Explore every episode of the podcast The Modern Membership Org

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

#TheModernMembershipOrg #Associations #AssociationLeadership #iMIS #MembershipManagement #AI #DigitalTransformation #BurstingSilver

"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

#TheModernMembershipOrg #Associations #iMIS #MembershipManagement #AIForAssociations #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.

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

#TheModernMembershipOrg #ChangeManagement #Associations #iMIS #MembershipManagement #NonprofitTech #AssociationManagement #BurstingSilver

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

4:43 What "Great Place to Work" actually is — the global standard

5:38 The track record: first certified 2023, now year four, 2× Best Workplaces in Canada

6:07 Why the badge is a snapshot, never the end goal

6:47 Inside the certification — can't anyone just game it?

7:45 The Trust Index Survey and its five dimensions

9:12 The culture brief

10:01 Why Will trusts it — real anonymity, real feedback

14:05 Rewriting the values — and the five that stuck

15:39 How the recognition changes recruiting (applications up 300%)

17:25 Work-life balance, and hiring for the person not just the résumé

20:02 Leaders who actually know their people

20:50 Remote-first: the benefit, the risk, and how BSI protects culture

22:42 The tech that keeps a remote team close — Gather + Slack

24:44 The annual retreat — "I felt like I knew you already"

27:45 What's still hard about culture work

31:53 Will's one piece of advice: invest in people, not perks

33:24 Wrap-up

🔗 About Bursting Silver

We'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

🌐 Follow the show

Instagram ▸ https://www.instagram.com/burstingsilver/

X / Twitter ▸ https://x.com/burstingsilver

Facebook ▸ https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61579548728138

TikTok ▸ https://www.tiktok.com/@burstingsilver

YouTube ▸ https://www.youtube.com/@BurstingSilver

🎵 Music

Fresh Start by Joakim Karud https://soundcloud.com/joakimkarud

Creative Commons — Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported — CC BY-SA 3.0

Free Download / Stream: https://bit.ly/_fresh-start

Music promoted by Audio Library https://youtu.be/XN-tBgJ5CVw

#TheModernMembershipOrg #Associations #iMIS #MembershipManagement #GreatPlaceToWork #CompanyCulture #RemoteWork #BurstingSilver

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.

📄 Show notes, transcript, and links: https://www.burstingsilver.com/podcast/ep10

⏱ Chapters

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

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

🌐 Follow the show

Instagram ▸ https://www.instagram.com/burstingsilver/

X / Twitter ▸ https://x.com/burstingsilver

Facebook ▸ https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61579548728138

TikTok ▸ https://www.tiktok.com/@burstingsilver

YouTube ▸ https://www.youtube.com/@BurstingSilver

🎵 MusicFresh Start by Joakim Karud https://soundcloud.com/joakimkarud

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#TheModernMembershipOrg #Associations #iMIS #MembershipManagement #DataMigration #DataManagement #DigitalTransformation #BurstingSilver

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.

📄 Show notes, transcript, and links: https://www.burstingsilver.com/podcast/ep9

About Bursting Silver

We'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

🌐 Follow the show

Instagram ▸ https://www.instagram.com/burstingsilver/

X / Twitter ▸ https://x.com/burstingsilver

Facebook ▸ https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61579548728138

TikTok ▸ https://www.tiktok.com/@burstingsilver

YouTube ▸ https://www.youtube.com/@BurstingSilver

🎵 Music

Fresh Start by Joakim Karud https://soundcloud.com/joakimkarudCreative Commons — Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported — CC BY-SA 3.0

Free Download / Stream: https://bit.ly/_fresh-start

Music promoted by Audio Library https://youtu.be/XN-tBgJ5CVw

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.

📄 Show notes, transcript, and links: https://www.burstingsilver.com/podcast/ep8

⏱ Chapters

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

9:36 Start with an AI governance policy

10:27 Testing before launch: the "Keith filter"

12:05 Why dumping all your data into AI doesn't work

13:06 Member-data privacy + clean datasets

15:06 Vibe coding: build without writing code

17:13 Join wizards, CE calculators, prototyping to 80%

19:16 The conference assistant — driving registration

21:43 The subject-matter-expert assistant on core docs

23:51 Self-hosted LLMs that keep member data in-house

26:41 Succession planning: an AI interviewing agent

29:47 Keeping a human in the loop

31:36 Advice to leaders: pick one measurable win

35:28 Wrap-up

🔗 About Bursting Silver

We'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

🎵 Music

Fresh Start by Joakim Karud https://soundcloud.com/joakimkarud

Creative Commons — Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported — CC BY-SA 3.0

Free Download / Stream: https://bit.ly/_fresh-start

Music promoted by Audio Library https://youtu.be/XN-tBgJ5CVw

#TheModernMembershipOrg #Associations #iMIS #MembershipManagement #AI #AIGovernance #Nonprofit #BurstingSilver

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.

