The Modern Membership Org with Bursting Silver is the podcast for leaders of associations, unions, and regulatory bodies who are done working around outdated systems and ready to build something better.
Each episode brings together practitioners, technology experts, and organizational leaders to talk honestly about what it actually takes to modernize. From replacing legacy workflows and unlocking cleaner data, to adopting AI responsibly and empowering staff to do their best work.
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Association Leadership in 2026: Relevance, AI, and the 4-Step Playbook
Season 1 · Episode 2
Tuesday, May 12, 2026 • Duration 19:59
Most association leaders know the word. Relevance. They know they need to earn it, that the old default position is gone. The real question is whether they can execute on it.
Bursting Silver CEO Al Povoledo joins Riley Miller to break down the pressures shaping association leadership in 2026: the relevance gap, rising member expectations, and why technology doesn't fix a broken foundation, it exposes one.
Al also shares the four-step playbook he gives every association leader who asks where to start with technology or AI.His advice after 30 years? Don't start with the technology.
If you lead, work in, or build for a membership organization, this show was built for you.
📄 Show notes, transcript, and links: https://www.burstingsilver.com/podcast/ep2
Why The Modern Membership Org Exists and Who It's For
Season 1 · Episode 1
Tuesday, May 12, 2026 • Duration 18:25
"We've been on the system for years, are we actually getting the most out of it?" Executive directors and operations leads ask Bursting Silver this question all the time. The honest answer is usually no, not fully, and that's the gap this show was built to close.
Welcome to The Modern Membership Org with Bursting Silver, a podcast about the real work behind running and modernizing associations, regulatory bodies, and unions.In this pilot episode, Riley Miller and Tanya Mirrlees set the table for the show: who it's for, what we'll talk about, and why we're building it. They get into the workarounds staff have quietly built up over time, what every leader is suddenly being asked about AI, and what it actually looks like when technology meets staff halfway instead of getting in their way.
If you lead, work in, or build for a membership organization, this show was built for you.
📄 Show notes, transcript, and links: https://www.burstingsilver.com/podcast/ep1
🔗 About Bursting SilverWe're a fully remote consultancy specializing in modern CRM, iMIS, and AI solutions for membership organizations across North America. Three-time Great Place to Work Certified.Website ▸ https://www.burstingsilver.com/LinkedIn ▸ https://www.linkedin.com/company/bursting-silver🌐 Follow the showInstagram ▸ https://www.instagram.com/burstingsilver/X / Twitter ▸ https://x.com/burstingsilverFacebook ▸ https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61579548728138TikTok ▸ https://www.tiktok.com/@burstingsilverYouTube ▸ https://www.youtube.com/@BurstingSilver
Super excited about our Bursting Silver podcast upcoming launch, be sure to subscribe so you don't miss out on the amazing conversations we have on the way.
Change Management for Non-Profits: The Work Behind the Work
Season 1 · Episode 3
Tuesday, May 19, 2026 • Duration 32:19
Everyone thinks they know what change management means. Usually they picture a training session or a few all-staff emails. James Harrison has spent 25 years in technology, 15 of those deep in iMIS implementations, and he'll tell you that's barely scratching the surface.
Bursting Silver's Director of Client Success joins Riley Miller to talk about what change management actually requires: it's the project management of the human side of change, happening on two tracks simultaneously. Your staff are navigating a new system. So are your members. Most organizations put all their energy into the first group and forget about the second until someone calls to complain.
James shares the patterns he's seen over 15 years, the internal champion who sets the tone for an entire team, the QA session that fell apart because everyone was nodding but nobody was actually ready, and the one thing every executive should do before any system change.
If you work in or around associations, unions, or regulatory bodies, this one's for you.
📄 Show notes, transcript, and links: https://www.burstingsilver.com/podcast/ep3
People First: What It Actually Takes to Be a Great Place to Work
Season 1 · Episode 11
Tuesday, July 14, 2026 • Duration 34:05
Most companies treat "great place to work" as a line on the careers page. Will Cooper treats it as a practice. He's the Senior Manager of People & Culture at Bursting Silver, and his take is clear: his job isn't to own the culture or hand everyone a rulebook, it's to observe what the team has already built over 15 years, protect what works, and help it grow. That's how Bursting Silver landed its fourth straight Great Place to Work certification and two consecutive years on the Best Workplaces in Canada list.
