality industries. Lydia has been involved with CSAE since 1996 having first joined as a Business Member with Coast Hotels and Resorts. She moved onto the Board and served as Committee Chair for Programs and Services. She became an Executive Member while working with the Vancouver Hotel Association and Dispensing Opticians Association of BC. Today, Lydia is a published author, online instructor, and the founder of The Miller Touch Training Group Inc. offering custom professional development, sales training and marketing consulting services that focus on customer service and online promotional strategies.

Tweet with her @TheMillerTouch, including any questions you have about your community culture!

It’s 2:30pm on a beautiful Saturday afternoon. You have a belly full of roast beef from lunch and despite the gallon of coffee you’ve been ingesting steadily since your strategic session began this morning at 8am, you are getting sleeeeeepy...

You look around at your board members: Miranda hasn’t looked up from her BlackBerry since lunch, Frank has stepped out to take a call, Murray is doodling on the worksheet in front of him and Jim...well he’s snoring quietly at the table in the back of the room. Everybody else is staring vacantly at the wall or, in a couple of cases, at the convoluted organizational matrix on the screen up at the front.

Sound familiar?

Strategic planning is critical to the success of your Association. We are talking about your future here - it shouldn't be boring!

This session will talk about how to create a strategic plan that is effective, easy-to-follow and that gets everyone excited and pulling on the same set of oars to help turn your Association’s strategy into a reality.

Join Carol-Anne Moutinho from the Association Resource Centre for this session on Strategic Planning for Associations.

Speaker Bio
Carol-Anne has played a key role as a Consultant in the Association Research Centre's (ARC) Research and Strategy division for the past six years.  Currently, Carol-Anne is responsible for conducting qualitative research for ARC clients in areas that include: member satisfaction, industry and consumer trends, program and service development, organizational effectiveness and competitive analysis.

Carol-Anne also has a strong facilitation and planning portfolio that includes projects in strategic and marketing plan development, and organizational analysis and implementation for clients in both the private and not-for-profit sectors.

Professional writing, editing, social media and content management are also among Carol-Anne's areas of expertise. She is the primary author of the ARC Blog, www.resources4associations.com.

Keeping track of your NPO’s finances can be an arduous task, especially without an in-house professional. Join a representative from accounting firm Tompkins, Wozny, Miller & Co. for this 20 minute presentation on Tips and Highlights for NPO Accounting. Learn about new and recurring accounting issues faced by most NPOs, and the best methods for addressing them. Can you afford not to attend?

Are public speaking engagements keeping you up at night? Gather the confidence and skills you need to master the crowd and become a media star with Executive Speaking Coach Narges Nirumvala.

A few simple tips can set you up for success for your next AGM presentation, media appearance, or guest lecture. As the face of your organization, are you commanding respect and inspiring action in your audience, or putting them to sleep? Join us for this complimentary 20-minute session and turn your Board of Directors into media stars.

About the Speaker
A Dale Carnegie Sales Talk Champion, Narges Nirumvala is an executive speech coach based in Vancouver, British Columbia and the owner of ExecutiveSpeak.com. She works one-on-one with entrepreneurs, executives and community leaders to help them supercharge their public speaking and presentation skills with a focus on persuasive content, great presentation skills and achieving powerful results. She is a columnist for Entrepreneurial Woman Magazine and her writing has been published and circulated to 106 countries worldwide. She is the first person in British Columbia (and only the third in Canada) to be selected as a keynote speaker for the '7 Success Secrets for Canadian Immigrants' monthly seminar sponsored by RBC and Prepare for Canada. Narges has extensive experience with numerous not-for-profit boards including St. Michael's Centre Hospice Foundation, Rotary International and the Kitsilano Chamber of Commerce, where she served as Vice President. She has been past-chair and emcee for the Westside Awards of Distinction and was nominated for the Business In Vancouver Influential Women in Business Awards.

Social media sites are powerful for more than just outbound communication - they are also extremely active listening posts. In the age of online communications and social networks, it is easier than ever for your members to express their opinions; are you capturing this valuable information, or letting it vanish into the online ocean of content?

On February 20 at 4PM, join Michael Rogers, Marketing and Social Networking Specialist, for a complimentary session on how to effectively listen, respond, and adapt to your valuable member feedback.

Educational documents, industry reports, and research findings are a valued member-benefit and source of revenue for your Association. Are you doing enough to protect your assets? Don't forget to join us Monday, February 6, 2012, for the next Association Night presentation. Jay Nelson, VP Technology Initiatives, will be sharing his views on simple digital rights management for protecting the value inherent in your association's online assets.

How will you develop your online presence in 2012?

Join Michael Rogers, Marketing and Social Networking Specialist at Support Services Unlimited, for a 20 minute discussion on social media for Associations, focusing on lessons learnt in 2011 and strategic directions for 2012. Login online or join us in-studio for this complimentary interactive session.

