Associations Embracing AI

Insights from ASAE MMC+Tech Conference

Last week's ASAE MMC+Tech conference offered some pleasant surprises about trade and member associations' adoption of AI. Rather than lagging behind the corporate sector, I thought associations were on par with their corporate colleagues in embracing individual tools and weighing larger AI solutions for business functions.

I attended for one day and attended the AI panels throughout the day. In networking conversations, many people shared that they are entertaining potential uses, both individually and for their larger teams and associations. Real use cases were discussed and shown.

• Using ML, ABA discovered members leave in their fourth year or stay for decades. With this crucial insight, they built a new outreach program to strengthen engagement during the fourth year.

• AIIM is considering a private LLM implementation to serve members with an association-specific answer engine.

• Several marketing communications executives shared that they were using AI to assist in versioning content, summarizing data, and ideating new content. 

• Exhibits and trade shows were a primary area of focus, from optimizing schedules and improving attendee experience to strengthening lead capture and enhancing content experiences.

Many attendees were critical of LLMs' ability to create new content on demand. They found that, at best, such content was a good drafting or ideation tool but lacked the chops to compete with their professional writers. I have found the same in my personal use and hear similar sentiments from many writers who use AI to support and hasten their writing efforts.

Implications

By their very nature, associations have domain knowledge—data, if you will—about their industries that no one else has. And instead of the usual lag of years, they appear to be as innovative as or almost as innovative as their industry peers. It makes sense that they would be leaders in adopting AI to serve members.

For generative AI, they have the ultimate training information and can provide specialized context for any AI solution. More traditional AI tools like ML have natural applications for analyzing unique sets to provide insights and, yes, optimize trade shows. 

ASAE showed that initial forays with generative AI tools were for writing and content creation. That matches a recent study by MCI Group that showed top initial use cases at associations. They are:

1. Content Creation

2. Marketing

3. Meeting Minutes

4. Customer Service

5. Member Management

6. Financial Management

7. All of the above

The study also showed a few areas for improvement, too. The report said, "...82% of survey respondents have either not yet integrated AI into their operations or have done so only in a very minor capacity. 77% of respondents have not begun or have barely started using AI to enhance member customization."

Truth be known, while private sector businesses talk a good game, I don't see their adoption curve being that much ahead of their association organizations. Given the conversations I heard at ASAE, while they might still need to adopt operational or member-based AI, associations are moving through the adoption process, weighing the potential merits of use cases.

It's really just a matter of time now—six months for the most aggressive organizations and two or three years for most associations.

Images created on Midjourney.