See this year's top priorities for associations, unions, and nonprofits with data from the 2026 Membership Performance Benchmark Report.
Every membership organization strives to improve and grow, but are you focusing on the right priorities?
Fresh insights from the 2026 Membership Performance Benchmark Report reveal the top goals and challenges your peers are tackling. We'll give you tips for each so you can address them effectively this year.
These insights and more in the complimentary 2026 Membership Performance Benchmark Report
Building meaningful connections with members remains the top goal for the fourth year in a row. By offering personalized experiences and interactive opportunities, organizations can foster deeper engagement and loyalty. The key is to understand what resonates most with your members and develop strategies around those insights.
Tip: Make it easy to analyze your engagement data. You can start engagement scoring and have an engagement dashboard in your membership management system. Organizations that with systems that support easy access to digestible data are significantly more likely to have increased member engagement in the past year (source: page 18 of the 2026 Membership Performance Benchmark Report).
Resources:
Member Engagement: A Guide + 12 Strategies to Win Loyalty (blog)
Retention strategies are vital for long-term sustainability. Ensuring members see ongoing value in their membership is the cornerstone of keeping them onboard.
According to the 2026 Membership Performance Benchmark Report, 45% of membership organizations increased retention, while another 31% held rates steady.
Tip 1: Regularly survey members to understand their needs and adapt your offerings to address them effectively.
Tip 2: Offer automatic renewals. For many membership organizations, automatic renewals are becoming a no-brainer. They create a more frictionless member experience and reduce manual work for your staff. With the right system, you can automate recurring membership payments via direct debit or credit card. Your staff and members will thank you.
Resource: Renew: Is Your Member Renewal Journey Magical or Miserable? (recorded webinar)
Attracting new members is essential for growth and vitality. Organizations must leverage innovative outreach strategies to appeal to prospective members.
Tip 1: Engage prospective members with an email campaign showcasing your member value proposition. Consider creating an email drip campaign to send an automated, personalized emails. This method took the #1 spot for best new-member recruiting strategies, with 39% of respondents listing it as a top three method.
Tip 2: Host valuable events and meetings. According to the 2026 Membership Performance Benchmark Report, 38% of respondents cited events as a top-performing method for recruitment. This was the second highest-cited method, coming close
Tip 3: Create a member referral program. Encouraging current members to spread the word is one of the most effective ways to reach new prospects, with 34% of respondents reporting success using this approach.
Resource: Recruit: Ensuring Your Member Onboarding Journey Gets Results (webinar recording)
By increasing member engagement through your online environment, you are building a stronger, lasting relationship. You need to remember your members are consumers and they want to feel valued and understood.
When you have a strong connection between your membership management system and your website, you can offer members:
Tip 1: Create a Single Source of Truth, so that you get a full picture of your membership and each individual member. Because you're pulling everything about your members together in one place, you can communicate with them on a highly personal level. More on this in challenge #3.
Tip 2: Even better than a tight integration between your membership management system and your website, use a system that has built-in website functionality. This way, you don't have to worry about data syncing issues.
Resource: Delivering an Unforgettable Web Experience (whitepaper)
iMIS empowers organizations like yours to drive member engagement, boost retention, and streamline operations—all on a single, unified platform.
CRM ✔ Accounting ✔ Events ✔ Personalized websites and portals ✔ Automation ✔ Dashboards and reporting ✔ The list goes on...
Your data is one of your most valuable assets, but do you have an expert (or team of experts) specifically tasked with keeping it clean, up-to-date, and reliable?
When you don't trust your data, it’s challenging to make data-driven decisions and share performance with your Board and other stakeholders.
To be truly useful, your data must be accurate, complete, up-to-date, consistent, and free from duplicates and inconsistencies. But, as we all know, this is harder than it sounds.
Tip 1: Use a solution that provides a single data source, offering exceptional business intelligence for historical, current, descriptive, and predictive analyses. Easy-to-use dashboards can also empower non-technical staff to create and access reports effortlessly. Analytics and reporting at both organizational and departmental levels ensure you can act on insights with confidence.
Tip 2: Appoint someone as your Data Wrangler. Data Wrangling is the process of cleaning, transforming, and organizing member data into a consistent, accurate, and reliable format your organization can leverage. Filling this important role will drive better decision-making, enhance operational efficiency, and minimize your risk. Data Wrangling is everyone's responsibility, but you need an expert.
Tip 3: Follow our 10-point plan to tame your member data from The Data Wrangler's Playbook.
Resource: The Data Wrangler’s Playbook (whitepaper)
Fragmented data creates inefficiencies and a poor experience for both members and staff. Membership organizations need a Single Source of Truth (SSoT). A Single Source of Truth brings all interactions with your members, donors and supporters in one database. This includes joins, renewals, purchases, event registrations, publications, donations, professional education, and more.
It also integrates your data with your organization’s website and your accounting system — so you have a complete 360° view of your membership base, and how they interact with your organization.
Tip: Consolidate your systems into a single, unified platform to ensure consistent and efficient data management. This shift won't happen overnight but is worth the effort so your organization can deliver better member value and make data-driven decisions.
In part 1 of our 3-part Performance Improvement Series, this educational guide highlights how a Single Source of Truth (SSoT) is the key to trusting your member data. Plus the 6 ways data silos are frustrating your members right now and what to do about them.
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iMIS empowers organizations like yours to drive member engagement, boost retention, and streamline operations—all on a single, unified platform.
CRM ✔ Accounting ✔ Events ✔ Personalized web portals ✔ Automation ✔ Dashboards and reporting ✔ The list goes on.
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