Breakthrough Market Analysis for Associations North
HOW CATALYSTICS helped Identify new opportunities and optimize strategy with the right data, presented in an insightful way.
about Associations North
Associations North is the leading networking and professional development resource for the Upper Midwest for association and nonprofit professionals. They serve over 200 associations and 1,200 professionals with high-value connection opportunities, conferences and continuing education offerings.
Services provided
Strategic Data Sourcing and Analysis
Custom Reporting Web App
Data Storytelling and Presentation
Challenge
Like all member-based organizations, Associations North is eager to recruit new, high-quality prospects to join their community.
For Associations North, a growing membership encourages new perspectives, greater financial sustainability, and support for new and improved services for all members.
While the goal was clear and supported by leadership, the path ahead was less than certain. For many years, Associations North lacked a detailed picture of its current market position. Starting a new outreach campaign without an understanding of market opportunities would likely lead to inaccurate targeting, disappointing results, and wasted resources.
The Associations North Board of Directors tasked President Angela Kisskeys with removing this critical blind spot. She turned to Catalystics for help.
Solution
Leveraging our tools, talent, and proven processes, Catalystics identified promising new opportunities and helped deliver them in a resonant way to decision makers.
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Catalystics started by interviewing Associations North leadership to understand business objectives, positioning, and value proposition. This process yielded fundamental context and business questions to explore.
Using what we learned, we assembled relevant source data from internal and public sources.
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Catalystics combined Associations North records with publicly available IRS 990 summary filings to produce a clean, organized reporting data model of Upper Midwest non-profits.
The model includes current membership status, making it easy to produce a detailed picture of the Association North’s present market share, as well as growth opportunities among similar organizations by revenue and size.
To aid in visualization, we applied geography coding that enables map-based visual analysis of important concentrations of organizations.
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We provided strategic business analyst support for Associations North staff every step of the way, working to maintain alignment of technology with business objectives. The solution includes methodology documentation that aids in understanding and builds trust.
After delivering a complete technical solution, Catalystics Principal Consultant Brian Seebacher supported leadership by preparing and delivering a custom presentation of initial findings to the Associations North Board of Directors.
The total market summary provides revenue and assets of 501(c)6 organizations in the target three-state area.
Interactive maps show revenue clusters by city, helping pinpoint outreach and site visit opportunities.
The reporting reveals individual organizations by revenue on an interactive map.
Built-in methodology helps describe analysis and ground expectations.
Results
By delivering impactful market insights, Catalystics helped Associations North leadership align and chart a course towards growth with new confidence.
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The pairing of trustworthy market information with internal data removed barriers that had held up consensus and progress for years.
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Empowered with new intelligence about the $966M total addressable market of target nonprofits in the region, Associations North can now pinpoint its sales and marketing efforts to reach its most qualified leads. Instead of generic advertising, their outreach can deliver personalized appeals that highlight benefits in a way that that resonates with each potential new member.
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Rather than wasting time fighting tools or crunching numbers, the Associations North staff can remain focused on their mission - growing the association and delivering the highest quality of member engagement.
Angela Kisskeys
President, Associations North
“Catalystics has been an invaluable partner in helping Associations North uncover the data that matters most. Through their association technology leadership, they’ve helped us mine meaningful insights, better understand the scope of our reach, and transform that information into visual dashboards that guide our strategic decisions.”
C O N T A C T
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Behind the Scenes:
Technologies Used
Catalystics designed and built this solution around a modern, high-performance, affordable open-source data analytics stack.
For data engineering work, we leveraged the powerful open-source duo of Python and DuckDB, with data warehouse hosting on MotherDuck.
For analytics presentation, we turned to Evidence, a tool which provided us with a clean, elegant reporting experience complete with interactive tables, charts, and maps on both desktop and mobile.
The resulting solution is easy to use, extensible, and secure.