Shared Services for Small Associations

Dana Whitfield, NANA's Southeast chapter chair and president and CEO of the Southeastern Textile Manufacturers Council, built the shared-services pilot from a converted mill office in Charlotte in 2023. Five small associations shared a finance manager, an events coordinator, and an AMS license at launch; the arrangement now covers eleven organizations, including the Rocky Mountain Outfitters and Guides Council, which joined remotely in 2025. The course runs three weeks after the Southeast Shared-Services Forum, where NANA launches the national rollout.

The staff functions that share cleanly across organizations, finance, events, database administration, and the ones that don't, like member relations and government affairs, which stay association-specific.

Building a cost-sharing formula across partner associations of different sizes and budgets, so a 900-member association and a 50-member association both pay a fair share of a shared finance manager's time.

What a written agreement needs to cover: whose personnel policy governs the shared employee, how supervision splits across organizations, and how a partner exits the arrangement.

Whether a shared association-management-software license fits a given partner's member count and data needs, and where a shared license creates a data-ownership question worth settling up front.

Executive directors and finance staff at small associations, particularly those with fewer than five staff, considering a shared-services arrangement with peer organizations, including chapters weighing the model the Southeast pilot just proved out. Pairs with the Shared-Services Model Guide.

• Identify which staff roles a small association can realistically share

• Structure a cost-sharing formula across partner associations of different sizes

• Draft a shared-staff agreement that covers supervision and dispute resolution

• Evaluate whether a shared AMS license fits a partner association's member count