Michigan Association of Certified Public Accountants (MICPA)

Event Garde Equips MICPA with Statewide Member Insights to Drive Strategic Action

“Event Garde was an exceptional partner in helping MICPA better understand and engage our diverse membership. Their thoughtful approach to survey design, stakeholder workshops, and data synthesis provided us with clear, actionable insights that are already shaping our strategic direction. The team was highly collaborative, organized, and brought a level of expertise that made the entire process seamless and impactful.”

- Katie Gadulka, CAE, CMP SVP, Chief Member Experience Officer

Benefit Summary

A multi-phase research plan provided both the statistical credibility of a broad member survey (508 respondents) and the depth of structured qualitative dialogue — giving leadership a complete, trustworthy picture of where member value is strong, where gaps exist, and what the association should prioritize next.
Five segment-specific workshops (44 total participants) surfaced the distinct needs of each member group, enabling MICPA to move from generalized programming to precisely targeted strategies.
Deliberately recruited underrepresented voices — including small firm practitioners and business and industry professionals — were meaningfully engaged, ensuring no major member segment was left out of the conversation.
A phased strategic roadmap of 12 recommendations gave MICPA leadership a clear framework for prioritizing investments and communicating member-driven action back to the membership.

Challenge

MICPA serves a diverse, statewide membership—from solo practitioners and large firms to corporate CPAs and accounting educators/future CPAs—yet lacked current, segmented data on what members actually valued and needed. Their last comprehensive member research was several years old, and the profession had shifted considerably since.

Without targeted listening, the association risked misaligning its programs, investing in the wrong priorities, and losing relevance with members who felt overlooked—particularly those outside Metro Detroit and in niche industry segments. MICPA needed a research approach rigorous enough to surface real strategic gaps, yet structured enough to yield clear, actionable direction rather than an overwhelming volume of raw feedback.

Solution

Event Garde designed and deployed a 15-question segmented member survey distributed to MICPA’s full membership, paired with five virtual two-hour Consensus Workshops using the Technology of Participation (ToP) method—a proven facilitation approach that builds genuine group consensus rather than simply aggregating individual opinions.

Each workshop engaged a distinct, deliberately recruited member segment—small firms, mid-size firms, large firms, business and industry, and accounting educators/future CPAs—ensuring that voices typically drowned out in broad surveys were heard on their own terms. Event Garde managed all logistics, facilitation, analysis, and synthesis, delivering a final report that integrated both quantitative benchmarks and qualitative consensus into 12 prioritized strategic recommendations organized by planning horizon.

Finish

MICPA emerged from this engagement with one of the most thorough member listening efforts in its history—quantitative benchmarks across key value and engagement metrics, and rich qualitative consensus from participants representing five distinct member segments. The combination of broad survey data and deep workshop dialogue gave leadership both statistical grounding and the kind of nuanced member voice that surveys alone rarely capture.

Rather than wading through raw data, MICPA’s team received a clear, prioritized roadmap tied directly back to member input—making it easier to build internal consensus, allocate resources confidently, and communicate to members that their feedback led to real action. The engagement reinforced MICPA’s identity as a forward-thinking, member-driven association positioned to lead the profession through a period of significant change.

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