A Virtual Success

Whether you manage components face to face or in cyberspace, your tasks are often the same: stimulating member discussions, keeping an eye on various details, and helping volunteers work toward your association’s goals.

About two-thirds of the more than 5,300 individual members of the American Chamber of Commerce Executives (ACCE) belong to one or more virtual networking groups. The ACCE has special interest groups for each of the five core chamber professional competencies (government affairs, communications, business development, membership, and workforce development). The ACCE also has community peer groups (CPGs) for chamber of commerce executives based on the size of the population that they serve, the number of members, and other CPGs for all staff professionals that work at chambers of commerce in similar communities (a large employer is a university or military base, for instance).

New virtual groups begin when at least a few members are interested in the same topic. Members can use our online tools or work with staff. Generally, we’ll create a more formal group for members if their topic impacts a large number of members. Some groups are long-standing; others focus on an issue and end when that particular issue is no longer a threat or an opportunity.

A forum for sharing

ACCE made electronic message boards available to these virtual communities in 1997 and participants quickly made them a forum for sharing ideas, solving problems, getting to know their peers, and obtaining just-in-time information about emerging trends. We’ve gone through two major upgrades of the Webboard software and two computer server changes since then, and the investment (under $10,000) has been well worth it in sustaining the cohesiveness of these virtual communities.

Each group varies in its goals for activity levels. Our popular CEO groups and other peer-to-peer groups, for instance, have one staff person who posts questions he gets from them, as well as brief summaries on relevant issues. Their expected activity level is 2-4 threads per month (they use e-mail, not our message boards), and a few groups just had their first conference call.

Our virtual professional interest groups, on the other hand, are for staff-level employees (although many of our CEOs at smaller member associations also participate). They have active message boards, an online members-only samples database, and an online peer database. These virtual groups create how-to publications and annotated bibliographies, contribute articles to our bimonthly magazine, set up teleseminars and regional seminars, and help put together the content and speakers for our annual conference.

We’ve assigned three full-time staff members to about 14 formal and 30 informal groups. We stimulate discussions, take minutes during conference calls, and keep volunteers working toward our goals of providing education, information, and networking opportunities to others in the professional development interest area. We occasionally summarize discussion threads for members and we also conduct informal polls by asking such questions as, “Who uses paid advertising to support lobbying efforts?" and "Who can share his or her job description?” We sometimes tabulate the responses with survey software such as Perseus Survey Solutions, which automatically collates and presents the data graphically.

From virtual to visible

ACCE constantly markets and educates members about how to use the message boards or online resources because of turnover and the natural tendency to cocoon or dig in to the daily details of work. We’ve enabled e-mail-based participation in the message boards so members don’t have to come to our Web site. We also allow attachments for them to more easily share samples (and for staff to then collect and post the samples in our online database). In addition, this year we’ve created a networking vice-chair position on the advisory team for each professional virtual group. This person will focus on sustaining conversations on the message board, among other tasks.

To further encourage participants, we ensure that each virtual networking group gets visibility in our ACCE publications, on our Web site, and at our national conferences. This has helped members connect with each other and create an identity. We also provide online and face-to-face public and private spaces for them to network and form a community. Every member can self-select into and out of most networking groups 24 hours a day, seven days a week, using the MyACCE online service module. If a networking group requires certain criteria, members can indicate an interest in the group and staff follows up on the notification.

One of the biggest hopes for the future of ACCE’s virtual networking groups lies in the ability for members to go to MyACCE to form their own groups around about 30 interest areas, including tourism, health care, and transportation. Through MyACCE, members can now access an online roster of their peers who share these common interests. Upon request, we’ll create a message board for a group to network more publicly. Until these virtual ad hoc groups become more visible, however, or until we learn that there’s a need, we’ll nurture them in their private networking space through e-mail reminders that the groups exist as well as information on how to use the online resources.

Catherine Lada is director of member services for the American Chamber of Commerce Executives.

Reprinted with permission. Component Relations, December 2003, ©American Society of Association Executives, Washington, D.C.

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