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services

Our focus is on you

AMPED continually applies creative solutions
and new principles to help our associations grow.

Services

Administration/Headquarters

AMPED will serve as your new association headquarters. With the support of our team and systems, your members won’t even notice the transition or that we work with any other groups — they’ll feel like our only client! All of your primary office needs are taken care of by professional, customer service-oriented staff. Our three office locations are equipped with high-tech meeting spaces and “hotel offices,” allowing for cross-team collaborations and creative workspaces for visiting team members. We place a high value on technology and have a VoIP phone system, cloud email service and cloud file storage, allowing us to access our work from anywhere in the world and provide top-notch results regardless of location.

Board/Governance/Committees

Volunteer leaders are critical agents in the success of any association, and we position them to focus on strategy, connection with stakeholders and being the voice of the profession. At AMPED, we firmly believe in the need to engage volunteers at a strategic level — not just having monthly phone calls for the sake of having monthly phone calls. We respect volunteer time and ensure that it is used positively to impact your organization.

Our staff are true partners with our boards, working behind the scenes to keep things moving strategically and efficiently, offering resources and ideas from a best practices in association management perspective. We also bring innovative ideas to promote “bench strength” and recruit new leaders, emphasizing an inclusive and collaborative environment.

Of course, we also cover the basics like attending meetings, taking minutes, preparing agendas and materials and arranging the logistics for both in-person and teleconference/video meetings.

Certification and Accreditation

Many of our clients have certification and/or accreditation programs that we have helped launch from scratch and continue to manage today. Holding many individual certifications and major company accreditation ourselves, we are familiar with a variety of different program and management styles.

Financials

Fiduciary oversight of the association finances is a key role of any governing body and AMPED facilitates that oversight by providing timely, monthly financial reports, budgeting expertise and long-range forecasting of the budget and cash flow. We are successful in helping associations achieve their goals and exceed financial benchmarks, helping Boards envision at least three years into the future. Our finance manager works closely with your treasurer by providing a very detailed, monthly “treasurer’s packet” that includes the balance sheet, P&L, general ledger, detail on specific accounts and online bank account access to ensure financial transparency. Our financial operations become even more efficient by utilizing services like remote check deposits and Bill.com.

Interim Leadership Management/Transition Executive Services

The current workforce climate is affecting all industries and associations: baby boomers are retiring. Before jumping into hiring your next full-time Executive Director, we encourage associations to take a step back and evaluate their current systems, procedures, etc to determine what their exact needs are for a future executive and ensure the organization is a desirable group to lead. Our three-pronged approach to this includes an organizational inventory to review processes, procedures, organizational documents, systems, technology, etc. We also use industry benchmarking data to compare your organization to others in similar size to review spending in various areas, including salaries. Lastly, we do a strategic assessment to evaluate current or future strategic directions of the organization. We help keep things moving and improve or build upon the existing strengths of the organization until you are  ready to hire a new executive.

Marketing, PR, Communication and Web

Our marketing team is prepared to meet all of your publication, communication and web needs. We understand that communications are an immediate reflection of the association and ensure that they are distributed in a timely and professional manner with brand consistency.

Our creative team and the communications we distribute would be integral to the success of your events, products, services and initiatives. AMPED will provide expert creative services and pay close attention to detail. Execution will include a strong presence on social media, targeted eblasts, printed collateral and ongoing management of web content. We will design and manage marketing campaigns to enhance them all. For social media, in particular, AMPED has a track record of increased engagement, utilizing graphics and video for higher impact. We invite you to see the Facebook pages of Construction Specifications Institute, the Society of Wetland Scientists and the Society for Research on Adolescence as examples.

We are familiar with a variety of content management systems (CMS) like Drupal, Joomla, Square Space, Wix and Word Press and work closely with trusted associates in the areas of web development and IT to ensure seamless web hosting and secure networking for all of your needs.

Membership

We don’t see ourselves as extensions of our association partners. We are our association partners; your members would be our members and we guarantee they will feel that sincerity through their regular interactions with the office. We utilize a high-touch, disciplined approach to membership recruitment and retention and understand that members need to be regularly reminded of benefits to create a lasting relationship and engagement with the organization. Not all members consume information in the same way, so we craft our renewal processes to include at least seven “touches,” including email, U.S. mail, social media and phone calls.

We develop onboarding documents for new members such as “how to use the website,” “how to use the directory,” etc., and promote more mobile-friendly, less corporate engagement. Our personal touch will shine through.

When it comes to databases, our tech-savvy and adaptable staff are experienced with a variety of association management systems (AMS) and are confident in our ability to be able to use your database to manage, communicate with and recruit members. Not happy with your database? We are experienced at managing the RFP process for these systems and have helped a variety of our clients migrate to new systems that better meet their needs.

Meeting Planning, Programming and Education

Our meetings team takes great pride in providing top-notch conference management from start to finish for our clients and are confident that we can exceed your event experience expectations. We leverage our relationships with national hotel and convention sales contacts to ensure smooth negotiations and cost-effective meetings. These relationships, combined with our innovative and exciting ideas, is what helps us make your event be what you always thought it could be. The logistics, from beginning to end, are all handled by our team.

The meetings team works closely with the marketing team (all in-house) to give our client meetings a branded look and feel, coordinating the design of all graphics, materials, mailings and websites.

In addition to in-person events, we have launched and manage webinar and podcast programs for a variety of clients. We understand that in-person events can be cost or location prohibitive to some members, and it is forward thinking to offer members education that they want, when they want it. Utilizing online learning or smaller, local meet-up format meetings also targets and builds memberships.

Public Policy

AMPED staff has strong experience developing and implementing policy programs that inform and support member interests, including policy committee support, monitoring proposed policies that are important to or affect members and leading fly-in events to highlight the work and interest of members.

Research

We recognize the role a strong research program can play in an organization’s long-term strategy. A research-based policy program enhances professions and informs guidelines and accreditation development. Our team has over two decades of research experience for both public and private agencies and has had experience utilizing research to strengthen an organization’s policy and advocacy efforts.

Sponsorship and Grant Funding

Our team consistently drives record-setting numbers in terms of sponsorship dollars. In fact, we recently raised $4MM for ACTRIMS’ triennial meeting that they co-host with ECTRIMS, their European counterpart. The Board set the goal for us to raise $2MM — through creative offerings, diversifying sponsors and looking at various funding sources within companies, we hit the $4MM mark, clearing most of that as profit for the meeting. We also have grant writing experts on staff who have secured both NIH and private grants to fund research and program development.

Strategic Planning

Now, more than ever, associations are turning to strategic planning to fine-tune their vision and determine the initiatives and member benefits that fulfill their mission. The pandemic has made such self-examinations even more urgent and AMPED has responded, preparing for and guiding organizations through more strategic planning sessions in 2020 than in any other year. Traditionally held face-to-face, we've excelled at bringing volunteer leaders together virtually and delivering creative and effective strategy sessions that ensure associations and their stakeholders focus resources on top priorities, driving organizations toward growth and success. Here's how we do it.

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