Connection is the Heart of Association Membership

The Power of Gathering: Why Events Still Define Membership Value

Across academic and scientific communities, one truth has been consistent throughout 2025. Members seek opportunities to learn, but even more importantly, they are seeking opportunities to belong. This year’s KGL Annual Reports on Membership Activities point to a consistent insight across disciplines and geographies: Members join for knowledge, but they stay for connection.

Meetings across the associations we support continued to draw participants from multiple countries and from academic, industry, and public sector communities. This mirrors a wider industry trend. Traditional conferences and face to face events remain the highest valued engagement tool, with nearly nine in ten leaders calling them the most effective way to connect members. Naylor’s 2025 Association Benchmarking Report reinforces this momentum, showing that every event category gained favorability this year with none declining.  Event attendance is also the single most important indicator of member engagement across the sector[1]. Even as digital tools expand access and enhance year round communication, real time interaction continues to be the moment when communities feel most aligned and energized.

Beyond Conferences: The Rise of Experiential Engagement

While annual conferences remain foundational, many associations are also investing in smaller scale programs that deliver high-value experiences. Lectures, workshops, guided excursions, and hands on learning opportunities invited members to connect more deeply with one another, creating meaningful engagement across the communities we support this year. These activities offered opportunities for exploration, informal networking, and shared discovery, deepening the sense of belonging that members consistently say they value most.

Virtual programming also played a critical role. Webinars, online lecture series, and hybrid formats ensured that members across time zones and career stages could still participate. However, even with strong digital attendance, the most notable spikes in overall engagement were consistently linked to live experiences where members could exchange ideas in real time.

Events as Strategic Engines for Growth

Financial data from this year’s reports underscores another important pattern. Events remain a central driver of revenue for many associations. Registrations, sponsorships, exhibitor participation, and even non-conference programs contribute to financial stability and support year round operations.

Both industry wide benchmarks and our own analysis show that events play a critical role in new member recruitment. In Marketing General Incorporated’s 2025 Membership Marketing Benchmarking Report, association sponsored events and meetings ranked among the top three most effective channels for acquiring new members. The report also highlights that conference registration discounts are the single most commonly used offer when recruiting new members, underscoring how closely membership growth is tied to event participation[2].

These national patterns align closely with what we observed across the associations we support. Events allow prospective members to experience a community in motion. They showcase expertise, reinforce mission, and provide leadership with an opportunity to share direction and vision. Most importantly, they create shared moments that remind members why they belong and why their membership continues to matter.

Confronting the Attendance Challenge

Yet alongside these strengths, associations are facing new challenges around participation. Industry benchmarking data shows a rising concern about participation at live, virtual, and hybrid events. In Naylor’s 2025 Benchmarking Report, improving member attendance debuted as number five among the top communication challenges. At the same time, Marketing General Incorporated reports a year over year decline in attendance growth at in person annual events, with only 53% of associations seeing increased attendance this year, compared with 62% the previous year.

These shifts point to an important reality. Members still want to gather, but they expect more intentional, efficient, and personalized ways to connect and learn. Competing priorities, expanded digital options, shifting travel budgets, and crowded calendars make it harder for events to stand out without a thoughtful approach to design and communication.

Associations, however, have a range of effective strategies available. Earlier and consistent marketing ensures key dates are seen before competing events and before budgets are planned. Smaller regional gatherings can meet members where they are, while more interactive virtual programming expands access and complements in person offerings. Reimagining live events to emphasize unique value encourages participation, and associations can also reassess the networking opportunities that arise between speaker sessions, creating environments that naturally encourage informal conversation and peer connection during those transition times. Additional approaches include personalizing outreach by interest area, strengthening speaker and content diversity, and creating clear event value propositions tied to networking, community, and career growth.

These proactive efforts demonstrate that attendance challenges are not a sign of diminishing relevance. Instead, they reflect a shifting landscape in which members expect clarity, flexibility, and purpose from the events they choose to attend.

Looking Forward: Strengthening Community Through Intentional Connection

As associations prepare for 2026, the message from this year is clear. Technology will continue to enhance accessibility and streamline operations, but connection will always be at the heart of membership. In a landscape filled with on demand learning options, the opportunity to engage with peers remains irreplaceable.

Associations that intentionally invest in meaningful experiences will continue to cultivate loyal, active, and inspired members. Whether through conferences, virtual discussions, collaborative workshops, or field based learning, the associations that thrive will be the ones that create spaces where members can see themselves in the mission and in one another.

Looking ahead, the most successful associations will be those that treat connection as a strategic priority. When members feel connected to one another, they feel connected to the mission, and that sense of shared purpose deepens engagement in ways no system or automation can replicate. By investing in valuable experiences that bring people together, associations strengthen loyalty, elevate member value, and build communities that thrive long into the future.

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[1] 2025 Association Benchmarking Report. Naylor Association Solutions, 2025. Data drawn from 385 association executives surveyed March–April 2025.

[2] Marketing General Incorporated. (2025). 2025 Membership Marketing Benchmarking Report. Marketing General Inc.

The KGL Association Management team offers full-service management and à la carte options for regional, state, and national scholarly societies and professional associations.