If you haven't gotten involved in social media, we will be looking at case studies and success stories of 2011. If you have, understand which tools and trends to plan your strategy around for 2012. Foursquare, Google+ and YouTube are just some of the platforms that will be big in the New Year - how will your Association measure up?

Google Analytics provides powerful information you need to measure the success of your online presence. Most websites have this free tool turned on – but are they using it? On November 28th at 4PM join Jay Nelson, VP Technology Initiatives at Support Services Unlimited, for a free 20-minute presentation on utilizing Google Analytics.

Go beyond website hits as you monitor your social networking activity, QR-code campaigns, SEO, e-commerce and more - make a small investment in working knowledge of this powerful tool to help maximize your online assets. Understand what the metrics mean, what to look for, and how to act on the knowledge you’ve gained. This is an introductory level session to get you started with this tool - if you’re already a Google Analytics wiz, keep an eye out for our more advanced sessions in the weeks to come.

How do you support your team? Attend our upcoming HR Webinar!
No matter how brilliant your business plan is, if you don’t have the workforce to support it, you’re not going to achieve your intended business results. Learn tips that will help you attract and retain top talent, and better manage the biggest asset and liability of your organization. On November 14th at 4PM join Glen Grant, Partner at HRfx Consulting, as he shares the insights you need to grow and support a successful team in this complimentary webinar event.

Bio: Glen Grant is a Partner of HRfx Consulting, providing human resource solutions to small businesses. With over 20 years of human resource and operations management experience in small to large organizations, Glen brings a wealth of HR knowledge and best practices to his clients. As a certified HR professional (PHR, GPHR), his passion is to help SMB owners and managers, effectively manage their people resources by simplifying the often-complex world of employees, HR and labour regulations. From 1 to 120 employees, Glen can help with your HR, while you focus on your business.

Most people equate conflict with confrontation, and who wouldn't be spooked by that! But that’s only part of the story. In this session you will hear about three key concepts that can help you cope more positively when disagreements occur.

• Learn what really sparks conflict. Hint: It’s not what you think!
• Hear about the one thing you absolutely can do that shifts the whole conflict picture.
• Find out what everyone needs when their opinions differ from those of others. Satisfy this, and the whole conversation will change.

Resolving conflict is simple – but not easy. On Oct 31 you can find out why this is so, and hear some ideas about what you can do to achieve different outcomes. Join Carol Sutton, Principal of CJS Communications, as she shares with you the secrets of effective conflict resolution in this special Halloween presentation!

For the budget-conscious association, finding the right help can be a hard task. Weighing the value between the cost of full-time staff and the variability of volunteers seems like an unanswerable question. Consider a unique solution from around the world – international interns!

International post-secondary students from around the globe travel to BC to gain experience in their chosen field of study before completing their respective programs. In exchange for the opportunity, they provide your association with qualified and dependable expertise. Sometimes the best way to tackle local problems is with international perspectives.

Join Timothy Wells, President of Internex International Exchange, as he shares with you the value and benefits of welcoming international interns into your organization - for free!.

Enhanced Benefits to Grow Your Membership

Associations need to stay competitive to attract a strong membership base; offering valuable products and services for their members can help them differentiate. Employee benefits and retirement solutions catered to members can not only enhance membership value, but can also bring in additional revenue for the association.

Join Donald Chu, VP of ICBA Benefit Services Ltd, as he explains how these services work and discusses case studies of associations who have taken advantage of a benefit/retirement program to effectively attract new members.

Those registered to attend via remote will recieve a link prior to the event.

Social Media is a constantly evolving forum for communications. Some organizations find immense followings while others flounder. How can you be sure that the time you have invested is paying off?

Join Michael Rogers, Marketing and Social Networking Specialist, for a 20-minute session on The Socially Networked Association. He will be discussing the merits and pitfalls of all the major social networks, and describing best practices on how to make them work for your association.

Registration is free - RSVP today!

You may have noticed that a new symbol is showing up with increasing frequency on buses, billboards and business cards. Called a QR code, it resembles a square full of Aztec-like squiggles.

A quick scan with your smartphone gives you an instant connection with information and lots of it, usually on a web page. On your business card, the QR code gives you a chance to tell your whole story, not just a few contact numbers.

In a print article or ad, you can invest in dynamic graphics and take the reader to your in-depth information when they scan the QR code. On your corporate brochure, it links the reader directly to your website.

QR codes make it easy to measure and track where and how your information flows. They are easy to change and (almost) free! We are inviting a few small groups of people to share what we have learned about the benefits and challenges of this rapidly emerging technology.

On August 29, at 04:00 PM, our VP Technology Jay Nelson is offering a 15 minute talk on the features and benefits of QR codes.

Please join us for this complimentary presentation.