How To Future-Proof Association Growth
“I don’t believe I’ll ever be able to retire.”
This blunt confession from a brilliant Millennial woman during a keynote I delivered last year stopped me cold. She wasn’t being sarcastic or provocative. She was simply stating what she believed her future held in store.
“Best I can tell, I’ll need to work until I physically can’t anymore, and then just hope for the best.”
She is a senior manager at a tech company earning over $100,000 a year. She has a valuable skill set, a 401(k), a modest lifestyle, and no viable pathway to long-term stability. She is scared, and her Gen Z colleagues are scared too, and the future of associations is in their hands.
MGI’s 2025 Membership Marketing Benchmarking Report found that 56% of association members are Baby Boomers and Gen X. This is the exact inverse of the global workforce, which is 56% Millennials and Gen Z today (I’ll refer to these two generations together as YZ for the rest of this article).
This inversion is a blaring alarm for the future of associations, and these numbers make it even louder:
- YZ’s will be 65% of the global workforce by 2035
- Gen Z association membership saw zero growth over the past year, staying flat at 11%.
The message is clear: YZ’s are the future of the workforce. Associations will not survive without them, but they’re not interested in us. At least, not yet.
As association leaders, it is our task to help them in ways that matter to them. Thankfully, we don’t have to wonder what matters to YZ’s, because they’re asking for it every day.
Safety.
Their driving need is to feel financially, psychologically, and physically safe.
For the past four years, Deloitte’s research has found that mental health and climate change are YZ’s top two sources of daily anxiety and stress. Feeling safe is not just what they want. It’s what they want most.
I know that we in the older generations are aware of this, too. Every time I give my cross-generational leadership keynote, Boomers and Gen Xers share how exasperated they are by YZ’s insistence on psychological safety at work. Sadly, most of these stories fixate on the annoyance and miss the fact that they hold the key to future-proofing our industry.
The majority of the global workforce has a core need for safety, and they’re not getting it. Not from their employers, their governments, or from society at large.
This gap is our great opportunity.
If associations become a pathway to that sense of safety for YZ’s, we will not suffer for membership, budget, volunteers, engagement, and future leadership pipeline.
Also, who better than associations to do this? The ability to have a successful career and get the life we want from the work we do is a cornerstone of feeling safe in today’s world. Associations are the experts at navigating the industries we support. Associations are ideally equipped to help YZ’s get what they want most, and benefit greatly as a result.
But to get those benefits, we need to be willing to act on the advice that Kiki L’Italien gave in her 2025 ASAE Academy of Leaders Award acceptance speech.
“Honor the path that brought you here, yes, but release what no longer fits, because the future of associations will not be built on certainty. It will be built on trust.”
She’s absolutely right. If we’re willing to give to get, and build trust in ways that are meaningful to YZ’s, we will break the flatline in Gen Z membership and strengthen the upward trend with Millennials.
Here are two pivots associations can make to future-proof our growth with YZ’s:
1. Start with Meeting Their Core Needs – until they know that associations can be a pathway to the safety they want and need, they won’t be drawn in by the rest of the benefits we offer. This may mean offering things that feel new and odd at first, but will have deep meaning to YZ’s. Here are a couple of examples.
For Gen Z, publish a guide on getting and keeping a job in your industry, including:
- Interview best practices
- Handling job loss
- Professional etiquette that leaders assume you’ll already know
For Millennials, using industry insights that you’re uniquely positioned to share, such as pay ranges and frequency of pay raises and promotions, publish a guide for Millennials on how to save the down payment for a home.
This will work because security in your job and living situation are major aspects of feeling safe in today’s world.
2. Prioritize Adaptability Over Certainty – leaders most often roll out a new strategy with the language of certainty. “We’re confident this is the best plan, and we’re sticking to it no matter what.” To a YZ, who knows that today’s world is defined by constant, disruptive change, certainty doesn’t build trust. Rather, it tells them that you won’t change when the world does, and your association isn’t a reliable source of the support they need.
Leading with adaptability could sound like this: “We’re confident that this is the best plan for now, and when the world changes around us, we’ll adjust. And then we’ll adjust again. And again.”
This will work because it commits to the kind of honesty and agility that YZ’s are already required to live by. It meets them in the reality of their circumstances, and has a true chance of connecting in ways that can transform their lives.
Securing the future of associations is a massive task and it can feel overwhelming. Even so, the clock is ticking, and change in associations is often a long business. My estimate is that we’ve got until mid-2027 to begin executing the necessary changes. That means the planning must happen now.
Yes, the timing is urgent and the stakes are high. However, there is huge room for success. According to MGI, 47% of all associations have not yet adapted their membership offerings to address generational differences. This means nearly half of us have yet to get in the game. Imagine the remarkable progress that will be made when we do.