📄 Show notes, transcript, and links: https://www.burstingsilver.com/podcast/ep7

⏱ 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

🌐 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

🎵 MusicFresh Start by Joakim Karud https://soundcloud.com/joakimkarudCreative Commons — Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported — CC BY-SA 3.0Free Download / Stream: https://bit.ly/_fresh-startMusic promoted by Audio Library https://youtu.be/XN-tBgJ5CVw

#TheModernMembershipOrg #Associations #iMIS #MembershipManagement #MemberRetention #DataScout #BurstingSilver

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.

Show notes, transcript, and links: https://www.burstingsilver.com/podcast/ep6

#TheModernMembershipOrg #Community #iMISUsersGroup #AI #iMIS #MembershipManagement #BurstingSilver

This episode features James Schwartz, CTO of Bursting Silver, discussing how AI can be practically adopted by non-profit organizations.

In this episode:

• Why so much AI "demos well but doesn't deliver", and how to tell the difference before you buy
• The practical, unglamorous use cases that actually move the needle: member inquiry triage, data cleanup, auto-tagging and segmentation, and predictive analytics
• How Data Scout took members from a 1–2% engagement rate to 15–20%
• Why being transparent that a message is AI-generated builds member trust instead of breaking it
• How to adopt AI in bite-sized chunks instead of as a daunting transformation project and what James would tell a stretched executive director to do first

Show notes, transcript, and links: https://www.burstingsilver.com/podcast/ep5

#TheModernMembershipOrg #AI #iMIS #MembershipManagement #NonProfitTechnology #BurstingSilver

Ask most technology vendors what makes a union different from an association and you'll get a blank stare. The answer isn't just regulatory complexity or collective bargaining agreements, it's the nature of membership itself. When someone joins a union, they don't sign up for a service. They join a movement. And that changes everything about what technology has to do.Bursting Silver CEO Al Povoledo returns to talk specifically about unions: what makes them operationally unlike any other organization, why a bad member experience erodes institutional trust in a way that doesn't happen anywhere else, and where AI is already producing real results on the ground.The AI conversation in the union world is contentious. Al cuts through with concrete examples already in production, grievance intake systems, member chatbots trained on collective bargaining agreements, onboarding tools that walk new members through their rights from day one. And for organizers worried about their role: AI doesn't replace the organizer. It tells the organizer exactly where to show up, why, what to do, and when.If you work in or around unions, labour organizations, or the membership sector, this one's built for you.📄 Show notes, transcript, and links: https://www.burstingsilver.com/podcast/ep4

#TheModernMembershipOrg #Unions #LabourOrganizations #AI #iMIS #MembershipManagement #UnionTechnology #BurstingSilver

Ellen Turner has been on both sides of a system change. Years before she became a senior consultant at Bursting Silver, she was staff at a trade association when leadership announced a new system out of nowhere. The whole team's reaction: "Wait, what?" On her return visit to the show, Ellen and Riley dig into why the software you're moving to is usually the smallest part of the change. It's everything underneath that actually moves.

Ellen breaks down what really shifts when you switch systems. The data structure changes. Reports staff have trusted for years break and need rebuilding. The navigation everyone runs on autopilot is suddenly brand new. Her analogy: buying a new car. You still know how to drive, but where's the light switch, and which stalk runs the rear wiper?

Then it gets tactical. The trap of rebuilding your old system, workarounds and all, inside the new one. Why data cleanup has no magic wand (bots once created a thousand fake accounts in her database overnight). How automation moves staff from keying in forms to actual member engagement. And the budget advice Ellen stands behind after five-plus years of implementations: if money is tight, trim the scope of go-live, never the training. Every time she's seen a training budget cut, the organization spent the same money on support tickets within a month or two.

Her Monday-morning to-do for any leader considering a change: get a representative sample of staff into the discovery sessions. Somebody in membership can't speak for what somebody in finance needs.

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/ep12

⏱ Chapters

0:00 Cold open — make sure staff voices are heard

0:41 Welcome back + reintroducing return guest Ellen Turner

1:28 Ellen's path: trade association staffer to BSI consultant

2:25 Blindsided from the inside — "we're changing systems… wait, what?"

4:08 What actually moves when an organization switches systems

4:44 Data structure, broken reports, and brand-new navigation

5:55 Think of it like buying a new car — retraining muscle memory

7:32 The rebuild trap: recreating the old system, limitations and all

9:27 Weeding out workarounds — must-haves vs. old habits

10:31 EMS then vs. now: when the new features caught up to the hype

13:12 Data you can trust: bots, stale addresses, and no magic wand

16:35 Roles change too — from keying in data to member engagement

19:13 AI, efficiency, and finally getting to the back-burner list

20:33 The training budget trap — trim scope instead

22:24 Testing as training: get staff hands-on before go-live

24:26 Core vs. can-wait: how to phase the implementation

26:55 The one thing you shouldn't delay: data cleanup

28:29 Give staff permission to prioritize training time

31:11 Keep training sessions under 90 minutes — aim for an hour

32:41 The Monday-morning to-do: staff in the discovery room

34:19 Where to find Ellen + wrap-up

🔗 About Bursting Silver

We'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

🌐 Follow the show

Instagram ▸ https://www.instagram.com/burstingsilver/

X / Twitter ▸ https://x.com/burstingsilver

Facebook ▸ https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61579548728138

