I thought that I would start a series – in hopes that others would contribute – on success stories. What are you doing, that’s working for your organization, in terms of tech? I’ll contribute a couple over the coming weeks, but hope that you will do so as well. I encourage you to add comments at the bottom, but also to learn how to become a contributor at http://associationtech.posterous.com/pages/how-to-contribute-1

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What is it?

Begun on January 1, 2010, AEA365 Tip-a-Day Alerts is a program from the American Evaluation Association (AEA) that delivers daily content showcasing Tips, Tricks, Resources, and Lessons Learned by and for our members. Built on a blogging platform (wordpress), it may be accessed on the aea365 websitehttp://aea365.org/blog/, and subscribed to via email or RSS. Every day, aea365 has a new post either from one of our members or from a staff person (as Executive Director, I post each Saturday). It is available to the public, not only to members.

Why bother?

AEA365 has allowed us to pursue multiple goals simultaneously:

1. AEA365 allows great member-to-member sharing of expertise, ideas, resources, and lessons learned and has created a rich archive of valuable content.
2. AEA364 is a platform that engages a variety of members, valuing in particular those who are ‘on the ground’ making things happen
3. AEA365 promotes our association and its products and services. Our members regularly refer to association training, reading, or programs and each post has a footer noting its association sponsorship and linking back to AEA.
4. AEA365 provides a platform for collaboration with other groups – we’ve just begun outreach to related associations to encourage their contribution.

What’s the outcome?

While still in the beginning stages, with six months under our belt, we have:

• Exceeded our goal of 500 subscribers in the first year (we have approximately 750 now and gain an average of 2-3 a day)
• Engaged over 150 different contributors to date, including many who had not otherwise been active in the association
• Served as one piece of a broader effort to reframe AEA as an association that engages its members throughout the year (literally 365 days), rather than only at conference time

Any lessons learned?

Wow, we’ve had a lot!

1. We started with an intern – an advanced graduate student in our association’s field – who fostered the blog for the first six months. He worked directly with a staff lead and his invaluable assistance and persistence got us off the ground. We’re now working to transition to a volunteer group of curators, but discovering that it still requires a staff person to ensure that there is regular content and do some of the outreach and nurturing.
2. We’ve had staff or a few volunteer leaders to all of the posting – individual contributors need not post, just send along content in a word processing document which has gotten over contributors tech fears (I don’t know how to post!).
3. The word ‘blog’ scared off many of our members! Originally framed as the aea365 blog, we’ve moved to using “Tip-a-Day Alerts” and have had more positive response when soliciting content.
4. When soliciting content, the more personal the outreach the better – blanket invitations just don’t work.
5. Approximately 75% of the invitations from the Executive Director ultimately result in blog posts, while about 50% of those from volunteers do (although we’re increasing this through more personalized outreach).
6. Of those who confirm that they will make a contribution by a certain date, only 50% will meet the deadline and ultimately only 80% will contribute – flexibility is the watchword here.
7. Don’t commit to specific dates or give the impression that someone can post on August 15 because they will send their content on August 14 at midnight (if they make the deadline at all) – in order to meet our commitment of 365 days of content, we encourage contributions and then queue them up usually 15-30 days in advance.
8. Give the people what they want – the way they want it. Making aea365 available through website, email, RSS, and links from our newsletter and weekly headlines has allowed our constituencies to connect with the content in ways that work for them (and greatly increased readership).

Want to learn more?

We created a guide for our volunteers that includes a statement of outcomes, measurement and tracking indicators (we’re the American EVALUATION Association after all), example invitation letters and posts, and a history of the functionality and add-ons that we’ve found useful and included on the wordpress site. The guide may be downloaded from our association’s public eLibrary here http://bit.ly/aea365_Guide.

Susan Kistler is the Executive Director of the American Evaluation Association and owner of Kistler Consulting and iMeasureMedia.