Each industry association develops a unique mission to respond to the special opportunities of its industry. Generally, industry associations are formed to: introduce and promote a new technology or business model as a viable alternative to existing solutions in the market; and/or create standards or specifications to facilitate the development of some new technology into a mature selection of products. Despite each association's unique mission,goals, and objectives, the founding members face a common set of requirements essential to the association's eventual success during the formation of the association: a clearly identified common problem (typically some market or technical barrier standing in the way of market expansion which is better resolved through collaboration than through competition); a clear purpose or "call to action" for the industry; and an active core group of founding companies prepared to invest in the solution and to provide leadership. While industry associations exist to address the issues in commercial markets (i.e., foster competition, etc.), the associations themselves do not exist to make profits and distribute monetary returns to their members. Therefore, whether or not an industry association formally incorporates itself as a nonprofit, mutual benefit corporation , it should structure itself and conduct its affairs as a nonprofit entity. Non-profit organizations, and industry associations in particular, are not inherently complex organizations to manage. However, the earlier an industry association engages experienced professionals to assist in the design and management of its organization, the sooner the organization's founders and members can focus on its needs by leaving management to the professionals. Industry associations are mutual benefit enterprises. They exist to create, produce and provide access to certain benefits for their members. They require access to a core set of services that allows the organization to create, manage and distribute its benefits to its membership. For industry associations in the computing and networking industry segments these core services involve a mix of traditional association management services plus the creation and management of the association's on-line presence for members to collaborate and to communicate with the market. These requirements are addressed in the six functional areas of L&M service offerings.

Because of the mutual benefit nature of industry associations it is very important that agents directly involved in the management and administration of the organization's business be independent in every way. Independence means: managing industry associations is the sole business of the agents; the agents should have no conflicting business relationships with entities who are, or might become, members of the associations managed by the agents; and the agents are not members of associations they manage.