In these days of liberalism and the “What’s in it for me?” crowd, belonging to a trade association can be confusing to some people.  We constantly get calls from prospective members who ask right off the bat, “What are you going to do for me?”

Before I answer that question, I think that an explanation of what a trade association is might be in order.

A trade association is a group of individual companies that come together for the purpose of improving their industry and to improve the way they do business in order to become more profitable. Members work together on committees and at conventions to achieve that goal.

If no one volunteered their time and effort, trade associations could not work effectively. When you join an association it’s like joining the Musketeers, “All for one and one for all” has to be the driving force.

In other words, a member will get much more out of an association if he participates in the development of the various programs or serves as an officer and attends conventions. In fact, those trade associations that do not have a great deal of volunteer effort tend to be costly, marginally effective and spend a great deal of time on fund-raising to keep secure the jobs of the staff before the needs of the association are met.

I have listened to those industry experts who claim to have all of the answers that you need for a price. Once you pay them their fee, they will give you a mass-produced set of audio or video tapes and manuals that can be interchanged between one industry and another. They almost always do not address the issues that you want to know about.

On the other hand, get a bunch of owners together in a room and just watch the information flow. The real experts are the people who are out there in the trenches everyday working in this industry. We all possess bits and pieces of valuable information that doesn’t always seem to make a lot of sense to us as individuals, but put us together with other owners & business managers and the exchange of bits and pieces creates a clear picture of the things that were confusing us before.

So the next time you are tempted to ask what the association is going to do for you, maybe you should take a look and see what you have done for the association, and how you plan to participate to obtain all of this knowledge and benefits that you seek.