Have you ever said something like "members really love this program, but it never makes any money?" Or maybe you experience the reverse: a program that brings in so much cash that it funds your other programs, but it has nothing to do with your mission. And have you ever wondered where to allocate your resources when you have to choose between two programs like these?

Associations have to consider many competing objectives when choosing where to spend their money, staff time, and volunteer resources. Sometimes it can be tricky to know where to put resources, whether toward member services or legislative advocacy—or any number of other priorities—all of which are measured by different standards. A portfolio analysis is one method associations can use to get a clear view of which programs are providing the most value to members—and at the best price.

Although a "true" portfolio analysis is a specialized and advanced management planning tool that can take months to complete and might even require help from a consultant, associations can perform their own simplified portfolio analyses by following four steps.

A portfolio analysis is one method associations can use to get a clear view of which programs are providing the most value to members—and at the best price.

Step 1: Identify Core Themes

First, pick about five broad core themes that express values that you think are most important to your mission. Ideally, these will come from your strategic plan or from member surveys. (At this point, don't use revenues or costs. These come later in the process.) Some examples of core values might be:

• Education accessibility. Members and potential members should be able to easily take advantage of our education programs because opportunities are located nearby, available online, or offered at convenient times.
• Prestige. Our programs should elevate our profession by making its value apparent to senior industry leaders, legislators, and the public.

Step 2: Rank Core Themes

Next, rank each of the themes on a scale of one to nine according to how important each is to your overall mission. In the example below, notice that there are nine possible rankings and only five themes. This allows you to emphasize a theme that is especially important. If multiple stakeholders are involved, you can either average all of the rankings or, even better, have a meeting where you discuss and come to a consensus on the rankings.

Theme	Jane's Ranking	Bill's Ranking	Laura's Ranking	Average	Weight
Accessibility	3	2	3	2.67	52.63%
Affordability	4	1	4	3.00	59.21%
Innovation	8	9	9	8.67	171.05%
Networking	2	4	2	2.67	52.63%
Prestige	9	8	8	8.33	164.47%

Next, divide the average ranking for each theme by the total average for all to get a percentage weight for each theme. This rate will give you a sense of how important each theme is relative to the others. Keep in mind that all themes in the example are important—that's why they were on the list in the first place—but in the example, the group believed that "prestige" and "innovation" were three times as important as "accessibility" and "networking."

Step 3: Rank Your Programs

Now, list each of your core programs or activities and give them a ranking of one to nine, based on how well they support each theme. As before, you can do this yourself or get consensus among other stakeholders:

Program Raw Scores	Accessibility	Affordability	Innovation	Networking	Prestige
Webinars	9	9	5	1	2
Annual Conference	2	2	8	9	8
Affinity Programs	6	4	2	1	1
Research	4	2	9	1	9
Print Publications	5	4	7	1	8

Then, multiply each of the programs' scores by the percentage weight calculated in Step 2. This produces an average value:

Weighted Scores	Accessibility	Affordability	Innovation	Networking	Prestige	Avg Value
Webinars	4.74	5.33	8.55	0.53	3.29	4.49
Annual Conference	1.05	1.18	13.68	4.74	13.16	6.76
Affinity Programs	3.16	2.37	3.42	0.53	1.64	2.22
Research	2.11	1.18	15.39	0.53	14.80	6.80
Print Publications	2.63	2.37	11.97	0.53	13.16	6.13

The average value tells you how well each program is serving your mission. In the example above, several of the programs have low scores in the "networking" theme, but they have high scores overall. That's because the "networking" theme has a low weight compared to other values. This ranking may provide useful insights into how well your programs are supporting your mission, but there's still one more step: the financial impacts of each program.

Step 4: Compare Financial Performance

In the final step, you compare how well each program supports your mission against how well it performs financially. This step requires a bit of math and Excel jui-jitsu, but the results are worth the effort. The trick is to establish an index for each score that can be compared against the other scores in a rational way.

Establishing an index for value alignment is easy: Just divide each program's weighted score by the weighted score of the lowest-scoring program, to get a value between one and five depending on how you ranked your programs.

The financial index is a little trickier: Subtract each program's net revenue from the net revenue of the most profitable program, then divide that value by the difference between the highest-revenue program and the lowest-revenue program. This is how the formula would look in Excel:

([Program Revenue] – MAX([Program Revenues]) / (MAX([Program Revenues]) - MIN([Program Revenues])

You might want to tweak the formula for your organization's specific needs. For example, if money is tight, you can add a multiplier to magnify the importance of profitable programs.

The result will yield something like this:

Program	Weighted Value	Revenue	Value Index	Rev. Index	Total Value
Webinars	4.49	($1,000.00)	2.02	-0.90	1.12
Annual Conference	6.76	$300,000.00	3.04	0.00	3.04
Affinity Programs	2.22	$35,000.00	1.00	-0.79	0.21
Research	6.80	($35,000.00)	3.06	-1.00	2.06
Print Publications	6.13	$10,000.00	2.76	-0.87	1.89

The total value gives you important insights about your programs. In the example above, research loses more money than any other program, but because it strongly supports all of the most important themes for the organization's mission, it is the second-most-valued activity. On the other hand, affinity programs are the lowest-ranked activity, even though they are the second-highest earner, which means that these programs don't support the organization's key themes well.

Even a simple portfolio analysis like this one can help you identify and quantify each program's value to your organization and make good decisions about how to allocate limited resources. While a true portfolio analysis is a lengthy and detailed process that yields many more insights, this simpler method can be done in the course of a single working session. Consider incorporating this analysis into your next planning sessions, and you may be surprised with the results.