AAACN

The American Academy of Ambulatory Care Nursing (AAACN) is the association of professional nurses and associates who identify ambulatory care practice as essential to the continuum of accessible, high quality and cost-effective healthcare. Ambulatory care practice settings include universities, medical centers, HMO’s, group practices, urgent care centers, physician office settings, hospital based ambulatory care settings, military, community health and other settings where nursing care is 24 hours or less.

Client Challenge:

With a membership size of 2300, our staff size is limited. Essentially, I am a “one-woman show.” I am called upon to execute our annual operating plan, coordinate our association committees, facilitate our nominations process, organize our special interest groups, direct customer service and arrange our practice related communications. My challenge is to provide support to our Board of Directors and membership while juggling a heavy workload that includes managing multiple high-priority projects at once.

In the past, our election was executed by mail and tabulated by an accounting firm. Coordinating the preparation and mailing of the ballots required much work on our part. AAACN was looking for a partner that could help develop a forward-thinking election strategy that included online voting. SBS fit that profile.

SBS Solution:

Since we switched to Survey & Ballot Systems (SBS) in 2007, our members have been thrilled to participate in online voting (95% of our members receive an invitation to vote online). I have been pleased with the level of service and attention to detail SBS puts toward the management of our election.

SBS approaches the AAACN election with a consultative plan and implements the following tactics to ensure a successful election every year:

• Supplying a “Template for Success” – Every important election milestone is laid out from the beginning, which helps keep AAACN on track. This template is essential in getting items approved on time while meeting the academy’s requirements and specifications.
• Assigning a point person to manage our election – We find it beneficial to work with the same person year after year. The SBS contact knows the project and our tendencies.
• Tactics for improving response rate – SBS deploys a few strategically timed reminder emails that help boost response for our online voting efforts. We value working with a partner whose election suggestions make an immediate impact.

The result: AAACN is able to save time and resources by having SBS manage almost every aspect of the annual election. AAACN has become a “little association that could” by offloading this large project to free up our time for other strategic initiatives.