Previous Page: Re-Emergence

Lesson Learned
NCSEA has been a victim of circumstance—crippled by a bad economy, travel restrictions, and onerous contracts. But if she has any advice to give association executives in a similar situation, Eubanks would tell them to know their organization’s conference history and be conservative in their pickup estimates.

“Don’t promise food-and-beverage and attendance rates that aren’t realistic, even in good times. That really was one of the major things about this contract that was quite difficult for us.”

She also cautions new association executives to review all future contracts to make sure they are comfortable with them. “Had I realized when I started, instead of a year into it, that we had an issue with this contract, we might have been able to do something earlier,” she says.

Finally, Eubanks’ advice to association executives worried about their conference is to contact your vendors right away to try and work out a deal. “We started by reaching out to the Marriott before we hired a bankruptcy attorney, just to get a feel for whether they would negotiate with us.” When it was clear they wouldn’t, NCSEA hired a bankruptcy attorney. “If we had waited too long, frankly, we wouldn’t have been able to hire an attorney and we wouldn’t be able to work this out like we did.”

So what about next year? As of now, the association plans to hold its 2010 annual conference in Chicago. “Our board is very committed to continuing to have an annual conference,” she says. A lot depends on the economy, but also, says Eubanks, NCSEA is hoping to work with the host property, the Sheraton Chicago, to reduce the room block. The meeting itself could change in other ways, but planning will wait until the new AMC is on board.

NCSEA has annual conferences booked through 2012, all done before Eubanks came on board. Right now, she’s not even thinking ahead that far. “We have to work through this first. It’s a matter of survival.”