3 easy ways to support professional growth for your association’s members

Supporting your member’s professional growth can be a tall order, especially when you have a small staff. Here’s how the right technology and solutions can help.   

An association industry study from Community Brands shows that certifications/credentials, job opportunities, training, and help with career advancement are among the most important member benefits. So, if you’re looking for ways to stay relevant with your association’s members, it’s important to support their professional growth.

Of course, delivering the benefits that help members grow their careers can be a big challenge for associations with small staffs. But with the right technology and solutions, it can be simple.   

For example, YourMembership association management software (AMS) by Community Brands is built for small associations. It includes functionality, and also integrates easily with other Community Brands solutions, that makes it easy to do things like:

• Offer continuing education opportunities
• Track and award credits, certifications, and credentials
• Offer a job board and career development resources 

Here are three ways the right technology and solutions can make it easier for your association to help your members grow professionally: 

1. Streamlining education, certifications, and credentialing. 

Offering learning content is a great way to help your members move forward in their career journeys. Members look to your organization for things like: 

• Completing trainings for professional growth 
• Fulfilling industry continuing education requirements 
• Earning certifications and credentials to advance their careers 

With YourMembership AMS, you can easily:  

• Award continuing education credits to event attendees. If you offer continuing education credit opportunities at your association’s events, you can track who attended each event and session, and then automatically award the appropriate number of credits to each attendee. To make things easier on your members and staff, your members can log in to a member portal to view their continuing education credits and certifications. Plus, you can set up YourMembership to automatically send emails when members have earned credits.
• Manage and deliver online learning content. You can integrate YourMembership AMS with Freestone learning management system (LMS) by Community Brands to help you easily organize learning content and deliver a modern and convenient online continuing education experience. 

2. Offering a robust online career center.

A comprehensive online career center helps members grow professionally in multiple ways. It can:

• Connect members with job opportunities through an online job board. 
• Give job seekers the resources they need to land their next jobs, including help with résumé building, interviewing, and negotiating. 
• Help members understand the best career paths for their goals and connect with coaches and mentors who can provide ongoing support.  

YM Careers by Community Brands integrates with YourMembership AMS, providing job board software to power your online job board. Each job board includes Career Planning Portal, a career advancement hub that offers a complete set of career resources.

TIP: With YM Careers, you pay no up-front costs: YM Careers doesn’t start making money until you do. And if you don’t have staff available to manage job board sales and marketing, YM Careers can help you showcase your job board to employers and job seekers.
 

2. Hosting career fairs.

Offering a career fair is a great way to help your members advance their careers. It provides a meeting space for your members and industry employers to connect.  

For example, your annual conference or regional meetings can be the perfect opportunity for your members to connect with leading industry employers who have jobs to offer. As a bonus, this type of event can be a new source of revenue for your organization.

In addition to offering job board software, the YM Careers event team can fully manage a career fair for your organization. The team can tailor a career fair to fit your needs, including thought leadership on key hiring trends, résumé and job search guidance, onsite branding and brochures, and facilitation of meetings between job seekers and industry employers.
 

Learn more. 

Find out more about how YourMembership can help you deliver the benefits and value your members seek: Explore YourMembership. 

By Kyela Bishop, YourMembership Marketing Coordinator, Community Brands