Will takes Riley behind the badge. How the certification actually works, and why it can't be gamed, an all-employee Trust Index Survey across five dimensions plus a culture brief, with anonymity he can personally stand behind. The five values the team rewrote last year. What People First looks like day to day, from manually reading every résumé to leaders who genuinely know their people. How a fully remote team stays close through the Gather virtual office and the annual retreat. And the hardest truth of the job: culture is never "done." His closing advice for any leader is refreshingly un-glamorous, it doesn't take fancy perks; invest in your people and remove the barriers to great work.
If you lead, work in, or build for a membership organization, this show was built for you.
📄 Show notes, transcript, and links: https://www.burstingsilver.com/podcast/ep11
⏱ Chapters
0:00 Cold open — a great workplace is built by your people
0:38 Welcome + introducing Will Cooper, Senior Manager of People & Culture
2:02 Will's path: Ireland to Canada, 14 years across people, talent & culture
3:18 Joining Bursting Silver in 2023 — and what a People & Culture lead should own
Data Migration Without the Nightmares: Dirty Data, Shadow Spreadsheets & SOPs
Season 1 · Episode 10
Tuesday, July 7, 2026 • Duration 28:29
Most leaders picture a system migration as a simple hand-off: pick up the data, drop it in the shiny new tool, done. Des Hymers has spent almost twenty years watching what actually happens. He's a Solution Architect at Bursting Silver, and his take is blunt: a migration is never just technical. Your business drives your technology, not the other way around. Treat an upgrade as a chance to look at how your organization really runs, and it stops being an IT project. It becomes a way to clear technical debt and make things better for staff and members.
Des walks Riley through the parts of a migration that never show up on a project plan. Dirty data, and why address data is the easiest thing to collect and the worst in every org he's seen. The "Joan's spreadsheet" nobody remembers to migrate. Custom code bolted on under deadline pressure. And the testing and change-management work that decides whether go-live is smooth or painful. His bottom line: write your SOPs down and get everyone to agree on them, because the business you can't document is the business you can't migrate.
If you lead or work in a membership organization, this one's for you.
0:00 Cold open — why your SOPs can't just live in someone's head
0:47 Welcome + introducing Des Hymers, BSI Solution Architect
1:29 Des's path: from early-2000s IT to almost 20 years at Bursting Silver
3:06 What a solution architect actually does in a migration
4:52 The myth: "just pick up the data and drop it in the new tool"
5:21 Why it's never just a system upgrade — the business drives the tech
6:57 Dirty data: why it causes so much pain on a migration
7:49 Address data — easiest to collect, worst for every organization
How Unions Actually Modernize: Data, People & the Work Behind It
Season 1 · Episode 9
Tuesday, June 30, 2026 • Duration 17:59
Most union leaders brace for the worst going into a modernization project; bad data, broken systems, a painful slog. Kevin VanderKley keeps finding the opposite. The Chief Consulting Officer at Bursting Silver joins Riley Miller to explain why the surface chaos is misleading and most unions are in far better shape than they think.
The real problem usually isn't bad data, it's fragmented data. The answers exist; they're just scattered across people, locals, and systems that each solved the same problem a different way. Kevin breaks down the one-person litmus test, the member-address example that shows why the same field means different things to different teams, and why so much critical knowledge lives in people's heads with no written path. Then he gets into the work behind the work: building consensus on a North Star, sorting out data ownership and stewardship, setting governance rules before the hard conversations, and keeping the why visible so a transformation doesn't quietly slide into "just an install." This isn't about union identity. It's about union enablement.
If you lead, work in, or build for a membership organization, this episode was built for you.
Quick Win AI Use Cases Nonprofits Can Start Using Today | Keith Stoute (BSI)
Season 1 · Episode 8
Tuesday, June 23, 2026 • Duration 36:30
Most leaders don't get stuck on AI because they're short on ideas, they get stuck because they have too many and no obvious place to start. Keith Stoute, Chief Product Officer at Bursting Silver and the firm's in-house AI lead, joins Riley Miller to fix that with a tour of quick-win AI use cases a membership organization can actually start on today.
