BEST MEMBERSHIP SUPPORT DURING COVID-19 (800 – 5,000 MEMBERS)
British Independent Retailers Association
With the lifeblood of Bira being retail businesses, it faced its own challenges having a membership community of 4,000 that largely traded for just 4 months of 2020. With a severely reduced staff and the need to introduce remote working, the British Independent Retailers Association set out to support & represent UK independent retail with aim of seeing as many businesses as possible survive the Covid-19 pandemic.
Since March 2020, Bira has push many of its members into the media spotlight, provided extensive supported to its own members and, undoubtedly, many more independent retail businesses throughout the UK.
As well as providing a comprehensive information hub, Bira worked hard to engage with governments, campaigned for change, fought for appropriate extensions and moratoria, consulted on essential/non-essential, helped increase contactless payments and provided social distancing resources. Members were also helped with trading online, providing click-and-collect, appointment booking, social media, local search engine marketing and more.
The Bira team faced a huge challenge ahead, at a time when its members and the wider sector needed more support than ever before. Bira stayed true to it’s 120-year roots… supporting members’ needs for today and for whatever the future holds.
British Thoracic Society – Provision of ad-hoc professional guidance and resources to healthcare professionals
In early March, at the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic, the British Thoracic Society responded to a need for guidance to support its members, who were at the forefront of treating patients admitted to hospital with COVID-19. The respiratory workforce was responsible for the care of approximately 85% of COVID-19 patients cared for in hospitals.
The Society embarked on a six months (and counting) effort to develop quick pragmatic guidance and advice for its members in the respiratory community, and the medical profession at large, to help them provide the right care for COVID-19 patients, assist with restarting their services in safety and prevent the spread of the virus among NHS staff.
Members were also engaged from the beginning as part of a network of experts on different techniques and conditions, to quickly review the evolving evidence and draft guidance that their colleagues could follow in the care of their patients.
The result is a portfolio of over 30 guidance documents , updated when new evidence emerges, which guides our members to care for COVID-19 patients with the confidence they are providing the best possible care in safety.
ENT UK – Information campaign to support membership and improve conditions during the COVID-19 pandemic
ENT UK supported our members by establishing a fast, responsive information campaign, disseminating high quality and up-to-date information on an almost daily basis throughout a period characterised by great uncertainty. We realised that the recommendations on personal protective equipment (PPE) provided by Public Health England (PHE) were inadequate with regards to ENT-related procedures, leaving ENT professionals dangerously exposed. We therefore surveyed our members on their experience of PPE availability, published more rigorous recommendations that could be invoked in negotiation with hospital trusts, and entered into discussions with PHE. As a direct result of this campaigning, the official guidance was ultimately updated, ensuring that hospital trusts were no longer obliged only to provide lower level PPE.
With the British Rhinological Society, we campaigned for PHE to accept anosmia as a key symptom of COVID-19 infection. As a result, it updated its guidance, slowing the spread of the virus, reducing the strain on the NHS and the number of unknowingly infected patients our members came into contact with.
These achievements had enormous implications for our members and the wider medical community, making healthcare professionals less vulnerable to infection, slowing the spread of the virus throughout the population, and increasing our members’ safety.
Hire Association Europe and Event Hire Association – Membership Support during COVID-19
Hire Association Europe and Event Hire Association (HAE EHA) is a trade organisation that represents companies in the plant, tool, and event equipment hire sector.
HAE EHA set out to be the go-to place for information, guidance and news, creating numerous resources to help businesses both small and large to understand what was happening, how it affected them, and where they could turn to for help.
HAE EHA’s mission is to ‘Support, Protect, Promote, and Develop’ our members. Our response and support to members during the coronavirus crisis has aligned with this mission more than ever.
National Association of Funeral Directors – Support for the funeral profession during COVID-19
Funeral directors, one of only a few private sector groups categorised as critical workers during COVID-19, have been under pressure throughout the pandemic, arranging just under 700,000 funerals in 2020 – up more than 90,000 over 2019.
The NAFD’s purpose as a trade association has perhaps never been clearer: working to provide support/information to funeral directors, campaigning for clear guidance and support from Government and ensuring the sector’s contribution to the national effort is recognised.
During the pandemic we have published government-backed guidance, created a COVID-specific website, been interviewed by the media more than 300 times, successfully lobbied for funeral director access to PPE and vaccinations, clarified liability and policing strategy over funeral attendance, campaigned for bereaved people to be able to attend funerals, delivered more than 250 email briefings as well as virtual meetings and other briefings for members, reached almost two million people via social media, commissioned research into the potential mortality impact of a second wave and likely economic consequence of COVID-19 on the funeral sector, provided a public/funeral director information line, funded counselling support for member firms – and met regularly with the Cabinet Office, MoJ, Department of Health and MCHLG as well as devolved administrations.
The Grain and Feed Trade Association – COVID-19 Response
Gafta represents the international trade in agri-commodities and our key priority through the crisis has been to keep agricultural commodities, feedstuffs and general produce moving to ensure food security now, and minimise any long terms effect. Gafta has a multi-faceted and international remit in order to serve its members’ best interests, so our response to COVID-19 needed to reflect this. Each key business area responded and adapted within weeks of the global outbreak in order to continue providing a cohesive and holistic service.
Changes have been made across the board, including in trade policy, the arbitration service, our approved register process, education and events, and marketing. These adaptations have been made with long-term member benefit in-mind, not just facilitation of services in the short-term. We have worked to streamline services, increase industry awareness, further industry-wide goals and deliver efficiency-savings.
Union for International Cancer Control – Virtualisation of the business with strengthened membership focus
In 2020, as the Covid-19 pandemic challenged the work and in some case the existence of cancer organisations around the world, UICC completely re-engineered its business model, virtualising its services for members and developing new platforms to bring the community together, and sharing best practice on how the cancer community should respond to the pandemic. The response from the UICC membership has been outstanding and in 2021, the new platforms available will be further explored to unite and support the cancer community, and to ensure cancer stays as a global and national priority as the pandemic eases country by country.
World Association of News Publishers (WAN-IFRA)
As the membership association for the global news publishing community, we believe unprecedented times call for unprecedented support for our members and the future of news. When the pandemic started spreading, we suspended our physical events and introduced an array of virtual offers. The aim was to provide our members with expert advice, as well as to offer opportunities for members to share new practices that were working for them and learn what other news publishers were doing to adjust to the ongoing challenges for their employees and businesses.
In March, we introduced weekly webinars to address key challenges facing news publishers in the context of the global Coronavirus outbreak. In parallel, we launched a new website, coronanewsroom.org, to share resources for best-practices across major operations areas.
We also established partnerships with other international organisations to further help publishers during this difficult time.
In addition, we published three special reports on Covid-19 for our members.
By the end of 2020, more than 7,800 unique individual media professionals had registered for 35 events and strategic briefings supported by 460 expert speakers coming from 130 countries. And, we were pleased to welcome 70 media organisations as new members in 2020.
