Evaluate Your Publication As It Now Stands

Is your association’s magazine or newsletter an asset or an add-on?

Look at your association’s mission statement.

Is there any part of it your newsletter or magazine can’t improve, in terms of your strategic goals for the association?

What Association Publications Should Do

The most successful associations have publications that aren’t stand-alone communications pieces – they integrate into every aspect of the organization. Effective association publications strategically achieve the following:

  • Help recruit and retain members
  • Increase attendance at annual meetings and other events
  • Generate more vendor and supplier participation
  • Increase non-dues revenues
  • Drive traffic to an association’s website
  • Communicate and enhance an association’s brand/image
  • Attract higher-quality board and committee members
  • Motivate other industry associations and societies to work with an association
  • Keep legislators informed about an industry or profession
  • Generate more member participation

Is your magazine one of the top three benefits your members identify on their annual survey each year? If not, you’re missing a powerful opportunity to meet your long-term mission and short-term annual goals.

Who’s Doing Your Makeover?

It’s easy to find publication consultants who can “pretty up” your newsletter or magazine with a new design that makes you look good for several months after the unveiling.

If you want your association’s newsletter or magazine to reach its full potential and make you look like a star with your board of directors, you need to start with a strategic evaluation that addresses your publication’s role and potential within your organization. And you want to work with someone who’s been a magazine publisherand an association manager.

Association Publication Evaluations starts with a review of your organization’s mission, its goals and your board’s mandates to you. You’ll work with a former executive director of 501(c)(6) and (c)(3) organizations — someone who’s walked in your shoes. From there, APE helps you maximize the full potential of your publication for many years to come by reviewing your editorial, design, sales, website, branding and circulation functions in a more thoughtful strategic context.

APE evaluations go beyond helping you undertake a one-time redesign or re-launch. APE helps you create a publication that touches every area of your association and helps you maximize your efforts to fulfill your mission.