Keith covers iMind, the member-facing assistant BSI built for the iMIS Users Group out of decades of forum Q&A (and the retention bump that followed); a conference assistant that cuts decision fatigue and drives registration; a subject-matter-expert assistant that answers questions from bylaws and regulations in seconds, with citations; self-hosted AI that keeps member data in-house; and an AI interviewing agent that captures institutional knowledge before it walks out the door. He also makes the case for "vibe coding" tools yourself, why an AI governance policy is step one, and the one rule that decides whether any of it works: start small, stay focused, and keep it measurable.
If you lead, work in, or build for a membership organization, this show was built for you.
0:00 Cold open — how to actually measure an AI rollout
0:42 Welcome + introducing Keith Stoute
2:04 A prompting trick: #task #context #interview
3:50 iMind — the iMIS Users Group member assistant
5:52 Cleaning the data: garbage in, garbage out
6:55 The retention bump + disclosing AI to members
8:55 Why targeted and focused wins
The 5 Hidden Mistakes Quietly Killing Your Member Retention | Doug Morris (ASI)
Season 1 · Episode 7
Tuesday, June 16, 2026 • Duration 29:02
Most membership organizations don't lose members in one dramatic moment, they lose them quietly. Doug Morris, VP of Sales, Support & Engineering at ASI and a decades-long veteran of the iMIS community, joins Riley Miller to name the five hidden mistakes behind it: email noise, the ignored once-a-year member, not helping members grow, one voice doing all the talking, and a digital experience that isn't worth coming back to.
Doug's fixes don't require a technology overhaul: segment your email, text when it matters, make your mobile app a year-round habit, build learning pathways members are proud of, bring more voices into your content, and call one member a day. Plus the bonus mistake that turns members off faster than anything else (check your checkout page), and why Doug calls DataScout's enhanced profiles the number one secret weapon for retention.
If you lead, work in, or build for a membership organization, this show was built for you.
⏱ Chapters0:00 Cold open — the once-a-year member problem1:32 Doug's background: CSI to ASI3:50 The five hidden retention mistakes6:13 Segmentation, dynamic content, real personalization8:08 Cutting through the noise with texting11:02 The once-a-year member + the year-round mobile app13:11 Helping members grow: LMS + certifications15:39 One voice — the 10-minute tune-out18:17 A digital experience worth returning to + call a member a day21:35 Where technology helps: Text Messenger, mobile app, TopClass23:25 Bonus mistake: credit card surcharges26:27 DataScout — the secret weapon28:12 Wrap-up
🔗 About Bursting SilverWe're a fully remote consultancy specializing in modern CRM, iMIS, and AI solutions for membership organizations across North America.Website ▸ https://www.burstingsilver.com/LinkedIn ▸ https://www.linkedin.com/company/bursting-silver
Community User Groups: Getting More from Your Solution Through Peer Learning
Season 1 · Episode 6
Tuesday, June 9, 2026 • Duration 30:14
When Ellen Turner started her first iMIS database job, she didn't have a manual. She had a community.
Two weeks into the role, she was sent to her first iUG conference, where seasoned members took her under their wing, answered her "I'm brand new and have no idea what this means" questions, and sent her home with pages of notes. That experience didn't just get her up to speed, it set the course for everything that followed.
Whether you're on the verge of upgrading to EMS, recovering from staff turnover, or just trying to write a SQL expression that won't throw an error, there's a community of people who have been exactly where you are, and who genuinely want to help. As Ellen puts it, not everybody makes their ice cream sundae the same way, but everyone walks away with a sundae.
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8:19 "Joan's spreadsheets" and the shadow data nobody tracks
9:50 Validating data with modern tools; statuses and effective dates
10:33 Where to start cleaning — flag records, find the good 20%
12:18 Make it repeatable: scripts, pipelines, and validation checkpoints
14:15 Hidden landmines — engaging staff early and reviewing SOPs
16:30 Custom code and configurations — the overlooked variables
20:13 What good testing actually looks like (real data, real edge cases)
23:01 Testing as change management — learning the new "digi-desk"
25:06 Where to start now: get your SOPs written down and agreed on
27:04 Where to reach Des + wrap-up
🔗 About Bursting SilverWe're a fully remote consultancy specializing in modern CRM, iMIS, and AI solutions for membership organizations across North America.Website ▸ https://www.burstingsilver.com/LinkedIn ▸ https://www.linkedin.com/company/bursting-silver
