Jo asks
What professional association do I join? One? Two? All? I know this is tricky question and high levels of diplomacy may be required – but how does a newbie choose between the associations? My RTO has given no advice and all associations seem to offer the same or similar benefits.
The good news is that you don’t have to join a celebrant association, it’s a choice you get to make. As for which association, and there’s many, you ought to look at the benefits membership brings you.
As I skim the membership benefits pages of many of the associations, I see insurance being offered by many, although because of my corporate structure I have public liability insurance separately, some offer celebrant software, some offer copyright licensing, and others offer mentoring, meetings, and online forms and Facebook groups (oh so many Facebook groups), and if pushed I personally don’t see immediate benefit to many of them outside of discounted insurance.
Liaising with the Attorney-General’s department
There is however an important aspect of celebrant associations that many associations are dropping, that’s their liaising with the AGD office.
From this week’s issue of Marriage Celebrant Matters
The department met with marriage celebrant associations on 2 May 2018. Sixteen celebrants representing fourteen celebrant associations were in attendance. Issues discussed included improving consultation approaches between associations and the department, changes to the Marriage Act 1961 for marriage equality, and consultation activities including the review of official marriage forms. The meeting also included a presentation by the Department of Finance on the Australian Government Charging Framework. The department held a teleconference with associations on 10 August 2018 and the next face to face meeting is scheduled for mid-October.
Celebrant associations have a seat at the table with the AGD.
Our AGD needs to be held accountable to decisions they make, plus there needs to be open communication between that office and the celebrant population. In recent times our own Sarah Aird has taken that upon herself and if we don’t support associations, or have one worth joining, this kind of work will fall on individual shoulders.
Maybe that’s what the future of marriage celebrancy in Australia looks like?
The need to join an association has changed immensely even since I was registered just five years ago. Back then there were no Facebook groups of celebrants to join to get assistance and camaraderie, people didn’t really seem to reach out and connect much with other celebrants, and life as a celebrant was generally much more isolated. An association was important because it provided assistance through online forums (mainly Yahoo forums), networking opportunities to meet other celebrants, and the business benefits Josh has mentioned (insurance, celebrant software, copyright licence, etc).
Nowadays there are many, many Facebook groups of wedding professionals and celebrants that you can join without being a member of an association. Instagram and Facebook have let new celebrants reach out to established celebrants without the need to meet through an association. All the business benefits are easily accessible through independent means (although it may prove cost-effective to get them through an association membership). So I don’t think it’s as important now as it was then to join an association.
However the one thing my association membership does give me is access to celebrants I might not otherwise come across; people in rural or regional areas, and people in a different age or branding bracket. Although I may get fed up and frustrated with the views and practices of some of those people, I think it’s important to be aware of the entirety of the types of people who work in our profession, and if we want to effect any sort of change in the wider industry, we have to be prepared to talk to all of the people, not just the ones we are aligned with.
The point Josh brings up about liaising with the AGD is certainly an important one, however it’s problematic from my perspective. We know that less than half of all civil celebrants in Australia belong to an association (somewhere around 3000 out of 8439 celebrants are association members). The only people who get to speak to the AGD on a regular basis are association representatives, and they are clearly not representing the majority of celebrants in the country. I can’t decide if that means we should be promoting association membership so that more people are represented by these meetings, or if it means more people should be agitating individually when problems arise, rather than relying on the association meetings to get anything done. It’s a tricky one, and I’m interested in others’ thoughts…
In terms of actually answering Jo’s original question of how does one choose which association to join, this is the way I did it. I looked at all the associations and created a spreadsheet (yes, we know I’m a nerd) of how much they charged, what they offered, and where they held meetings. Some associations are state-based, so any outside Victoria were off the table. One Melbourne-based association held their meetings on the other side of the universe, so I figured that wasn’t going to be a lot of use to me. I ended up joining all three of the associations that were left after doing that elimination exercise; I dropped the first after six months and the second after 18 months because they simply weren’t meeting any of my needs. I’m still in the AFCC and I’ve now joined The Celebrant Society. Again, this one is a personal choice and you need to look at what will work for you and what you think you might need to get out of an association.