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Association News

New Chief Executive Officer for Music Mark

 

Applications have just closed for the post of CEO of Music Mark, the UK Association for Music Education, based in London.

 

Music Mark is a membership organisation, subject association and strategic lead organisation for music education. It aims to enable its members, and the wider music education sector, to deliver high-quality musical and social outcomes for all children and young people. For the new CEO this is an excellent opportunity to lead The UK Association for Music Education through the next phase of its development. Adaptability, creativity, strategic thinking, and business aptitude are all pre-requisites. As well as a passion for education and the arts. Outstanding leadership goes without saying, and the new post holder will also be engaged in developing and maintaining relationships with all who hold a stake in the strategic planning and operational delivery of music education as part of a broad and balanced education.

 

General Secretary Designate for NAHT

 

The National Association of Head Teachers (NAHT) has announced that Paul Whiteman has been elected unopposed and is confirmed as General Secretary Designate until he takes over as General Secretary from 1st September. The recruitment process has been exhaustive and Paul was unanimously endorsed by both the recruitment panel and National Executive. He replaces Russell Hobby who was in post for the past seven years.

 

Whiteman has been NAHT’s Director of Representation & Advice for the past five years and is keen to build on the excellent service we provide for members, and maintain the strong, professional community of leaders that is the cornerstone of NAHT’s reputation. NAHT will continue to be recognised as the clearest voice in the education debate in the UK and under his leadership the association will continue to use the respect it has with parents/carers, policy makers and partner organisations to effect real change for leaders and learners everywhere. Hobby and Whiteman will work together in the coming months to ensure a stable transition.

 

New Director of the Royal Institution (Ri)

 

The Trustees of the Royal Institution – which has been at the forefront of public engagement with science since 1799 – have appointed Professor Sarah Harper to lead the organisation as its Director. Professor Harper is Professor of Gerontology at the University of Oxford and founder of the Oxford Institute of Population Ageing, having previously held senior academic positions at universities across USA and Asia. She has worked extensively with the Government Office for Science, serving on the Prime Minister’s Council for Science and Technology and contributing to UK government and European-wide strategies on issues such as ageing, population change and education.

 

Full announcement: http://www.rigb.org/about/news/spring-2017/director-announcement

 

New Chair: Chair Alan Turing Institute Data Ethics Group

 

The Alan Turing Institute has announced the membership of the Alan Turing Institute’s Data Ethics Group. It will be chaired by Luciano Floridi, the OII’s Professor of Philosophy and Ethics of Information.

 

Made up of academics specialising in ethics, social science, law, policy-making, and big data and algorithms, the group will be responsible for driving the Institute’s research agenda in data ethics, and working across the organisation to provide advice and guidance on ethical best practise in data science. The group will work in collaboration with the broader data science community, will support public dialogue on relevant topics, and there will be open calls for participation in workshops later this year, as well as public events.

 

Luciano Floridi is a Fellow of St Cross College; Distinguished Research Fellow of the Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics; Research Associate and Fellow in Information Policy at the Department of Computer Science; and Member of the Faculty of Philosophy. Outside Oxford, he is Adjunct Professor (“Distinguished Scholar in Residence”) of the Department of Economics, American University, Washington D.C.; Faculty Fellow and Chair of the new Data Ethics Research Group of The Alan Turing Institute.

 

Commenting on his appointment Luciano Floridi, said “We are all aware that digital data innovation is transforming our society very rapidly and profoundly. The opportunities as well as the challenges require more thinking, more collaboration, and more foresight about the ethical questions we are facing. I hope the newly established Data Ethics Group will play a significant role in such an exciting context, and I am honoured and delighted to coordinate it.”

 

Members of the group include  Dr Jonathan Cave, Senior Fellow in Economics, University of Warwick; Dr Jennifer S. Davis, Faculty of Law and Centre for Intellectual Property and Information Law, University of Cambridge; Dr Phyllis Illari, Senior Lecturer in Philosophy, Department of Science and Technology Studies, UCL; Charles Raab, Professorial Fellow in Politics and International Relations, School of Social and Political Science, University of Edinburgh; and Prof Burkhard Schafer, Professor of Computational Legal Theory, Law School, University of Edinburgh.

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Association News

Looking for non-police officers to plug the nationwide detective gap is not the answer – that’s the message from the Police Federation of England and Wales (PFEW) following an announcement today that Londoners will now have the opportunity to join the Metropolitan Police Service directly as a detective constable, working in investigative policing immediately after initial training.

