Business View - May 2015 41
BUSINESS VIEW: Let me make sure I have this right.
Does anyone just straightaway join the state asso-
ciation? They’re all joining locally and they then are
automatically members at the state level and na-
tional level?
NORMAN:
99 percent of them are joining at the local
level – that is correct.
BUSINESS VIEW: Are you competing with any other
associations for the same pool of members? You
said when they’re joining locally that they’re auto-
matically a member of state and national, so obvi-
ously that’s not a case, but are you competing for
the same pool of people with other groups?
NORMAN:
Not really. There are a couple of other lo-
cal homebuilder clubs around the state, but we are
the only statewide homebuilder trade association and
almost all of our local area ones are the only local
homebuilders. So, not directly, but there are other real
estate related organizations, but homebuilders specifi-
cally, we are pretty much the only game in town.
BUSINESS VIEW: For the typical member, what’s
their reason for joining? What benefits or services
are they particularly looking for?
NORMAN:
Well, if someone is an old lobbyist and does
advocacy on the state level, I would love if they were all
joining for government relations, but that is not at the
top of the heap. Most members join, and it depends
on whether they’re a builder or if they're someone that
we call an associate member, which is not a builder –
if they’re a builder, they join for educational purposes,
to network with their peers, learn from their peers, and
give back to the industry, and, as part of that, to try to
affect change for the benefit of their industry. That’s
kind’ve what we give back – we do survey. For asso-
ciate members, same thing, but as you can imagine,
the networking is more business-driven, trying to meet
builders, meet remodelers, meet people they can do
business with – networking as well, but it’s business
relationships that are really why most associate mem-
bers originally join, but then they learn there’s other
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