Think about the process of planning a conference or other major event for your association. You likely spend months determining the event’s theme, assembling an agenda, developing marketing materials, and handling behind-the-scenes logistics.

Without a solid plan, your events wouldn’t be nearly as successful. Clear direction ensures you attend to every detail and create a cohesive member experience. Have you ever considered taking the same approach for your association more broadly?

While many association leaders develop plans for specific initiatives, they may not zoom out to analyze the bigger picture of how their organizations should run as a whole. Building an association strategy helps you focus on what’s important, align your team on your priorities, and fortify the overall member experience.

To help you create an association strategy that keeps your organization on track and fuels membership growth, we’ll walk you through the following topics:

• What is an association strategy?
• Why is it important for your association to have a strategy?
• How to Develop an Association Strategy: 8 Steps
• 9 Pitfalls to Avoid When Planning Your Association Strategy

Develop an association strategy that engages members and fuels growth.

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What is an association strategy?

An association strategy is an overarching plan that guides your association and helps your organization grow. This strategic plan should encompass various areas, including:

• Your mission. Your mission summarizes your association’s guiding principles. All activities and initiatives you plan should align with your mission and reflect your organization’s core purpose.
• Association management. The back-office operations that keep your organization running smoothly ensure you can provide a positive member experience. Your association strategy should cover areas like governance and technology infrastructure to streamline behind-the-scenes tasks.
• Financial management. Appropriate fund management allows you to execute the programs and initiatives members love and grow your organization sustainably. Determine how you’ll budget for different expenses, diversify non-dues revenue, and maintain compliance with relevant regulations.
• Marketing. Association growth also depends on a strong marketing approach that entices current and prospective members to get involved. Craft a strategy for promoting your organization across channels like your website, email, and social media.
• Membership engagement. Once you acquire members, you need to actively work to provide an engaging member experience that keeps them coming back. Plan activities and events that excite members and solicit active participation.

By combining these elements, you’ll create a comprehensive strategic plan that prioritizes your mission, keeps your organization stable, develops your community, and fuels future growth.

Why is it important for your association to have a strategy?

To maximize success, your association needs a strategy to focus and guide your team. This central plan helps your organization because it:

• Clarifies priorities. An association strategy helps your team get to the heart of what matters most to your organization. That way, you can ensure your mission statement is not just a sentence on your website, but instead, a catalyst for action.
• Aids resource allocation. Nonprofits are often stretched thin with limited funds. By creating a strategy that emphasizes what’s important, you can more easily allocate resources to the areas that will fuel your mission.
• Helps serve members more effectively. Sticking to the same activities and initiatives likely won’t fully engage members. Developing, revisiting, and updating an association strategy keeps your programming fresh and reflective of members’ current needs.
• Enables growth. Taking the time to think about your association’s future allows your team to explore new opportunities. You may develop new revenue streams, create new programming, or adopt new technology to transform your operations.
• Builds resilience. Change is inevitable. Whether your association is weathering an economic downturn, a dip in federal funding, a global crisis, a local natural disaster, or anything in between, having a predetermined strategy allows your team to make stronger decisions and adapt in the face of uncertainty.
• Improves accountability. Aligning your team around a central strategy ensures everyone knows their roles in making your association successful. Additionally, developing an association strategy helps you stay accountable to external stakeholders like members and sponsors by creating clear benchmarks and sticking to them.

When you have a strategy guiding your team, everyone benefits: your staff, board, leadership, sponsors, and most importantly, your members.

How to Develop an Association Strategy: 8 Steps

With a better understanding of why having an association strategy is so important, you’re now ready to build your own. Follow these steps to set your strategy up for success.

1. Refine your mission.

Your mission provides focus to your team and the rest of your plan. If you’re a new association just starting out, sit down with your team to draft a mission statement. Ask yourself the following questions to start brainstorming:

• Why are we creating this association?
• What gap in the association space are we filling?
• Who will we serve?
• What programming and resources will we provide?
• What is our intended impact?