 

Karen Stephens, detectives’ lead for PFEW said: “We are aware of the massive workload and stress our detectives are under, with detective numbers dwindling faster than any other group of police officers.  So it is with a certain amount of understanding that we acknowledge the Met’s attempt to stem the haemorrhage of detectives in their own force.

 

“But, as with other direct recruitment schemes, we believe that individuals first need a grounding on what it takes to be an officer in the 21st century. Direct recruitment or ‘direct entry’ is not a magic bullet for the current detective shortage which has reached crisis proportions, as recognised by HMIC earlier this year.

 

“Detectives need first-hand experience of responding in an operational capacity to incidents they would not encounter in any other walk of life – the bedrock of British policing is the Office of Constable.

 

“In relation to this specific role the question must be asked, what has changed to create the gap? Why is a role that people once queued up to do not a desirable one anymore? There are many contributing factors including workload, the changing types of crime, the fact that the role is not family-friendly and more.”

 

Mrs Stephens said forces should be looking to existing officers before searching for answers outside the world of policing and also queried the Met’s insistence that candidates had degrees: “One certainty is that there are very talented officers already in the service whose skills and experience could make them fantastic detectives. It is this talent that we must harness and encourage into the role first and foremost.”

 

She added: “We do, and always have, supported accrediting qualifications to those officers already in policing to recognise their existing skills.  However, it is essential that we do not create a police service where the only chance of becoming a police officer is if you can afford to educate yourself to degree level before joining.  Other organisations are moving away from insisting on degree qualifications so why are we moving towards it?

 

“There is a danger of marginalising and excluding good quality candidates from all communities, effectively limiting the pool of candidates available. The biggest risk is we end up with a service that doesn’t represent the community it serves because of unnecessary restrictions like this.”

 

Source: The Police Federation

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Hang on a minute! What is all this stuff about ‘engagement’? Everywhere I look these days membership organisations are talking about engagement as though it was the be all and end all of their existence. But why? And what do they mean by the term? Look up ‘engage’ in any shorter dictionary and – apart from a ‘promise to marry’ – to engage somebody means to attract or hold their attention of sympathy, or to cause them to participate. But that isn’t what the tech wizards appear to mean when they come knocking at your door with a ‘solution’ to your dwindling membership. What they have in mind seems much more superficial. Just clicking in some cases!

 

Now, if I click an online petition, that no more makes me an activist, than liking a post or a tweet makes me engaged with the author or their organisation. The truth is, there is no definition! We may have been bandying the word around since the mid-2000s, but in reality you can make engagement mean anything you like. It could be defined as consumers’ behaviour online, or the strategies brands use to attract attention, or the things you can count. Context is everything!

 

If you’re a writer looking for blog readers, or you’re an ecommerce site looking for shares, it will alter the type of engagement you’re looking for. If you want people to purchase, then it’s all about the first meeting and activity leading up to the sale. But if you’re a blogger, then engagement may be a comment or a share by an influencer.

 

When it comes to associations, I contend that engagement is the result of a member investing time and money with them in exchange for value. That value may me financial, practical, emotional, or a sense of belonging. The more resources they invest, the more engaged they are. And that happy state can’t be brought about by clicks alone!

 

Engagement is also about value. The value for the person doing the engaging as well as the value of that engagement for the association. It’s not the ‘output’ of a programme, but the strategies and actions that go into establishing relationships. It’s a discipline not a goal.

 

So, I reckon that any system that offers to analyse your engagement by counting clicks is leading you into a fool’s paradise. Vacuous statistics are just vanity metrics. Handy for keeping critics off your back, but essentially worthless when it comes to predicting outcomes or measuring success!

 

The twin goals of most associations are member acquisition and retention. When it comes to acquisition, the numbers that view your website, blog, or twitter account; share content from your publications; or even read your press coverage, are superficial. They’re not a signal that you have held attention or triggered participation. And transactional interactions, like buying a product, or paying for a course, are unreliable as an indicator of likely member retention. Attention gained through financial incentive tends to be transient!

 

It’s only when you put issues of empathy into the mix that you can really start to measure engagement; when participants align with your ethos, and the significance of the relationship outweighs the financial cost of membership! Indicators of that state of mind are a willingness to write or speak on your behalf; volunteer for a committee or task force; serve in a leadership role; achieve status; invest in sponsorship or similar. Of course, not every member can achieve this, but at least they should have the feeling that they could!

