One Thing Your Partnerships Are Missing and How EDUCAUSE Found It (S2:E6)

John Bacon: We’re talking about all these programs and all these things that we’re trying to do, these tools that we’re trying to use, and we’re never talking about the partners that provide that to the space. We trust them with their money, but we can’t trust them with their expertise?

Carolyn Shomali: I’m Carolyn Shomali, host of the Association RevUP podcast, presented by the Professionals for Association Revenue. But more importantly? That was ASAE’s John Bacon, serving up that podcast mic drop.

“We trust them with their money, but we can’t trust them with their expertise.”

Today’s episode is a gut check – because John raises a valuable point. Associations are trending away from one-off sponsorships and more towards year-round partnerships. From increased revenue to ease of transactions, partnerships can be win-win for everyone.

But the real value? That comes from actually moving the needle in your industry. And while partners can help do that with the revenue they generate, they can do it so much more with the expertise they supply. If we let them.

We’ll hear from one association who is doing what John is advocating for with a one-day event that invites partners into the conversation.

Leah Lang: Let’s just get on there and let’s everybody get in the same room. Let’s hash it out. Let’s talk about our problems and figure out what to do going forward.

That was Leah Lang, SR DIRECTOR FOR PARTNERSHIPS AND CORPORATE ENGAGEMENT at EDUCAUSE, an association dedicated to advancing higher ed through technology. Their new partner program doubled in-size in just one year.

But first, we’re going inside PAR’s RevUP Summit where John and other association leaders talk candidly not just about the value of partners’ dollars, but of their expertise.

Whether you already have a partnership program, or you are considering one, today’s episode focuses on potentially the biggest value of the program: the partners themselves.

Let’s get started.

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With more than 200 association executives and industry providers gathered in the room at PAR’s annual RevUP Summit, Robb Lee – PAR Leadership Advisory Board member – prompted the onstage presenters and the audience in the room with a question:

Robb Lee: So here’s where I want to go, and that is, there are Association execs, there are sponsors and partners in this room, and other service providers. Here’s the question. The question is simply, how is it that from the organization’s perspective, how can you engage sponsors, partners, advertisers, in this journey to help push an organization forward that, candidly, sometimes might be a little resistant for some of the things that we’re talking about.

Shomali: How can you engage sponsors, partners, and advertisers in the journey to help push your organization forward?

Simply asking the question shows your associations sees the value of collaboration. Earlier we heard part of how ASAE’s VP Of Enterprise Sales, John Bacon, answered that question. John spent 15-years working with Naylor Association Solutions prior to joining the ASAE team…that experience shaped his perspective.

Bacon: I think sometimes, coming from that background, from the tech solution provider side, it was nice to bring a different way of looking at it, going over to the association side. And I think, you know, why can’t we make our partners a part of the solution? we’re talking about all these programs and all these things that we’re trying to do, these tools that we’re trying to use, and we’re never talking about the partners that provide that to the space. We trust them with their money, but we can’t trust them with their expertise.

Shomali: Partners aren’t just an important part of our missions because they can help to fund them, but because their industry expertise can help us reach them. Still, many providers feel they are adjacent to the conversations instead of being part of them…that’s what longtime association industry provider Michelle Brien shared during the conversation.

Michelle Brien: It was 2020 when I first felt a part of the association community, and I think it’s because that was the opportunity where associations had to move online, and so many associations needed more content, and were a little bit more willing to open the door to sponsors who were able to participate and offer an educational perspective and not Come in and not be selling. And it was when that happened, and I started participating in more conferences and speaking at more conferences and engaging with more associations in different groups, in that way, that I better understood what the associations needed from us and how to share our perspective and our expertise in a way that was helpful. And so I think that that is just, you know, it’s not just about associations getting into the heads of sponsors. It’s about associations opening the door to let us in as well, so that we can understand your needs and then better understand how we can work with you to help achieve them together.

Shomali: In a moment, we’ll hear how one association is doing that…but first, a quick note that the insights you just heard came from PAR’s RevUP Summit, made possible by our stellar production company VPC Incorporated. The production value of your event matters. If you’re an association or a meeting planner, VPC is the type of company you want to work with onsite…a team of skilled audio and visual professionals who are accustomed to producing events much larger than ours in the sports and entertainment industry. Check the show notes for more information.

Michelle has the second soundbite worthy of a reair…

Brien: it’s not just about associations getting into the heads of sponsors. It’s about associations opening the door to let us in as well, so that we can understand your needs and then better understand how we can work with you to help achieve them together.

Shomali: The idea of bringing partners into the conversation…like truly into the conversation…was the motivator of the Partner Summit, a one-day event for EDUCAUSE…more on that in a moment, but first some background on how they got there.

EDUCAUSE is an association committed to advancing higher education through IT. Higher ed institutions, technology companies and peer associations make up the EDUCAUSE membership and more than 7,000 people attend their annual conference each year. That’s where they offered the traditional gold, silver, bronze packages – but according to Leah Lang, SR DIRECTOR FOR PARTNERSHIPS AND CORPORATE ENGAGEMENT, those offerings were losing value…and interest.

