‘Rants and Kudos’ Archives

How NOT to apologize…

We all make mistakes in our work. As the old saying goes, it's not the mistakes you make, it's how you deal with them after the fact that matters. Last week, I received an email from Carefirst BlueCross BlueShield (my health insurance provider) telling me that my insurance policy had been ...

Are you (really) thanking your donors?

At the end of this past year I made donations to four charitable organizations. While the donations were not the size of "name a building after me" donations, they were much larger than $20. Three of the donations were made online via the org's website; the fourth was delivered in person. With ...

Pet Peeve of the Day

Opt outs that require you to enter the email address at which I no longer want to receive your emails. If YOU sent me the email, why can't your opt-out system detect WHICH email you sent the email to, and the opt me out automatically? I've got at least four email addresses. When I click ...

Kudos to ASAE

I've served as a volunteer for ASAE for many, many years. (My first volunteer effort was writing an article for their print(!) membership section newsletter back in 1994.) Over the years I've written many articles, spoken dozens if not hundreds of times, and served on three separate committees, ...

How Training Should be Done

I've written many times about the importance of training. (I've even done a teleseminar on it!) And far too often, training from AMS vendors ranges from mediocre to really bad. So I was pleased to have the opportunity to sit through some very good AMS training from Aptify this week, while working ...

Attention vendors! Check your work! – A lesson we can all learn

I'm conducting a search for a new AMS on behalf of one of my clients. We requested responses, including pricing, from five vendors. Of the five vendors responses, THREE of them had mathematical errors in their proposals. Ironically, the only area of the entire proposal that I can judge for absolute ...

I’ve said it before, but it bears repeating…

Working in a homegrown system is malpractice. (Click here to read why.) I continue to marvel at the number of associations I encounter that are still using homegrown software (or worse yet, Excel spreadsheets) to manage all of their association's data. There is a large number of association ...

Trust is EVERYTHING

I was reminded of this again recently while shopping for a new car. Working with a local car dealer, I had narrowed my choice down to the same model of car with two different color schemes. He didn't have the cars in stock but said he could get them. A week later, he emailed me and said he had both ...

ASAE Annual Re-Cap

I just returned from the ASAE Annual Meeting in St. Louis, and wanted to share some quick thoughts on the event. The opening reception was held under the Arch, and it was great. But MAN, we could have used some air conditioning! It was hot and HUMID! The opening general session featured some ...

Success is measured by….?

According to this poster, which hangs in my childrens' school (and I've seen it in other schools, too), success is measured by effort. But nothing could be further from the truth. Success is measured by clearly measurable objectives. How does one measure "effort"?  Imagine telling your ...