 

Healthy associations create more engagement opportunities in areas that create value for both organisation and member. Strategically, it’s also worthwhile for associations to plot the members likely progress from pre to post engagement, and consider what the first steps on the commitment escalator might be. As an efficient flow from low to high value engagement will tend to be healthier from both revenue and mission fulfilment perspectives.

Michael Hoare

©2017 M J Hoare

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Association News

Households are being hit with letting fees up to £800 when renting a home, with the average at just over £400, according to ARLA Propertymark (Association of Residential Letting Agents). The issue of letting agency fees has been highlighted by campaign group Generation Rent shortly before the close of a consultation on government proposals to ban letting fees for tenants.

 

Capital Economics was commissioned by ARLA to produce a report looking into the impact of the proposed letting agent fees ban on landlords, letting agents, households, the buy-to-let sector and the wider economy.  There are a number of estimates of the average fees charged by letting agents to tenants. However, lettingfees.co.uk which looks at fees quoted by 902 letting agents across the United Kingdom – and is the one based on the widest sample across the market – finds that for a simple contract for two tenants, average fees total £412.  Capital Economics calculate that the total revenue from fees charged to tenants is around £0.7 billion for letting agents in England and Wales annually. Based on those estimates for turnover in the residential lettings sector, this means that around a fifth of turnover is at risk if a ban on all letting agent fees is drawn into law.

 

Other key findings are: • Total turnover in the residential lettings sector in England and Wales is around £4 billion and it employs around 58,000 workers • Residential lettings activity is localised with at least 2,000 jobs supported in each region • The introduction of a ban on letting agent fees charged to tenants would be the third hit to buy-to-let activity in recent years, which exacerbates downside risks to the private rented sector, wider property market and economy as a whole • Fees charged for letting activities reflect real work to be undertaken and therefore, if the ban on fees goes ahead, the costs will need to be recovered • On a comparable basis, fees for letting a property are lower than buying a house in the United Kingdom, while they are also lower than in some other major economies • Landlords are likely to pass on higher agents’ fees to tenants in the form of higher rent. In the most plausible outcome, letting agents lose £0.2 billion in turnover, landlords lose £0.3 billion in income and tenants pay an increased rent of £103 per annum • The impact on letting agents is likely to result in a loss of jobs to the tune of 4,000 workers • Although renters will benefit from a reduction in up-front fees, most of this will be passed back to them through increased rents; those tenants who move more frequently will enjoy a saving on overall costs but those who do so less frequently (which are likely to be lower income families) will see a loss.

 

Letting the Market Down? Full report:    http://www.arla.co.uk/media/1045728/letting-the-market-down-assessing-the-economic-impacts-of-the-proposed-ban-on-letting-agents-fees.pdf

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Association News

Platform still dominates, but specialist systems are fighting back

 

A narrative has emerged, which sees specific and genuine investment and a revitalisation in the specialist NFP CRM market. This is happening alongside recognition of some of the real challenges faced by non-profits seeking to implement platform solutions. Those challenges include a better understanding of the scale of investment required to enable projects to succeed, which may comprise significant financial sums, time and knowledge input.

Of course, it’s probably beyond coincidence that these two are happening at the same time. The specialist NFP CRM providers will undoubtedly have understood this challenge before most of the sector. Maybe that’s what’s inspired their revitalisation…

Approaches to the platform challenge have varied so much in terms of how these specialist solutions have responded and adapted. Therefore, we will be addressing several individual CRM specialists’ approaches, for example thankQ, Oomi, Millertech and Protech. Additionally, in the series, we’ll be reviewing why specialist NFP CRM systems remain a viable and strong alternative to platform solutions and consider how ASI are seeking to address this challenge by evolving their IMIS CRM into an ‘Engagement Management System’.

 

Read the full article and access the Specialist CRM series so far here

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Association News

The afternoon presentation with industry experts will provide vital insights and practical guidance for any NFP organisation involved in or planning a CRM implementation.

 

The benefits of this event are:

  • Insight into the behaviours in your own organisation that influence CRM success or failure
  • Explore the common pitfalls of CRM projects – and how to avoid them
  • Insight into what other NFPs are selecting, what they are spending and the relationship to a successful outcome

 

Key areas covered in the report include:

  • Indicators that relate to project success or failure – from project preparation, through vendor selection and delivery
  • How to prepare for a successful project – and avoid the surprises later
  • Internal vs external resourcing – what has the best outcome?
  • Project budgets – what is the ‘going rate’ for projects
  • What types of systems are being selected in the current market?

 

See the programme and register for this free, relevant event

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