So why join RDO?
Soul searching “So Why Join RDO?” and why this topic? For the very simple reason it would be pretty amazing if the one or two Finance Managers, Managing Directors, Board Members or one or two senior Executive didn’t ask that question – “Why do we pay this money to RDO?”. Likewise I don’t think I’d be doing my job properly if I didn’t ask myself that same question, if only to ensure that whatever RDO is doing, it is doing for the benefit of its members.
But let’s be clear from the very beginning, I am not going to try to prove the impossible, in other words I recognise that as a pure question of a commercial return, RDO can never hope to establish that an individual member will receive the full value of his/her membership in terms of Euros and cents or pounds and pence. But I suspect that is true of most trade associations, I don’t know of a single such organisation in Europe or elsewhere that a member joins because they believe they will get a financial return on their membership.
Organisations and individuals join trade associations because they want to benefit from the security gained from pooled experience, for their industry to be represented in the UK, Europe and elsewhere, with the powers that be and for their business to be safeguarded wherever possible from the most damaging elements of legislation and the claims companies where applicable and for the benefits of the products to be publicised wherever possible. Broadly I would say these are the main aims of most trade associations and they are what RDO aims to achieve.
I don’t intend to justify today how well RDO has done in achieving these objectives, but the recent changes to legislation that RDO has worked so hard for over nearly 10 years in Spain, stand as an example of what RDO can achieve for members. I would say that to date, RDO has fulfilled those key objectives (some of which I am currently unable to discuss, for legal reasons), and I cannot see why that will not continue, as it is not possible to predict every issue that will arise “out of the blue” as was the case with the first Spanish Supreme Court decision back in 2015.
So why do we still have a small but significant handful of developers in Europe not members of RDO? Is there a rationale behind this? Is it because these developers don’t believe they can meet RDO’s Code of Ethics and are operating outside the law? I think not in most cases. I am pretty convinced that both their reputation and their size means that they would in any event be working within the ambit of our Code. Are they members of another rival association? Unlikely, as there isn’t an alternative association that represents the industry in front of the media and legislators. Is it the cost? I would be very surprised if these organisations at the end of the day would have trouble meeting the membership fees applied by RDO. So what is the reason?
Sad to say, I believe it is a combination of reasons – part historical in that there will in the past have been a falling out or a political disagreement between the developer and the trade association and even now some individuals or organisations are just unable to grasp that nettle or overcome that prejudice and get back into the club. In other cases I concede that there may be an economic reason why they hesitate, but here there is a fundamental dishonesty, because those organisations are only too happy to slip stream behind the work RDO does in the UK, Spain and other Member States on proposed or existing legislation, or to pass on complaints from their owners to RDO’s Enforcement Team to track down fraudsters, thus they are happy to let others shoulder the cost of this work, as has happened in Spain, but see nothing wrong in failing to bear their share of the costs associated with these activities.
So where does that leave us? I have strayed considerably from where I originally started, but it is a fact that any trade association is only as strong as its membership and the more you put into such an organisation, the more you get out of it.
