Every membership organization strives to improve and grow, but are you focusing on the right priorities?
Fresh insights from the 2025 Membership Performance Benchmark Report reveal the top goals and challenges your peers are tackling—and how you can address them effectively to thrive this year.
These insights and more in the complimentary 2025 Membership Performance Benchmark Report
Building meaningful connections with members remains a top priority. 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: Create a formal engagement plan. According to the 2025 Membership Performance Benchmark Report, organizations with a clear engagement strategy can see a positive impact on event and webinar attendance, annual conference participation, and membership renewal rates.
Resources:
Retention strategies are vital for long-term sustainability. Ensuring members see ongoing value in their membership is the cornerstone of keeping them onboard.
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? (Webinar)
Attracting new members is essential for growth and vitality. Organizations must leverage innovative outreach strategies to appeal to prospective members.
Tip 1: Host valuable events and meetings. According to the 2025 Membership Performance Benchmark Report, 52% of respondents cited events as a top-performing method for recruitment.
Tip 2: Create a member referral program. Encouraging current members to spread the word is one of the most effective ways to reach new prospects, with 46% of organizations reporting success using this approach.
Resource: Recruit: Ensuring Your Member Onboarding Journey Gets Results
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 — including joins, renewals, purchases, event registrations, publications, donations, and professional education — together in one database.
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.
Customizations often create inefficiencies and complexity, making it difficult to scale operations effectively.
Tip: Another challenge that can be addressed with a Single Source of Truth (SSoT). An SSoT eliminates the need for customizations. With most functionality already built-in, you can avoid costly integrations, reduce reliance on IT, and maintain an efficient upgrade path. The right SSOT also offers seamless two-way integration for any specialty applications you may need.
Resource: The Ultimate Guide to Association Software (Guide)
Without effective reporting, it’s challenging to make data-driven decisions and demonstrate value to stakeholders.
Tip: 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.
Resource: Becoming a Learning Organization (Whitepaper)