Frequently Asked Questions

If you hire association staff, the chief staff executive reports to the Board of Directors and is responsible for all staff. That doesn’t change if you hire AGM as your association management company. You will have a contract with AGM spelling out, to everyone’s satisfaction, issues of accountability, responsibilities, and roles and relationships. Such an agreement makes disappointments or surprises highly unlikely.

The short answer is “no”. Members shouldn’t even realize that the association does not have direct employees and a separate office. In fact, your association office phones will be answered in the name of your organization.

Unless you choose to reveal the arrangement, your members and the general public will believe they’re dealing with an in-house staff. Association leaders often fear that they will become lost within an association management company’s staff structure – that no one will be responsible for their needs. With AGM, there will always be at least three individuals who is intimately familiar with your association’s members, programs, and culture.

Because the relationship of an association management company to a client association is that of an independent contractor, the association is freed of employment responsibility and liability. Employee relations is an increasingly complex management responsibility. Hiring, firing, worker’s compensation, fringe benefits, avoiding discrimination in a host of protected areas, and employer liability are only some of the concerns employers face. AGM will relieve an association’s board of all of these concerns.

AGM also provides flexibility in staffing levels. AGM’s shared resources allow our clients to realize savings in computers and other office equipment, office space rental, insurance, and the host of other expenses that go into maintaining a business office.

AGM provides a consistent level of quality, accountability, and dependability that can be difficult to find in a strictly volunteer-run organization for reasons of leadership turnover alone. Add to that the convenience of having AGM handle your association’s research, staff hiring and training, planning, bookkeeping, public relations, marketing and publishing activities. This leaves more time for your volunteers to devote to the organization’s policies, membership, and strategic goals.

A management company that concentrates on profit over and against the needs of its clients/members will soon have no clients to manage. A management company doesn’t make money by concentrating on profits; AGM profits by concentrating on serving clients better than any other company could. If your organization doesn’t think it’s getting good value for the fees you pay, you hold the right to find a different management company at the end of the contract term.

Like lawyers and accountants, association managers tend to the affairs of each of their clients without disclosing confidential client information or co-mingling client funds. A staff Member is assigned as your association’s chief contact at AGM.

Financial statements are necessary, because they provide AGM with information about the extent and breadth of the association’s activities, giving us a truer picture of the association. A current financial statement reveals the budgetary priorities of the association and helps identify projects and activities that consume staff time.