In 2007, 3 PARN members supported us to growth in the professional body sector.

Our research previously had found that the main differences between professional bodies is that of size, rather than, for example, professional field, governance structure or CPD policy.

Smaller professional bodies have a particular set of issues. For this project, we asked the questions:

• How do we get members to sign up?
• How do we move from those initial, volunteer-led, stages of existence towards a more sustainable and further-reaching type of organisation?
• How do we decide what kind of staff we need to recruit?
• How do we supplement the income we get from member subscriptions?
• And how do we become the voice of our profession, gaining the ear of government?

This research relied on the sharing of the experiences of smaller associations, and those (of varying sizes and at difference stages of development) who had already made some headway in overcoming some of the problems that they face.

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