Andrew, excellent point. If an association is collecting data that by definition will “age” over time (e.g., # of employees), then the association needs to have a plan in place for collecting, updating, and managing that data into the future.

Sometimes, this is not possible. How many employees are at your business? What is your annual revenue? What are your interests? There is no underlying key from which these answers can be derived. If this type of data is to be collected and stored for future analysis, there needs to be an outreach procedure in place to keep the data honest. The technology is there to make this possible – e-mail blasts and online profiles are standard features that any major AMS offers. But, organizations need to be both creative and disciplined in order to encourage members to complete the chore of communicating that their business hired another fifteen employees, or they’ve dropped running to take up Tae Kwon Do.