Leah Lang: We had the gold, silver, bronze, tiered situation where you if you spent enough money, you were recognized at a different level. And so you’d go to our conference, and you’d see that a certain company was a platinum supporter of Educause, and it wasn’t quite clear what the company got out of that or what, and it didn’t really mean anything specific to the membership.

Shomali: EDUCAUSE refocused, and set a strategy: to bring higher ed and industry together to evolve the technology market. Traditional sponsorship no longer fit into that strategy – but a partnership program did.

Leah Lang: So we thought, we need a different strategy beyond. Just you spend a certain amount of money, you get recognized. But we actually need these companies to engage with our membership and to make some significant changes to help progress, higher education. So our sponsorship program now focuses  on these companies participating with us all throughout the year so that our community can really get to know them and what they’re all about, and trust them as technology providers, trusted leaders in our community. And we come up with some really interesting projects that we work with on with each partner, and those projects are focused on addressing challenges that higher education has brought to us example that always comes to mind for me is one of our major partners. Aws wanted to help higher education think differently about their AI readiness. They wanted to help them prepare for what’s to come with AI. And so we worked together with community members and aws experts to come up with a readiness assessment for higher education, and that’s been really successful for us.

Shomali: EDUCAUSE became the conduit between the partner’s expertise and a gap in higher education. The expertise of AWS led to real value for the higher ed community.

But the real uniqueness of EDUCAUSE’s partnership program is not what their partners are doing in isolation, but what they are doing together. Last year they unveiled the Partner Summit – a 1-day conference event for nearly 100 people. It included partners from the industry, higher education leaders, as well as representatives from their peer associations.

Leah Lang: And so we just spent all day talking about what good partnership is, where the roadblocks are right now. How can industry and higher Ed partner better together? How can industry and industry partner together a little bit better? So that was really helpful for higher Ed to have a platform to say to our industry partners, Hey company A and Company B, you know what would really help us out if you got your teams together and figured out a solution to these challenges in integrating your technologies. So it was nice to be able to kind of get all that out on the table and figure out how to move forward. And so then a result of that in-person event was that they requested they were said this was a great day. We really felt like we finally came together and gelled. And we want more of this, and we want to do a 6 month, follow up and get the band back together. And could you host a virtual summit for us? So we just did that in early May.

I think we had, like 60 or 70 participants from the original group of 80, and we were on a zoom call for about 90 min, shared partnership stories. We identified some priorities for discussion for the next in-person summit in the fall, and then we spent about 20 min. We put them in breakout rooms. One of the bits of feedback was they just wanted to network. They wanted more networking time. They wanted to get to know each other as people.

So one of the major agenda items for that day was trying to determine what  a corporate recognition program would look like, and that. So this, the this idea kind of, came out of that face to face Summit, where we want more, we want the ability to signal to industry what good looks like for higher education, what higher education thinks of as a trusted partner and colleague? And so the discussion from that day identified, I think, 7 values that higher education looks, holds and looks for in potential partners. And from those 7 values we’ve  identified a set of criteria, and that forms the basis for this corporate recognition program that we’re going to be developing over the next year, and companies will be able to submit an application and put forward evidence to demonstrate that they are aligned with the values of higher education, and then we’ll plan to recognize them. 

At the start of the episode, John and Michelle outlined the value of opening up the conversation for partners to share both their perspective and expertise. If we view EDUCAUSE’s partnership program as a proof of concept, then it is a success story – what began with 11 partners has now grown to 21 in just a year.

Leah Lang: We’re at 21. We had to turn people away. So for 2026, our problem is to figure out how to  address the needs of some other companies that want to be involved in this way. And we’re going to be optimizing our packages so that we know that our, you know, major partners are getting some really deep good work out of our engagement, but we also have the ability to bring people in. I mean, what we’d really like to be able to do is mature companies and their involvement in our membership. And it’s it’s not just about, you know, growing their spending with our organization. It’s about, how do we mentor companies to become great partners of higher education over time. Through their involvement with our association. We want them to learn what it’s like to work within higher education, and how higher education thinks about them, and how to move from vendor or solution provider to just to a better partner.

Shomali: What’s a good starting place to begin in thinking about making that transition?

Leah Lang: Start talking to your customers, to the the customers that have the most potential to become this type of partner, find who you trust the most that was really important to me. We for our 1st year we wanted. We had a goal of 10 partners. We looked at our are the typical spending for any of the companies with our association and identified 15 potential partners. And we we started from a position of strength with this. We weren’t trying to sell. We were trying to identify who was actually going to be a good partner of ours. And so some companies would get on the call, and and they were really focused on their own goals, which weren’t in alignment with the goals of our membership, and it just felt like it wasn’t going to be a good fit, and so we kind of took them off the list. So I would say, work really hard to identify who’s going to be a great partner from the start and build success with that, and then it kind of just snowballs from there

I’m your host Carolyn Shomali – come join as at the annual RevUP Summit – visit revupsummit.org to check out the agenda and save your seat.

That’s it for this episode of Association RevUP. A special thank to our partner in this podcast, VPC Incorporated. Check them out for the production of your next association event. And our thanks to the PAR Pathway PARtners – they are committed to helping associations advance their mission, serve their members, and grow their bottom line..and we are thankful for their insights and expertise. Matchbox, MCI, Multiview, Popshap, swapcard and Yes&.

I’ll see you next time.