Author: Cecilia Sepp

Cecilia Sepp, CAE, brings over two decades of experience to the association management profession, having served as a staff member at professional societies, trade associations, and a non-profit dance organization. For 12 years, she consulted to a variety of professional and trade associations, focusing on strategy development and research.

She frequently speaks and writes on a variety of association management topics.

Cecilia received a B.A. in political science, with an adjunct in management, from Webster University in St. Louis,
MO. She became a Certified Association Executive (CAE) in June 2015.

Jun
25

WORKING WITH YOUR CONSULTANT TO GET THE BEST RESULTS

If you’ve never worked with a consultant before, or rarely worked with one, you may be wondering why you might want to do so when you may have the ability to complete a project on your own. The reason you would work with a consultant comes down to the best use of your resources, which are […]

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Jan
22

A Pioneer of the Virtual Frontier

For some people, remote or fully virtual work is a shock to the system.They need the separation of going from home to office and have difficulty adapting to a completely different method of working which relies on self-discipline and self-management. Not everyone is cut out to be alone most of the time, and let’s face […]

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Oct
23

5 Basic Rules for Member Service

There are a few basic rules of member service that all associations should keep in mind. No matter the size of your budget or staff, what counts is how your members feel at the end of an interaction with the organization. All member interactions must focus on a positive experience that shows active listening (or active […]

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Jan
08

Winning The Work at Home Game

During your commute, while you are sitting in traffic or wondering if public transportation will ever get you to the office, you start daydreaming about working at home. You think to yourself, “Oh, it would be so great. No commute and look at all that time I’d save. And it would be SO much less stressful. I […]

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Apr
17

Membership dues should get you more than another reason to spend money

For a number of years, I’ve heard conversations about “changing membership models.” This is a difficult discussion to have across individual membership societies and trade associations because who joins (individual v. company) in each model dictates the types of membership categories and/or access provided. We all know the “reason for being” for a professional society v. […]

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Jan
30

Make no mistake: An association is still a business

Calvin Coolidge, 30th president of the United States, famously said, “The business of America is business.” I like to paraphrase this quote to “the business of associations is business” because that is in fact what we are. Non-profit or not-for-profit corporations are indeed corporations; all the 501c statuses are incorporation statuses and, thus, businesses. This […]

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Jul
27

Technology: Disruption or path to freedom?

Disruption. It’s a buzz word that is widely circulating, and I think people are misusing it, and even worse, overreacting to it. Panic is ensuing over it when what we’re really identifying is the latter stage of a trend that started years ago. What some call disruption, I call the logical result of actions or events. […]

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