If you run an established association with an existing mission statement, decide whether you need to rework it or not. For instance, when you started your association, your main focus may have been to grow your membership, whereas now, as a large, fully formed association, you may be more focused on enriching members’ experiences and boosting member engagement.

2. Assess your organization’s current state.

Before developing a strategy that will inform your association’s future, you must understand where your organization currently stands. Conduct a SWOT—strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats—analysis to determine your starting point and explore how your organization could progress.

For example, here’s what a SWOT analysis might look like for a legal professional association:

• Strengths (positive internal factors): positive reputation in the legal field, robust member base spanning various legal sectors, and high-quality programming
• Weaknesses (negative internal factors): outdated association management software (AMS), difficulty attracting early-career professionals, and lack of diversity in leadership
• Opportunities (positive external factors): potential partnership with legal technology companies, chance to explore the needs of younger generations of attorneys, and opportunity to discuss legal reform with members to engage them in the field’s current events
• Threats (negative external factors): economic downturn that could decrease membership, changing bar requirements that may make some association offerings obsolete, and alternative, cheaper Continuing Legal Education (CLE) providers emerging

Based on your SWOT analysis, determine which type of strategic plan you need. For example, suppose you already have a fully fleshed-out strategy, and your main concern is the economic shift that could impact membership renewals. In that case, you may just need a short-term, issue-based plan that’s narrowly focused on that specific area. However, if you don’t have a strategic plan or need to work on multiple areas, a traditional, comprehensive association strategy is your best bet.

3. Engage key stakeholders.

The more stakeholders you involve in your strategic planning process, the more well-rounded your association strategy will be. Your staff, board, leadership, sponsors, and members should all have a chance to give their input so your final plan reflects their perspectives and experiences with your organization.

To involve as many stakeholders as possible, your association can:

• Send surveys. Solicit stakeholder feedback with surveys about your association’s current state and vision for your organization’s future. They may suggest new programming, recommend hosting events more frequently, or ask if your association could cover a certain topic in greater detail in its educational materials.
• Hold focus groups. For more in-depth input, bring different stakeholders together for a focus group. That way, they can expand upon their thoughts in real time and help you workshop new ideas.
• Host a strategic planning workshop. Consider hosting a workshop dedicated to developing or refining your strategic plan. Partner with an association consultant to lead discussions and ensure everyone’s voice is heard.

Your association’s strategy should ultimately serve the people who make up your community. By involving them in the strategic planning process, you can identify their pain points, unmet needs, and expectations and incorporate these findings into your plan.

4. Set clear goals.

Take what you’ve learned from your SWOT analysis and stakeholder feedback to create goals that will steer your strategy. Leverage the SMART goal framework, which stands for specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound, to ensure your goals are actionable.

Here’s what this might look like:

• Specific: We want to boost member engagement by expanding our educational resources and hosting more events throughout the year.
• Measurable: We’d like to increase our member engagement rate by 20%.
• Achievable: Last year, we saw a 10% increase in member engagement, and with stronger tactics for getting members involved, we believe a 20% increase is possible this year.
• Relevant: This goal is relevant to our mission because we aim to provide an enriching member experience that helps members further their careers and build community.
• Time-bound: We have a year to accomplish this goal. We plan to finalize the new educational resources by the end of Q1 and plan at least one event per quarter.

The final SMART goal may look something like this:

“Our association’s goal is to boost member engagement by 20% this year by expanding the educational resources we provide by the end of Q1 and planning at least one event per quarter.”

Repeat this process for each priority you’ve identified until you have several key objectives for your team to focus on.

