Debate
Should associations
partner with organisers?
EN attended the Associations World Congress
in Gothenburg, Sweden last month. We asked a
selection of association event profs: what are the
benefits and disadvantages of organising your
association events internally, versus getting help
from an external agency?
Rodney Cox,
events director,
International Gas
Union
Focusing on the revenue side,
if your association strategically
wants to expand its exhibition
to engage with the broadest
group of industry stakeholders
(for example outside your
membership base) then a
professional organiser may drive
this process better, and you can
probably move some commercial
risk to them. But you may need
to broaden your visitor base
too, such as non-delegate trade
visitors.
If your objectives require
that your exhibitor universe is
limited, such as by association
policy, membership, a sponsor
benefit only, or a size and style
of venue factor, then you will
probably already have those
company relationships inside
your association.
Jose Zuniga,
president/CEO,
International
Association of
Providers of AIDS Care Aslaug Skuladottir,
senior advisor,
Norwegian
Physiotherapist
Association
The benefit of organising our
medical education conferences
internally is the ability to directly
and continuously link our in-
house meeting planner expertise
with subject matter expertise.
The disadvantage is that there
are not enough hours in the day
for our small team of meeting
planners, which we cannot
expand because granters limit
logistics fees in the grant support
they provide for educational
conferences. Our association has been getting
help from an external agency
in various degrees for our
association events. There are
some competences for organising
big events that are not relevant
for the association to have in-
house, since we don’t organise
annual events.
My experience is that we can
buy help with some services,
but we have to have internal
resources (time and expertise to
order) to follow-up the external
agency. We have to stay in charge
from planning to evaluation of
the event.
Brian Campbell,
community manager,
Ex Ordo
From our perspective being
in the tech industry, we work
with external agencies and
associations regularly. One
thing we experience is that when
you’re organising large events,
knowledge is power and external
agencies certainly bring that to
the table.
Whether it is the event social
media, the destination or the
tech you should be using,
external agencies are experts.
This does depend on the size of
your event, if you’re organising a
smaller event with a lower budget
using an external agency may be
outside of your budget.
May — 13