Trend report shows big opportunities for small associations

How does your small association compare? Discover findings from a recent trend report to help you evaluate your organization and find big opportunities for improvement.

As you plan for your association’s future, it can help to know what’s going on at other associations like yours. For example:

• What’s happening behind the scenes at associations with small staffs?
• What are their top priorities?
• How are they meeting member needs?
• How technologically prepared are they for the future?

A recent report offers insights from the 2024 Association Trends Study by Community Brands about small associations and how they’re using technology. The report gives small associations industry benchmarks and tips to help them evaluate their own organizations and identify areas for improvement.

Insights and tips from the trend report for small associations

It turns out that small associations have big opportunities to better serve their members and prepare for the future. Here are just some of the findings from the report and tips for how you can use them to meet your priorities and grow your small association.

Associations undervalue some of the benefits that are most important to members – especially when it comes to giving members career advancement help. Members place greater importance than associations do on areas including job opportunities, keeping up with the latest industry technology, help with career advancement, professional standards, certifications, and training.

With the right tools and approaches, your association can easily give members more benefits to help them grow their careers. For example:

• Offer an online job board. Even with a small staff, your association can easily launch and manage a successful job board. YM Careers makes it easy to set up an online career center that provides your members with a focused group of job opportunities in their industry and resources to help them move their careers forward. It also integrates with YourMembership association management software (AMS), which is built for small to mid-sized associations. The solutions work together to help you create great member experiences and deliver more of the career help your members want.
• Provide year-round professional education opportunities. Your members look to your association for everything from continuing education to certifications. You can deliver educational content more efficiently with Freestone. It’s a learning management system (LMS) that integrates with YourMembership AMS to help small associations like yours to organize content and deliver a modern online continuing education experience.
• Get your members more connected. Connecting your members with each other can make it easier for your members to grow their network of contacts in your industry, which can help them to move their careers forward. A great way to do this is to offer an online community. YourMembership AMS includes functionality that makes it easy for small associations to create and manage a thriving online community where members can connect with each other to discuss topics and share ideas.

Small associations have work to do when it comes to being technologically prepared for the future. Only five percent of professionals from small associations say they feel very technologically prepared.

Some powerful ways to become more technologically prepared include:

• Refreshing your website. Your website should be modern and updated so that your organization appears more relevant and attractive to members and prospective members. YourMembership’s website editor makes it easy to create, edit, and design pages with no technical skills needed. YourMembership also offers optional website design services to help you create a modern and intuitive website design.
• Automating processes. Work more efficiently by streamlining and automating day-to-day processes, freeing your staff to spend more time delivering a great member experience. With YourMembership, you can easily automate previously manual processes, making your staff more efficient and reducing the workload.
• Using an all-in-one AMS. Moving to an all-in-one AMS solution like YourMembership reduces the number of systems you must pay for and maintain while giving you the benefits of storing and managing your member data in one place.

Learn more trends and insights to help your small association grow

Even with a small staff, your association has big opportunities. Read the full report about small association trends to learn:

• Insights on the strategic priorities and technology usage of small associations
• How your organization compares with other small associations
• Tips on how to use data from the report to more effectively meet your priorities and grow your organization