5. Create an action plan.

Now that you have clear goals, you’ll need a plan to implement them. Follow these steps to create an action plan that pushes your goals forward:

1. Break goals down into smaller tasks. Translate your goals into individual tasks for team members to complete. Continuing with the example in the previous section, potential tasks could be researching what educational resources other associations offer, booking event venues, and reaching out to potential event sponsors.
2. Prioritize these tasks. Organize tasks based on which initiatives they support, and order them from most to least important. That way, team members know what to tackle first.
3. Assign responsibilities. Distribute tasks among team members so everyone knows exactly what they’re responsible for. Set deadlines and check-ins to measure progress.
4. Determine any resources you’ll need. Note anything needed to streamline tasks or accomplish your overarching goals. For instance, you may adopt a new software solution or enlist the help of a member-based organization consultant.

Additionally, align your budget with your priorities so you can allocate resources to these initiatives. For example, you may set aside funds to invest in a new event management platform or learning management system.

6. Build in flexibility.

Your association strategy should grow and change with your organization and its evolving circumstances. Making your plan flexible ensures your team can easily adapt and stay mission-focused, regardless of what has changed since you created your initial strategy.

Leverage these tips to build flexibility into your association’s strategy:

• Revisit your strategic priorities. Your goals are likely a snapshot of a specific moment in time for your organization. For example, while in one year you might focus on new member acquisition, you may prioritize member retention the following year. By revisiting your priorities annually or semi-annually, you can update your goals based on what’s most relevant to your association and use those objectives to guide your strategy.
• Develop check-ins. Schedule regular meetings with your team to monitor goal progress. If you’re behind on any of your objectives, you can adjust your plan or implement new strategies to catch up.
• Leverage scenario planning. Scenario planning is the process of developing different versions of your budget based on potential financial situations. By preparing for your association’s best-case, worst-case, and most-likely scenarios, you can quickly adjust your resource allocation to uphold your overarching strategy.
• Create a financial reserve. Situations beyond your association’s control may impact your ability to deliver services. Setting aside a percentage of your association’s budget as a financial reserve maximizes the chances you can continue to execute your strategy, even in dire circumstances, such as a natural disaster or economic downturn.

The more flexible your strategy is, the better your association can weather unexpected shifts, stay on track with its goals, and continue to provide an excellent member experience.

7. Share your strategy with stakeholders.

Once you’ve finalized your association strategy, sharing it with your team allows you to gain leadership buy-in and ensure everyone is on board. To successfully distribute your plan among stakeholders, leverage these tips:

• Use various formats. Make it as easy as possible for stakeholders to absorb your strategy. You may develop a presentation, create infographics, and distribute handouts summarizing your plan.
• Tailor your messaging to different audiences. Different stakeholders will have different strategic priorities, so cater your messaging accordingly. For example, a presentation to your finance committee may focus more heavily on the financial management aspect of your plan, whereas materials for leadership may go more in-depth about each element of your strategy.
• Make adjustments as needed. Even though you’ve wrapped up the planning stages, that doesn’t mean your strategy can’t still change. Sharing your plan with stakeholders enables you to collect feedback from them and incorporate it to further strengthen your strategy.

Before sharing your plan, anticipate questions stakeholders may have, and compile answers to those questions. That way, you can confidently respond to their inquiries and assuage any concerns about your strategy.

8. Monitor your strategy.

Monitor your strategy to ensure goal progress. Track the key performance indicators (KPIs) you’ve assigned to your goals and schedule regular meetings where your team reviews relevant data.

Don’t be afraid to pivot if necessary. Whether that means adjusting one of your fundraising targets, rescheduling an event, or allocating more resources to a certain program, keeping track of your strategy allows you to make changes that put your organization back on course.

Develop an association strategy that engages members and fuels growth.

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9 Pitfalls to Avoid When Planning Your Association Strategy

Association strategic planning is a complicated process with many moving parts. It may seem overwhelming at first, but many organizations have successfully navigated it and learned a thing or two along the way.

