BY CLIFFORD M. BROWNSTEIN

For decades, association management companies (AMCs) were perceived as firms that catered to small associations who could not afford their own staff, offices, furniture and equipment. This could not be further from the truth, then and particularly, now. For many years, AMCs have managed trade and professional associations with budgets running into the multi-millions. They could not have accomplished that without offering a wide, comprehensive array of services necessary to successfully manage full-service, growing associations.

Quite prominent among these services have been conference and trade show management. It is very common for even the smallest of AMCs to arrange, administer and sell multiple conferences and trade shows within a given year, with larger firms handling as many as one hundred or more of these functions annually. Clearly, AMCs possess the knowledge, expertise, and experience to not only manage meetings and trade shows, but to promote and sell them as well.

Over the last decade, there has been a decided shift by AMCs to unbundle many of their services and sell them individually to the customary not-for-profit entities. An additional, concurrent shift, has been the promotion of these unbundled services to for-profit organizations. Both of these factors have led to new marketing opportunities for AMCs, and consequently, have allowed a wider range of organizations to utilize their services. (more)