YES - There IS a Membership Gene!

I read Tony Rosell's post Membership Marketing Blog: Is There a Membership Gene? and he shares several great quotes about membership.  I just wanted to provide a couple more and to provide a bit more information about associations and nonprofits.

Another quote from Alexis deToqueville in Democracy in America, 1835:

"Americans of all ages, conditions, and dispositions constantly form associations....not only commercial and manufacturing companies, but associations for 1000 others kinds...religious, serious, futile, general or restricted, enormous or diminutive...they use them to found seminaries, build inns, construct churches..."

President Herbert Hoover, considered the father of the modern trade association movement, said this in a 1927 report to the Department of Commerce:

"In the field of scientific and economic research, in statistics, in simplification and standardization of commodities, in the promotion of arbitration in commercial disputes, in development of foreign trade, and in scores of other directions, trade associations have made a valuable contribution to our economic process."

President Theodore Roosevelt in 1908:

"Every man owes a part of his time and money to the business or industry in which he is engaged.  No man has a moral right to withhold his support from an organization that is striving to improve conditions within his sphere."

A bit more information worth considering:

• At the turn of the 20th century, there were only 100 national and regional associations in the US*;
• By 1920 the Commerce Department identified about 2,000 associations*;
• According to ASAE's website, in 2004, there were an estimated 86,054 trade and professional associations. These organizations include local, state, regional, national and international associations. A number of these are independently incorporated chapters or allied organizations of larger associations. Add to that an estimated 1,010,365 philanthropic or charitable organizations and you begin to get an idea of the scope of the non-profit community nationwide.
•  A study by Johns Hopkins University found that nonprofit organizations are a $1.1 trillion industry worldwide, employing more than 19 million full-time personnel.*

In America, 9 out of 10 belong to at least 1 association, with 4 out of 10 belonging to 4 or more associations.*  YES, I definitely believe the membership gene is in us!

*Information from Robert C. Harris, CAE, Tallahassee, Florida.