Karma-Link, a boutique management services company, was created to provide exceptional management services to engineering and technical not-for-profit associations and learned societies. We are focused on this industry niche because we believe that technical associations have unique characteristics that need to be understood and appreciated to generate great customer and member experiences.
Some of these unique characteristics include:
-
Volunteer Led Business Model: Being led by strong, engaged members of the association/society is critical to ensuring the organization provides value to its members. However, the volunteer led business model does provide challenges with term limits, availability due to conflicting priorities (i.e. day jobs) and shifting strategies, direction, and areas of focus. It is critical that volunteer led organization have a solid, consistent, and stable team to support them over the long-term.
-
Complex business requirements: Most professional associations would be considered small or medium sized businesses. While this may be true when measured from a revenue or income perspective, there are considerable complexities in the business that require knowledge and experience of how associations govern and operate. Regulatory compliance, GST and other taxation complexities, inter-relationships with sister societies and International bodies are some of the complexities uncommon with small businesses and require a broad based set of management skills that are not easy to source.
-
Geographically Distributed: Members at large, Board members and Executive Committees are typically geographically distributed and meet infrequently. It is essential to have strong communication and collaboration tools and processes to support a geographically distributed leadership team.
-
Fractional Expertise: Associations and Societies require a broad base on skills and expertise in areas such at marketing and social media, financial management & accounting, membership management & support, information technology, legal and other specialty areas. Most organizations lack the funding to staff all the skills required in-house and hiring ad-hoc consultants gets expensive. By outsourcing association management to Karma-Link, our customers get access to the expertise they need on a fractional basis.
Karma-Link’s team approach assembles a diverse mix of people and skills that can successfully navigate through the complexities of association management and provide exception member services. Since we only work with similar organization, we have higher customer intimacy and a better leverage model than typical association and event management firms that support a broad customer base.