MADISON, Wis. — With a down economy and looming corporate bailout assessments, many credit unions are slashing the travel budget, pushing credit union trade associations to resort to drastic measures to bolster their conferences.
Those measures include everything from discounts and special offers, to canceling traditional face-to-face meetings in favor of "cyber meetings" and teleconferences.
CUES launched its "pay what you can" program for its CEO network in November, a "radical move in terms of seeing the writing on the wall on what people are going to be spending money," according to SVP and Chief Learning Officer Dawn Poker. "There are credit unions that are doing very well right now that are paying the full registration fee, and there are others that are not doing so well that need to be at these meetings so they pay what they can."
The program has been a "resounding success," Poker said, and she is particularly proud that it fits the credit union mantra of people helping people. But the flexible fee structure leads to an uncertain revenue stream and that is forcing CUES to look for ways to cut down on its expenses without cutting value. Poker pointed out that hotels, caterers and other vendors who power their national conferences are hurting in the recession as well and that tends to give CUES some leverage when asking for discounts.
"We are blessed in the fact that based on our organization and mission that we've developed strong partnerships in the tourism and hospitality industry which allow us to be much more flexible," she added.
CUNA is seeing drop off in attendance at face-to-face meetings through the first quarter of 2009 Todd Spiczenski, VP at CUNA's Center for Professional Development told Credit Union Journal, but there are some bright spots elsewhere.
"An equal part of our business, eLearning, is showing some growth," he said in an email. "CUNA has emphasized blended learning since 2000 when we purchased a learning management system and began transitioning to eLearning. This approach proves very beneficial to CUs that have restricted travel because they still have a wide variety of options to get training to their staff and board."
Simply reducing the number of conferences they attend isn't an option for some credit unions this year according to NAFCU chief Fred Becker.
"I've heard from some CEOs that they are not sending anyone to any conference this year," he said. "They have totally curtailed any conference attendance to anything."
But that isn't hurting NAFCU greatly as attendance at the conferences it has held to date in 2009 is flat or only very slightly down compared to last year. NAFCU's stance on allowing any credit union, not just association members, to attend its conferences may be one reason its attendance has not degraded significantly; the association has also locked its registration rates, keeping them the same as last year but is not making major budget changes on its end.
"What we try to do first and foremost is to serve our members and keep up the quality. Despite the economy we will not in any way degrade the quality of our conferences," Becker maintained.
NAFCU is also stepping up its Internet presence by offering bundled webinar packages at discounts and allowing any credit union with less than $10 million to receive free webcasts.
Some organizations outside the credit union movement are swapping locations by exchanging their trips to Las Vegas, Hawaii and other high profile destinations for lower-key and lower-priced cities. But Poker said CUES has no plans to do move any of its events and cautioned against the mindset that a new destination is better for the bottom line.
"Moving a meeting from one location to another is robbing Peter to pay Paul. The city your moving from is taking job losses," she said. "What we have found when we are working with different cities is that when we come at it together we are able to come up with better solutions and it's not adversarial positions."
