For associations that have used YourMembership (YM) for years, moving to iMIS may offer an opportunity to address longstanding frustrations and improve how technology supports members, staff, and organizational goals.
But before beginning an implementation, there’s an important question to answer:
Replace your current AMS but keep operations static?
Improve how your association operates?
At Starkweather Association Services, we’ve spent 20 years helping associations implement, maintain, troubleshoot, and improve their YourMembership systems.
During that time, we’ve heard a range of frustrations from YM users:
These are reasonable motivations for evaluating another AMS.
However, choosing a new platform based solely on frustrations with the old one can lead to a missed opportunity.
A new system may address specific technical limitations while leaving outdated business processes, unnecessary complexity, and organizational inefficiencies untouched.
Many associations have membership structures, dues rules, resource pages, and programs that haven’t been substantially reconsidered in a decade. The term for this is strategic decay.
Over those years, membership expectations may have changed. Programs that were once valuable may attract less interest. New opportunities for continuing education, member engagement, and non-dues revenue may have emerged.
Yet the AMS may still reflect decisions made years earlier.
When an association moves to a new system, it’s tempting to recreate existing workflows and configurations as closely as possible. After all, staff members understand those processes, and maintaining familiar structures may appear to simplify the transition.
But different AMS platforms don’t necessarily support business processes in identical ways.
Trying to reproduce every existing workflow can introduce unnecessary complexity and prevent the association from taking advantage of the new system’s capabilities.
Instead, the transition should begin with a review of what the association actually needs.
Before deciding how to configure iMIS, association leaders should examine their current operations and future goals.
For example: membership categories
An association may have created multiple membership categories over the years to accommodate specific exceptions or programs. Before transferring those categories into iMIS, it may be worth evaluating whether they are still necessary.
This is where strategic discovery becomes essential.
Strategic discovery starts with understanding what’s working, what’s not, and where the association wants to go. This may involve reviewing business processes, identifying gaps between current capabilities and future needs, and gathering input from the staff who use the system every day.
Consider five questions:
Identify specific membership, revenue, engagement, or operational goals.
Distinguish technology limitations from outdated processes or policies.
Identify programs, membership categories, or administrative activities that no longer provide sufficient value.
Evaluate potential improvements to member services, communications, education, and operations.
Identify decisions about business rules, data, and responsibilities that should be resolved before configuration begins.
These answers become the foundation for implementation decisions, helping determine what data should be migrated, which workflows should be redesigned, and how iMIS should be configured to support the association’s goals.
Addressing these questions early can also help associations avoid carrying unnecessary data, outdated rules, and inefficient processes into their new system.
An AMS implementation requires significant organizational resources.
It’s worth investing time upfront to make sure those resources support the association’s future, rather than simply preserving its past.
At Starkweather, we combine decades of YourMembership experience with strategic discovery, business process analysis, and association technology consulting.
As an authorized iMIS consultant, Starkweather helps associations evaluate their existing environments, identify opportunities for improvement, and prepare for a transition aligned with their organizational goals.
Start with strategic discovery: understand what’s working, what’s not, and where the association wants to go. That can include reviewing business processes, identifying gaps between current capabilities and future needs, and gathering input from the staff who use the system every day. The answers guide what data to migrate, which workflows to redesign, and how to configure iMIS.
Strategic decay describes membership structures, dues rules, resource pages, and programs that haven’t been substantially reconsidered in a decade. Member expectations and opportunities change over time, but the AMS may still reflect decisions made years earlier.
Common reasons include needing functionality the current system doesn’t provide, a cumbersome interface, limiting group management capabilities, and bulk email tools that are difficult to use. Reporting is another concern, since YM’s reporting tools can be challenging for staff unfamiliar with Boolean query logic.
Not necessarily. Different AMS platforms don’t support business processes in identical ways, and reproducing every existing workflow can add unnecessary complexity and keep you from using the new system’s capabilities. Review what your association actually needs first.
