Memberships - How many is too many?

I was recently on LinkedIn and saw a question posed by someone that read something like this. "Are organizations charging too much for memberships?" My response was, "Well, not too much if you're a small company like myself and only have one to pay". However, most companies are not small like me and it can easily costs thousands of dollars for all of the various memberships. Most organizations charge by the employee count, so you are charged whether any or all of your employees want to attend the functions. And, since we are bombarded by advertising everyday that we must be everywhere, most companies are members of at least 2-3 different professional, social and other work-related groups. When you combine these costs they can become a real issue for many companies.

I know for myself that when I first started my company I joined 4-5 organizations expecting to attend all of the meetings and other gatherings. I was going to conquer the social networking game and rake in the clients. A year later I have dropped all but 2 of those groups and just today joined the Retail Merchants Association (RMA). I found that I could easily spend 1/3 of my waking hours just responding to emails, webinars, attending weekly/monthly meetings and generally being a good member. However, when I stopped to really analyze that time I found that very little of it contributed directly to my bottom line.

I'm very optimistic about the RMA. I know there are a lot of companies that could use my services, and now it's my job to explain why and how. I look forward to that challenge and I'll let you know next year how many groups to which I still belong.