Perhaps not. Still, we worry more about associations that don't serve their members' needs. That's why we like dues. The more an association depends on them, the better we feel about two issues that ought to be of critical importance to members: accountability and control.
"Why do trade associations hate dues?" asks Matt Coffey, president of NTMA. "Because it's so hard to raise money that way. You have to justify yourselves every time you go out there."
So far that has not been a problem for Coffey. He came to NTMA in 1985 from the National Association of Counties and in 1989 raised dues by 12%. Since then NTMA's 60-member board of trustees has approved a string of 3% annual increases. Dues are levied on a sliding scale based on the number a company employs. Tamasi, who runs an average-size shop with about 20 machinists on his payroll, pays $1,219 a year. That's steep by association standards. But "if the member isn't willing to pay for your services," says Coffey, "doesn't that send you a message?"
Not that NTMA ignores nondues income. It publishes books and training manuals, it has its own magazine with national advertising, and it aggressively pursues government grants for special projects. But unlike other trade associations we're aware of, NTMA says such moneys shall never exceed 50% of its total income. "Our members understand the control issue," says Coffey, "and control means you're a 51% owner."
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Benefits
You hear a lot of talk about "mutual aid" and "giving back to the industry," some of it heartfelt. But typically, that's not what motivates people to join their trade association. "To paraphrase Mr. Kennedy," says Lionel Diaz, senior vice-president of the Manufacturers' Agents National Association (MANA) -- who started out as a member -- "I joined to see what MANA could do for me."
Often there are group discounts on travel, on long-distance telephone calls, on all kinds of insurance. In some industries those discounts are crucial. But while NTMA sponsors several insurance plans, they're not especially big selling points. NTMA's health plan, for example, is strictly last resort; most shops find they can do better on their own. So, Coffey asks, "what is it we contribute to the growth or success of these companies? The only thing we contribute, the only value we can add, is as a center of knowledge."
Last year NTMA fielded more than 16,000 queries from members who called 1-800-248-NTMA. Staff experts at NTMA headquarters, in Fort Washington, Md., just outside the Beltway, handle inquiries on technical and marketing matters. They refer questions on taxes and labor to outside counsel on NTMA's retainer, whose services are available free to members. The last time Bill Turley, president of the Bechdon Co., in Upper Marlboro, Md., revised his employee handbook, he sent it to Alan Berger, NTMA's labor lawyer, in St. Louis. It came back with extensive notations. "I got a first-class labor lawyer for a very low price," Turley says.
Like many associations, NTMA publishes a buying guide, which lists all members and goes out to potential customers. Its annual industry surveys -- one on wages and fringe benefits, the other on operating costs and executive compensation -- help members position themselves in relation to their peers. Sixty-five percent of NTMA's 3,000 members rate the surveys as the benefit they value most. Bruce Braker, head of the Tooling and Manufacturing Association, a Chicago association with ties to NTMA, finds that the operating-costs survey alone justifies membership.
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Education And Training
Almost all trade associations offer their members opportunities to improve their management skills. If NTMA members tend to take the offer more seriously, it may have to do with the nature of their industry.
There are roughly 12,000 tooling and machining enterprises in the United States, a number that has remained remarkably stable since the industry exploded during and shortly after World War II. Most are small family-owned businesses -- with 25 employees, maybe $6 million in sales. Half are precision machine shops, like Tamasi's; the other half are toolmakers. Tools, in this case, are not hammers and saws but made-to-order components that manufacturers buy to make almost anything that's mass-produced: a fender on a car, a cap on a pen, a valve in an engine, even the peens on hammers and the blades on saws.
Like AccuRounds, many businesses in the industry were started by skilled tradesmen. "A journeyman toolmaker is trained to do lots of very important things," Coffey points out. "But the thing he is not trained to do is to run a business." A guy like that might want to attend a management seminar or buy a video on a topic that interests him. Both of those are available from NTMA, but he can learn a lot just from reading NTMA's Business Management Advisories. Free to members, it's an anthology of more than 100 easy-to-read articles, including "Disciplinary Communications with Employees," "When, Where and How to Use Manufacturers' Representatives," and "Business Succession Planning."
Basic stuff. Over time, however, as founding chief executives have passed the reins to their college-educated sons and daughters, and downsizing manufacturers have begun making more complex demands of their suppliers, articles like "Activity-Based Costing," "Implementing SPC," and "Preparing for Your Quality Audit" have found their way into Business Management Advisories.
Local NTMA chapters operate 13 regional training centers -- some of them freestanding facilities, others run jointly with local community colleges -- to train the next generation of toolmakers and machinists. NTMA writes the curricula, publishes the textbooks, and hires the teachers.
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Lobbying
It's not for nothing that so many trade associations -- including NTMA -- make Washington and its environs their home. Trade associations lobby; it's what they're known for.
Actually, though, only 43% do it, according to a report by the Hudson Institute, in Washington, D.C., another think tank. And the process consumes, on average, a bare 6% of expenditures, twice that if you add in so-called public information. Still, when trade-association executives get together at conventions of their American Society of Association Executives (ASAE), it's the big guns like the American Road and Transportation Builders Association that keep the others enthralled with tales of billions diverted from federal coffers into the pockets of their members.
We do wonder, sometimes, whether lobbying is a smart allocation of scarce resources. We're thinking of the point Reunion Time's Fiore made earlier. Dynamic companies don't wait around for the tide to rise in their industry. They usually find a way to prosper no matter what. And the Kenan Institute's Bremer cautions that "the government these days has fewer goodies to give away. So if you're in the business of getting goodies, that's not necessarily a good business to be in."
