The future of associations and what you can do to prepare

Associations must nurture and protect their missions to succeed.  

Here’s a look ahead from the general manager at YourMembership AMS about the future of the association sector and what you can do to prepare for it. 

By Quinn Hoffman, YourMembership General Manager, Community Brands

As an association professional, you recognize the value of your organization. Every day, associations like yours guide and support their industry or profession.  

Associations advocate for their industry. They provide members with the information, education, career development, and networking opportunities they need to thrive in their chosen field. And they connect employers in the industry with highly qualified talent.  

Here at YourMembership and our parent company, Community Brands, we appreciate the value of associations, too. We see how critical associations are to the success of the industries they serve. Personally, I’ve worked with association solutions teams at Community Brands for 14 years, and I’ve seen firsthand the powerful work our association clients do for their individual industries.  

That’s why I’m so excited to now serve as general manager for the YourMembership AMS team. 

The way I see it, our goal at YourMembership is simple. We’re focused on you and your membership. That means we continue to support the missions, visions, and futures of our customers in any way we can – from training and customer service to the product itself.   

The challenge for associations
Here’s what I think this means for the future of associations: After the past two years of ups and downs in the world, the key benefits for joining an association remain the same (the results from the 2022 Association Trends Study by Community Brands backs this up!). But they’re even more important today. 

Professionals need industry information, job opportunities, networking opportunities, and the support of an overall community now more than ever.  

But as I look ahead, a big concern is that large for-profit companies are targeting your members and prospective members. They’re trying to take the place of associations by providing training and education as well as gathering associations’ member data through social media sites.  

Associations need to own this space. THEY need to be the ones providing these much-needed benefits and then, in turn, advocate more effectively for the industries they serve. This way, instead of non-dues revenue going to specific for-profit companies, the money that members spend with their associations will go back into supporting their profession.  

It’s a great ecosystem. But it needs to be continually nurtured and protected. 

Supporting the future of associations 

As the world and technology continues to change, YourMembership continues to provide new features and functions that are vital to associations. Here’s a peek at just three of the recent ways we’re supporting the missions of associations: 

1) Use of insights and data
Insights into your membership are vital to your association’s ongoing success. Data insights uncover opportunities for growth and drive more informed business decisions.

The 2022 Association Trends Study suggests that while associations understand the importance of data analytics, many still are not investing in and using data analytics tools to advance their mission.

That’s why YourMembership offers advanced dashboards to help take your data to new levels. This new analytics feature includes:

• Business insights – View your association’s important data points in one accessible dashboard to easily keep track of your overall performance and assess your strategy.
• Quick, easy access to data for everyone – Provide these insightful dashboards to everyone across your organization, making it easier to visualize member data for quick and secure analysis and action.
• Focused data insights – Your entire organization can save time and uncover insights easily with data visualizations that can be filtered.

2) More career advancement opportunities
Another finding from the study: If you want to be the go-to resource for your industry or profession, you must provide members with resources to help them advance their individual careers.

Offering an online job board is a powerful solution. It gives you a way to provide members with the industry-specific career development resources they want while selling job postings and ads to employers in your industry.

YM Careers by Community Brands offers you the job board software and solutions you need to easily set up and manage an online career center. YourMembership AMS and YM Careers integrate easily to give you added benefits, including the ability to:

• Market to prospective members. Launch new member acquisition campaigns when non-member visitors to your career center are delivered to your AMS. 
• Engage and retain members more effectively. Data gathered from your job board and AMS can provide detailed information that helps in creating targeted marketing campaigns. 

• Drive more revenue. Your job board collects information such as who is actively job searching and what types of jobs they’re seeking. This data can be passed to your AMS for you to analyze for marketing non-dues generating products and services.

This is just a small sampling of what we’re doing to support the future of associations. Wactch our latest Yourmembership AMS July Town Hall to learn more about how YourMembership AMS is ready to help your organization succeed for years to come.