Board meetings often reduce a year of work to one growth number, usually new members signed up. However, retention, non-dues revenue, and chapter growth should also be part of the growth conversation.
Measuring growth with only one number means your association or professional network may miss early signs of a member about to lapse, or revenue opportunities hiding in your existing base. You may also miss changes in how your members engage.
In this guide, we'll walk through the 4 growth levers you need to have in your association growth strategy. We'll also explore why growth stagnates and lay out a 5-step framework you can use to turn the levers into a working plan.
Let’s start with a quick preview of the 5 steps to building a practical association growth strategy:
We’ll discuss each step in detail later in the guide and walk you through the specific actions to take to change what your members experience.
Counting only the number of new members you sign up leaves out most of the growth indicators that show the health of an association or professional network. New signups alone miss who's leaving and what your non-dues revenue looks like. They also skip how far your community actually reaches and whether new members settle in during their first 90 days.
The following 4 levers explain the other forms of association growth you need to capture and why each lever matters to your members specifically:
As an association or professional network, you might look at your overall growth and think that there’s steady progress, even when 1 or more of the 4 levers barely move. This view skews reality and makes you less likely to try to improve the other non-performing levers.
Let’s go over the 4 main barriers that can stand in the way of your growth:
Let’s explore the solution to each of these barriers through the 5-step framework below.
The growth levers only help your members if you have a detailed plan to execute them together.
The 5 steps below walk you through what your plan should include, from setting a baseline to reviewing results every quarter:
Growth usually means something different for every association or professional network. For strong membership development, start with the basics: your organization’s definition of growth and the baseline you'll use to measure it.
Growth can mean having more members renew or getting more non-dues revenue. These are just a sample of the growth levers we discussed earlier.
Once you define what it means for your association, pull last year's actual numbers for membership growth and retention, non-dues revenue, and chapter or community size. Set these figures as your baseline against which you’ll measure the outcomes of the next steps.
Members and prospects need separate segments, and segmentation is easier and more effective when you understand your members' actual needs. If you use one list for both, you risk dividing your attention from what each group deserves based on its unique needs.
You can sort your current members by engagement level, from consistently active to those who have already lapsed within the last 12 months.
Build a separate list for prospects who've shown interest but haven't joined, ensuring you score them by how close they are to signing up.
Moving all growth levers at once can spread any team thin. For a start, pick 1 or 2 levers based on your baseline from step 1.
For example, if retention is already trending in the right direction, turning existing content into revenue is probably your best lever this year. A well-retained base is already primed to buy more from you.
If retention looks shaky, put your energy into boosting member engagement before adding a second lever.
Association growth management can break down easily if no one in your organization owns the process.
Name one person as the owner, assign them responsibility for each lever you chose in step 3, and have them report the numbers on a regular schedule. Give the owner a real budget line, even a small one, to ensure they have the resources they need to execute your growth strategy year-round.
Additionally, set a timeline with actual dates, such as one quarter for planning and several quarters for execution. The timeline can vary greatly depending on which lever you chose and how much time your team can realistically give it each week.
If you make a plan without a check-in schedule, it will fade as time goes by. Set a 90-day review schedule.
Every quarter, have the assigned owner report real numbers against the baseline from step 1 in a meeting. Based on the numbers and the outcome of the meeting, you can decide whether to replace each tested lever or let it run for another quarter.
The 5-step framework above builds your overall plan.
The 5 strategies below give your members specific reasons to join and stay, and several connect to more than 1 of the levers you chose in step 3:
You can point your new members toward one relevant group and one relevant course within their first few days and weeks. New members who receive a guided welcome sequence customized to their career stage or specialty are more likely to stay active longer than those who receive a general communication that offers little information.
Members who engage with personalized outreach from your team also tend to renew often.
You can pair an experienced member with a newer one to build a relationship that keeps both people engaged. Since the newer member feels valued, they often become an advocate and ask their colleagues to join your association or professional network.
A personal recommendation from someone a colleague trusts can mean more than an advertisement or other paid recruitment campaign. You can measure this strategy with a simple 60-90 day check-in to see whether the mentor relationship actually worked.
A certification or continuing education track gives a member a reason to renew year after year. Each completed credential also opens a natural moment to ask willing members to mentor the group behind them.
You can build a simple credential ladder with 2 or 3 levels so members always have a credential to work toward throughout the year.
Let members submit questions and case studies, giving community participants a reason to check in between events.
You can also use their input for your learning content too. When you let members shape your learning catalog, the courses you build match what they actually want to learn. Also, a content calendar or course catalog built partly from your members’ submissions costs less staff time than one written entirely in-house.
The same principle extends to your newsletter too. You can open a simple submission form on your community space, review submissions weekly, then feature 1 or 2 member contributions in every newsletter.
A member who stops logging in or skips a renewal reminder is likely to leave soon.
You can reach out to members at risk of lapsing using personalized messaging, which can save more members than a general renewal campaign.
To identify members at risk of leaving, you can set up 1 or 2 simple triggers, such as no login in 60 days or no email opens in 90 days. At this point, a real person reaching out with a personalized message gives that member a direct, human touchpoint at exactly the right time.
At Forj, we bring different growth strategies together in one connected experience. Your members can feel one relationship across community and learning through the following capabilities:
Schedule a free demo today to see how Forj can help you grow your organization beyond an increase in members.
Your board will ask what changed when it’s time to review your progress. Your answer will come from the same numbers you set as a baseline and the metrics you want to measure.
You can measure the 4 metrics below in addition to a raw membership count:
Besides these metrics, you can also rethink how you measure events because a single attendance number used alone can hide as much as a membership count that’s also used on its own.
Let’s close with questions association and professional network leaders ask often before committing to a growth plan:
The time an association growth strategy takes to show results can vary widely, depending on the complexity of your communities, the industry you operate in, and other factors.
Generally, you can expect early changes in member engagement once you personalize onboarding and outreach. Retention and non-dues revenue changes can take several renewal cycles to materialize.
Both strategies solve different problems.
A growth strategy focuses on the levers that need attention in the current year, which can be any or all of the 4 levers.
A strategic plan covers the whole organization across a multi-year horizon, with growth work being only one part of the entire goal.
Not really. Small associations and professional networks need the same growth framework as their larger counterparts, though in a smaller form.
A team of 1 or 2 people can pick a single lever for the year and follow the 90-day rhythm without the need for a full committee. A larger organization can manage several levers simultaneously.
It’s possible to grow membership while raising dues, provided the value your members receive grows at the same pace as the price.
For instance, an increase in dues that’s combined with new certification options or deeper community access won’t trigger the drop-off leaders expect. The risk appears when the price increases while the value stays the same.
You’ll know your association growth strategy is working effectively when your target growth levers belong in one connected system.
Retention keeps the members you already have, while your non-dues revenue funds what the members actually want. Chapter and community expansion reaches members you haven't found yet. New members who become active early are more likely to stick around to renew.
At Forj, we bring community and learning together with behavioral data in one connected experience, built specifically for associations and professional networks.
Your members stay in touch through community, while learning gives them a real reason to keep renewing and spending. Behavioral data flags which lever needs your attention before a member slips away.
Book a demo today to see how Forj can help you grow your organization.