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Last week, I ran our third Membership Special Interest Group. The room was full of Membership Managers from across the sector — experienced people, doing good work. But when I asked one simple question, the conversation shifted.
For most in the room, the honest answer was: we’re not.
Many association management platforms charge by the number of members or contacts in your system. The more non-member data you capture, the more you pay — a quiet tax on growth. So associations end up with systems built to manage existing members, not attract new ones.
If your platform penalises you for capturing interest, you can’t build a pipeline. And without a pipeline, you’re not growing — you’re replacing.
Every event attendee, webinar registrant, and resource downloader who isn't a member is a signal worth capturing — and most associations let those signals go to waste.
The fix isn't complicated:
Build a journey designed for people who are interested but not yet in
But none of it works without a platform that supports it. If yours doesn't, that's the first conversation to have.
A renewal invoice is not a request for last year's money. It is a request to pay for next year's benefits. The moment a member — individual or corporate — opens that invoice, they make a decision: renew, or walk.
If your association is thinking about a rebrand because the colours look dated or a Board member doesn't like the typeface, stop. That's not the question worth asking. The real question is harder: does your organisation still represent the sector it claims to lead?
A website project is a governance decision with a technology component, not the other way round. The associations that get it right are the ones that invest in discovery, requirements, and contract scrutiny before a single pixel is designed. The ones that get it wrong skip straight to the demo, fall for the referral, and find out about ownership, integration, and total cost when it is too late to do anything but pay.
How we help membership based, not-for-profit associations now and into the future.