TikTok ▸ https://www.tiktok.com/@burstingsilver

YouTube ▸ https://www.youtube.com/@BurstingSilver

🎵 Music

Fresh Start by Joakim Karud https://soundcloud.com/joakimkarud

Creative Commons — Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported — CC BY-SA 3.0

Free Download / Stream: https://bit.ly/_fresh-start

Music promoted by Audio Library https://youtu.be/XN-tBgJ5CVw

#TheModernMembershipOrg #Associations #iMIS #MembershipManagement #ChangeManagement #DigitalTransformation #BurstingSilver

A year ago, Bursting Silver gave everyone in the company access to ChatGPT and started running hackathons, lunch-and-learns, and working groups. It worked, until it became obvious the informal approach couldn't keep up with how fast AI moves. So the team formalized it: a 12-month AI adoption program called Project Navigate, named at a company retreat in St. John's, Newfoundland.

In this episode, BSI CEO Al Povoledo joins Riley Miller to open the books on how the program actually works: a competency framework so people know what good looks like at their level, a self-assessment to find the gaps, optional training paths measured at the company level, governance guardrails that keep client member data out of AI systems entirely, and a working group that ships new skills, connectors, and policies every week. Al also gets honest about the hard parts, like catching people who outsourced their judgment to the machine, and shares the question he'd ask any leader before starting: are we ready?

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/ep14

⏱ Chapters

0:00 Cold open — "This isn't going to take away your work"

0:49 Welcome back Al Povoledo

2:49 The informal year: hackathons, lunch-and-learns, ChatGPT for everyone

4:22 The St. John's retreat + naming Project Navigate

5:28 The working group: hired guns, SMEs, and the CEO in the room

7:05 Why the plan is 12 months

7:43 Four stages + four pillars: competency, assessment, training, policy, tools

10:20 An enablement program, not an expert factory

11:41 AI governance: guardrails on the bowling alley

12:48 Skill + connector sprawl: standardize half, experiment half

15:49 The rollout: weekly releases + a website built in a week

18:32 Client member data is job one — "It's not ours"

20:04 A head start, not a replacement

22:52 Optional courses, company-level measurement

24:30 Hardest part so far + biggest surprise

27:04 What changed after the retreat

29:00 The kickoff question: "Are we ready?"

30:37 Wrap-up + free AI adoption checklist

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🔗 About Bursting Silver

We'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

🌐 Follow the show

Instagram ▸ https://www.instagram.com/burstingsilver/

X / Twitter ▸ https://x.com/burstingsilver

Facebook ▸ https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61579548728138

TikTok ▸ https://www.tiktok.com/@burstingsilver

YouTube ▸ https://www.youtube.com/@BurstingSilver

🎵 Music

Fresh Start by Joakim Karud https://soundcloud.com/joakimkarud

Creative Commons — Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported — CC BY-SA 3.0

Free Download / Stream: https://bit.ly/_fresh-start

Music promoted by Audio Library https://youtu.be/XN-tBgJ5CVw

#TheModernMembershipOrg #AI #AIAdoption #AIGovernance #Associations #iMIS #MembershipManagement #BurstingSilver

Chris Walton spent forty years inside the union movement and built the ACTU's Union Innovation Hub — a movement-owned platform now shared by 30+ unions. His throughline: there's no new principle of organizing, but there are powerful new tools.

In this episode, Chris and Riley Miller get practical about what those tools do — engagement scoring to spot at-risk members and hidden workplace leaders, member journeys that lifted average member tenure in Australia to eight years, and why buying technology as a movement beats going it alone. They compare Australia's open shop with Canada's Rand formula, and Chris shares the news that the Hub's Union Suite for iMIS is now available to North American unions through Bursting Silver.

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/ep13

⏱ Chapters

0:00 Cold open — "I don't pretend it's a magic solution"

0:28 Welcome + introducing Chris Walton

1:41 Forty years an organizer: from bank unions to the Innovation Hub

3:53 Why the movement chose a collective approach to digital

5:42 Triaging shared improvements + the "pass the hat around" model

7:35 Australia vs. Canada/US: open shop, the Rand formula, free riders

9:51 Engagement is the key — members off the sidelines

12:57 Engagement scoring and finding at-risk members

17:28 Member journeys without feeling like a subscription

21:25 Using digital to organize for growth

24:42 The one principle to take away — and "have a go"

26:50 Union Suite for iMIS comes to Canada + the US

🔗 About Bursting Silver

We're a fully remote consultancy specializing in modern CRM, iMIS, and AI solutions for membership organizations across North America.

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