Quick Findings on Membership Dues Increases

Once again in our 2013 Membership Marketing Benchmarking Research, we investigated the practices around increasing membership dues rates. 

Of the 680 association respondents that answered these dues related questions, 23.5% reported that they have or plan to increase their dues rates this year.  The industry segments most likely to be raising dues include organizations that identified themselves as Chambers of Commerce.  The industry segment least likely to be raising membership dues are Arts, Cultural, and Museum based associations.

A total of 31% of trade associations report that they are raising dues in 2013 compared to 21% of individual membership organizations.  Also associations with budgets of over $5 million dollars are more likely to be putting a dues increase in place.  And organizations that report annual renewal rates above 80% or better were more likely to be raising dues compared to those with lower renewal rates (26.7% compared to 18.5%).

How much are organizations raising dues levels?  51% of respondents said that their last dues increase was between 1 and 5% and 24.7% had increases of between 6 and 10%.  The vast majority of associations (62.6%) report that they do not raise dues on a regular basis, but only on an “as needed basis”.

From our research the lesson has been pretty consistent over time that most associations can easily implement modest dues rate increases without adversely impacting their membership.

The final benchmarking report will be released in several months and participating associations will receive a printed edition of the complete report.