Organizational Satisfaction and Participation: ACE Members Speak Out

LaRae M. Donnellan
Gail Snowdon

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for Gail Snowdon

 

 

Any professional organization, such as Agricultural Communicators in Education (ACE), needs to stay relevant to the needs of its members. This article reports the results of a 1998 membership survey that examined such questions as why people belong to ACE, how well ACE is meeting member needs, what would make ACE more relevant, and whether ACE should change its name. Fifty-four percent of active members responded to an on-line survey. The top reasons given for belonging to ACE included professional development and networking with peers. However, only 47 percent of respondents felt ACE was doing "well" or "very well" in meeting members' professional development needs. The longer a person belonged to ACE, the higher he or she rated ACE overall. The challenge for ACE leadership is to provide appropriate professional development opportunities to match the high ranking given to networking, job announcements, publishing, leadership opportunities, and award recognition. ACE also needs to address the changing culture within communications offices that has resulted in changing expectations and participation.

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LaRae Donnellan is professor and head of Extension Communications at The University of Tennessee. She has been an ACE member for more than 25 years and was ACE president at the time of this survey when she drafted the content. Gail Snowdon is the director of development research for the University of Illinois Foundation. She was an ACE member at the time of this study and coordinated the creation and delivery of the survey. She presented the preliminary results at the ACE annual meeting in Asilomar, California, in 1998.
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