Here's a sobering exercise: look honestly at the average age of your membership and the rate at which younger people are joining. For a lot of associations, the picture is quietly alarming — a loyal, ageing core and too few younger members coming through behind them. An organisation that doesn't continually attract the next generation isn't stable; it's slowly ageing into decline.
Younger professionals often engage differently — different expectations of value, different ways they want to connect, different reasons to join. An association built entirely around how things were done twenty years ago can feel irrelevant to someone early in their career, however excellent it is. Reaching them isn't about chasing trends; it's about genuinely understanding what they need from a professional community and meeting them there.
This isn't only a marketing project — it's an existential one, and it belongs on the board's radar. The decisions you make now about relevance to younger members determine whether the organisation thrives in twenty years or fades with its founding generation.
Ask the hard question: if no one under forty joined for the next five years, what would our association look like? If that thought is uncomfortable, it's pointing at the work.
Future-proofing membership across generations is a strategic thread through What Every Association CEO Needs to Know.
Explore the Association CEO course
Free first step: the Membership Health Scorecard.
Annie
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