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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 lot of associations produce a magazine — hard copy or electronic — as part of the member benefits package. And for many of them, pulling together each quarterly edition feels arduous, thankless, and disconnected from any real return.
Membership growth is not a membership problem. It’s a governance one.
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The membership fee strategy is not an accounting exercise. It is a leadership decision. And if your Board is setting fees based on what feels comfortable rather than what the organisation needs, you are already behind.
How we help membership based, not-for-profit associations now and into the future.
