03/15/2022

Enhancing the Member Experience in Challenging Times

Help members feel and see one another

The Eye Bank Association of America (EBAA) has always strived to provide members with educational opportunities and resources that make it easier for them to do their jobs. However, in 2020, like other associations, COVID-19 caused us to pivot and find ways to assist our members: both non-profit eye banks with dedicated staff, as well as corneal surgeons. Here’s a look at some of the steps we took.

Community Chats

Soon after the pandemic began, we launched Community Chats to provide members the opportunity to regularly meet and discuss best practices, solutions, concerns, ideas and more. Naturally, many of these early conversations revolved around the challenges related to navigating COVID-19. Although this offering began as a way to keep members connected, it is something that we have continued for the past two years. While the focus of conversation has largely drifted away from the pandemic, we continue to find other topics to discuss, such as communications and marketing, quality assurance, technical or administration. One reason we feel these chats have been so successful is because members are seeing and talking to each other continuously throughout the year, compared to the one or two times they would see each other at a conference.

Learning Management System

At the end of 2018, we launched our learning management system, eyeLEARN. During the early stages, the LMS was primarily used for previously recorded and live webinars. While we always wanted eyeLEARN to be something more robust, COVID-19 caused us to speed up the process of expanding our resources. Since we transitioned to virtual meetings for our larger conferences during the pandemic, eyeLEARN became the place to host our live virtual events. Additionally, our committees have worked hard to create customizable and downloadable resources for members, and we are at the beginning phase of launching a training library that will feature bite-sized videos on a variety of topics.

Please select this link to read the complete article from ASAE's Center for Association Leadership.