What this is, on the record.
The homepage makes the case. This page is the file: what the association is, who runs it, and how it is kept honest.
Why it exists
Entertainment research is in the middle of the largest shift in how the work gets done in a generation. What data can be trusted, what methods cost, what a deliverable is for, what a team is expected to produce: all of it is moving at once, and most of it is being worked out privately, company by company, with no way to compare results.
Next Practice exists so the field can work it out together. Members compare real experience: what was tried, what held, what failed, and what it took to get it approved. The association publishes what can be published and protects what can’t.
It is not a standards body. Nothing produced here is doctrine, an audit, or a certification, and no one reviews anyone’s methodology for compliance. The test of the association is simpler: a researcher facing a new question should be able to find, quickly, the people who have already faced it.
The legal entity
Next Practice is a program of the Entertainment Audience Research Association, incorporated as a nonprofit, with 501(c)(6) status pending. Next Practice is the working name. The association is the legal body behind it, and the legal name appears on filings, contracts, and member agreements.
The form is deliberately ordinary. The IRS recognizes more than 60,000 trade and professional associations in the United States: the doctors have one, the actuaries have one, the economists and the homebuilders have theirs. A 501(c)(6) is the standard instrument by which a profession looks after the field as a whole while every member keeps their own business interests intact, and belonging to one is a normal part of a senior career. Entertainment research never built its own. This association is that.
How it is governed
The association is member-led. The board sets the calendar, reviews applications, safeguards the rules, and remains publicly accountable for the room it creates. It also keeps the agenda on open questions, not settled ones: when a question stops being open, it comes off the table.
Every association setting runs under a written antitrust policy, restated at the open of every session.
Every seat publishes its name, role, professional affiliation, and relevant conflict disclosures on this page before public applications open.
The President seat is open. Nominations welcome at hello@nextpracticeassociation.org.
The vendor rule
Membership is individual and portable. It moves with you between jobs, and you keep it while you’re looking for the next one.
One hard rule: if any part of your pay depends on winning or keeping client accounts, you can’t be a member. A room stops being useful the moment someone in it is selling, and how you get paid is the only reliable test. Vendor-side people in non-revenue roles are admitted case by case, and vendor-side members stay under ten percent of the roster.
Admissions are decided by the non-vendor members of the board, without exception.
Disclosures
Next Practice was founded by Jesse Divnich, of Good Entertainment Group and Good Gamer Group, entertainment and gaming communities, and Interpret LLC, a research vendor serving the games and entertainment industry. That is published here from day one, because the vendor rule has to apply hardest at the top.
The founder holds the Chair seat, is excluded from all admissions decisions, and does not vote on membership. A President is being recruited to run day-to-day operations.
The association is funded by the founder until it has funding of its own. There are no dues.