Association Management Companies
What are Association Management Companies?
Association Management Companies, or AMCs are professional service firms providing shared resources and proven practices to deliver value to associations, their volunteer leadership and their members. The AMC industry has existed for over 100 years but only in the last 20 years has the industry become well known. Today, AMCs partner with over 5,000 associations worldwide.
Why partner with an AMC?
AMC’s employees are specialists in subjects important to associations like meeting planning, tradeshow production, certification development, lobbying, standards development and more. These employees provide leadership and direction on these important program areas.
Volunteer leaders are just that, volunteers. AMCs allow association leaders to make the most of their time commitment to the association by focusing their time on strategic and policy issues, instead of human resource and administrative issues.
AMCs reduce the liability of their association partners because the association doesn’t have employees, office space and other overhead.
AMCs allow associations the ability to spend their money on items that will directly create value to the association and its members rather than overhead and salaries.
How do AMCs deliver their services?
AMCs typically provide services in two models: the full service model and the contracted services model. In the full service model, the AMC serves as the staff for the association. The AMC’s office is the association’s headquarters; the AMCs employees deliver services to the association and its members.
In the Contracted Services model, the AMC delivers “a la carte” services to the association and does not serve as the association’s staff. In this example, the association might contract with the AMC to plan a meeting or produce a tradeshow, lobby the government, publish a magazine, etc.
CM Services, Inc. The Association Partnership Company
Professional life is sometimes difficult and every day brings new challenges. Most associations were created so that people and companies with similar interests could meet these challenges collectively. In 1976, Dick and Jeri Church started CM Services, Inc. The Association Partnership Company to help associations create opportunities out of their challenges. Their business philosophy was and is simple: Partnership. Focused long term cooperation between individuals and/or organizations and CM Services to achieve complimentary goals.
What does Partnership mean?
It means we invest ourselves in the industries or professions we represent. We want to become experts so we can identify trends, make opportunities out of challenges and help the association achieve its mission.
CM Services Mission
We partner with associations to develop, maintain and advance their missions
CM Services Values
Our business philosophy of partnership is based on six simple values that we try to live by and apply to each business transaction every day:
- Be trustworthy
- Commit ourselves to each other, our company and the industries we serve
- Act responsibly
- Care about others
- Grow every day
- Have fun
