Magazine Monday: Trust Is the Receipt

There’s a communication problem hiding in plain sight across the association industry and most leaders aren’t ready to look at it directly. Kiki L’Italien, VP of Marketing at Naylor Association Solutions explores what association leaders need to understand about the relationship between member engagement and trust. 

It starts with a shift Dan Pink identified over a decade ago in To Sell Is Human. The old “buyer beware” world has flipped. Today, it’s “seller beware.” Buyers — and yes, your members — can compare, search, verify, question, and decide long before anyone officially pitches them anything. Information asymmetry is gone. One side no longer holds all the cards. For associations, this changes everything.

Your members can compare your conference to five others before lunch. They can ask peers whether membership is still worth it. They can see your public presence, your leadership choices, your responsiveness — and your silence. Especially your silence. The value proposition conversation has to get more honest.

Most associations still talk about value like it’s a benefits list: advocacy, education, networking, research, events, community. Those things may matter. Some matter a great deal. But the member isn’t only asking, “What do I get?” They’re asking, “Do I trust this enough to keep choosing it?” That’s a different question. And it should make us a little uncomfortable.

Here’s what makes it urgent: Forrester’s 2024 Buyers’ Journey Survey found that 92% of B2B buyers already have a vendor in mind before formal evaluation begins. Replace “buyer” with “member,” and the implication is hard to ignore. By the time renewal season arrives, many members have already made an emotional decision. The invoice is just the moment they act on it.

That decision has been forming for months — in every email they opened, every event that felt worth the cost, every survey where they told you something and never heard back.

When associations treat renewal as a campaign instead of a relationship outcome, they end up trying to save in 60 days what they spent the previous 10 months eroding. The real test isn’t whether your value proposition sounds good. It’s whether your members can feel it.

You don’t get credit for saying you’re trusted. The more an organization has to say it, the more nervous you should get. Trust isn’t a tagline. Trust is the receipt.

Read the full article in the 2026 edition of Association Adviser magazine!