When developing your strategy, look out for these common pitfalls and avoid them to ensure your plan is successful:

1. Confusing “strategy” with “tactics.” It’s true that your overall strategic plan will include activities your association will execute. However, you can’t jump right into launching different initiatives without a solid foundation. The heart of your strategy is your mission, vision, and long-term goals that should inform the rest of your plan.
2. Lack of member input. Your association strategy shouldn’t just reflect assumptions about your member base from your staff and board. Involve members early in the process, and consistently solicit feedback to ensure your plan reflects their preferences.
3. Trying to do too much. Don’t stretch your team too thin. Instead, aim for three to five solid goals that your team can commit to wholeheartedly. Additionally, focusing on fewer goals ensures your objectives are strategically aligned with your mission.
4. Focusing too heavily on internal goals. While you may have plans to adopt new project management software or revamp your team meetings, don’t forget about the bigger picture. All goals should ultimately put the member experience at the forefront. Internal improvements are sometimes necessary to better serve members, but you should also have goals that directly relate to members and their experiences with your association.
5. No implementation plan. A strategy does nothing if you don’t implement it. Incorporating an action plan allows for confident execution. Break down your goals into manageable tasks, and assign responsibilities, deadlines, and budgets for each initiative.
6. Lack of flexibility. Your strategy will quickly become outdated if you don’t make it adaptable. Plan for various scenarios, and meet with your team regularly to review and adjust your plan as needed.
7. Poor communication. If stakeholders don’t understand the plan or their roles in it, you won’t be able to execute it properly. Communicate about your strategy early and often, catering your messaging to different audiences and using different mediums to get everyone on the same page.
8. Not leveraging data. Without making your goals measurable, it will be difficult to track progress and identify when you need to pivot your strategy to improve results. Assign KPIs to each goal, and review metrics regularly.
9. Not revisiting your strategy. In today’s ever-changing world, a three to five-year plan may no longer be realistic. Revisit your plan often to ensure it still aligns with your priorities, and incorporate strategic discussions into regular staff and board meetings to keep iterating on your plan as things change.

Use this list as a checklist when developing your strategy. Actively avoiding these pitfalls will put your organization in the best position possible to develop a plan that aligns your team and fuels sustainable growth.

Work with SAS to Develop a Comprehensive Association Strategy

Creating an association strategy organizes your efforts, clarifies your priorities, and empowers you to provide the best member experience possible. While strategy development is crucial to association growth, we know your team may be overwhelmed with other responsibilities.

That’s why SAS is here to help! Our team helps associations like yours establish, fine-tune, and uphold their strategies through the following services:

• Financial health analysis
• Strategic planning
• Operational assessment
• Strategic roadmap

We also provide membership-based nonprofit accounting, technology support and systems implementation, payroll and human resources (HR) support, and design services. If you’re ready to supercharge your association strategy, fill out our contact form so we can discuss our services and customize them to fit your organization’s needs.

To learn more about SAS and association management, check out these additional resources:

• Accounting for Nonprofits: The Basics and Expert Tips. Proper financial management fuels successful association strategies. Learn the basics of nonprofit accounting in this guide.
• Nonprofit Accounting Services and Back-Office Solutions. Explore our nonprofit accounting services and back-office solutions designed to power stronger association strategies.
• About Us. Get to know the team behind SAS and how we use our expertise to better serve associations.

Tom Gooding

Managing Principal

Tom Gooding is the Managing Principal of Strategic Association Solutions (SAS), where he leads the firm’s strategic vision and operations, empowering trade associations and professional societies through high-impact outsourcing solutions. With a career spanning technology, business development, and executive leadership, Tom brings a unique blend of strategic insight and industry experience to the evolving needs of membership-based organizations.

Before founding and leading SAS, Tom served for seven years as Executive Vice President at Kellen, a global association management company, where he drove digital transformation and organizational growth. Prior to Kellen, he was Head of Sales at Cloud Theory, a software provider serving private equity firms and hedge funds. Earlier in his career, Tom specialized in selling technology consulting services to the financial sector, helping institutions navigate complex digital and operational challenges.

Tom holds a Bachelor’s degree in English Literature from The George Washington University.