Pay whatever your AIIM membership is worth to you

Got an interesting email from my friend Bob Zagami, who is Chair, AIIM International Board of Directors. Bob says that for a limited time, anyone can join AIIM with a Professional Membership at whatever price they could pay.

AIIM is a "non-profit organization focused on helping users to understand the challenges associated with managing documents, content, records, and business processes."

John Mancini, AIIM President, posted details on his blog.

I find two things interesting about this offer.

By making a move like this, people talk about AIIM, which is a good thing. As more people hear of the organization for the first time, newer potential members may choose to join.

But perhaps more importantly, AIIM understands that in tough times, many companies are eliminating budget items such as professional organization fees. The result when your company no longer pays for your memberships is that you must decide if you want to pay out of your own pocket or let the membership lapse.

AIIM makes it the decision easier by making pricing flexible.

Bob Zagami says: "Many companies are eliminating all spending on travel, education and training – at the very time that education and training are needed most. Well, if the company won’t pay for it, AIIM is going to let them pay what they can afford, and we put our trust and faith in the American worker to do what is right, because most of them always do."

What can your business do in these tough times that will serve to both spread your ideas and bring in more business?

Comments

[David McInnis]

Not sure if you remember back to the early days, but this was the model we used at PRWeb. Obviously it is no longer this way. However it was a fun model and it is a great way to launch an online business. It makes the entire customer / vendor experience more cooperative. I love it.

[DaveMurr]

There is a dinner here in Detroit MI that is doing the very same thing. For a few weeks they are letting their customers pay what they feel their meal was worth. I've never heard of this dinner before, but because of the word of mouth, I am interested in checking it out, sharing the story with who I know, and will most likely pay full price for my meal just on the simple fact that they would even provide this option. Smart!

[Ari Herzog]

OK, I'll bite.

What is AIIM????

I visited their website and looked on their homepage, their about page, and their contact page, but there's no elaboration what the acronym stands for. Or is that the name?

[Bob Zagami]

Ari,

The acronym is now the name of the Association but originally stood for the Association for Information and Image Management. Prior to that it was the National Micrographics and before that it was the National Microfilm Association.

The Associations's trade members allow companies and organizatiion to capture, index, manage, store, retrieve and distribute information (paper or electronic) throughout the enterprise.

We move information through an organization electronically versus doing everything with paper.

You might enjoy the organizations magazine and web site that highlight actual end user success stories in helping their companies go "green" through the use of the technologies and solutions that might incorporate hardware, software, software-as-a-service, or document conversion services to ingest large amounts of legacy paper-based information into an electronic document management system.

The web site for the Assocations magazine is: http://www.aiim.org/Infonomics/

Thank you for inquiring.