Magazine Monday: Trust Is the Receipt

Without a doubt, there is a communication hiccup happening in how we talk and think about value, and that is a problem. Information asymmetry is gone, and many of us in the association industry don’t want to see it.

By information asymmetry, I mean that one side has more information. Today, your association members can see enough to decide for themselves whether your value story holds up.

Dan Pink understands this well. In his book, To Sell Is Human, Pink made the case that the old “buyer beware” world had flipped to “seller beware.” Sellers no longer held all the cards. Buyers can compare, search, verify, question, review, and decide long before anyone officially tries to sell them anything.

And that is important for us to understand if we care about association growth. That shift matters for associations more than we may want to admit. Because your members can find out almost anything now.

Members can easily 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, your reputation, your competitors, and even your silence.

Especially your silence.

Your members have access to information. They do. There is no question about that. The question is whether what they find and what they experience over time makes them want to stay.

The value proposition conversation has to get more honest.

Many associations still talk about value as if it were listed in the benefits. Advocacy. Education. Networking. Research. Discounts. Events. Community. All of those may matter. Some matter a great deal.

The member is not only asking, “What do I get?”

They are asking, “Do I trust this enough to keep choosing it?”

And that is an entirely different question.

And it should make us a little uncomfortable.

The Decision Is Happening Earlier Than You Think

Selling is not really about “selling” in the old, pushy, vaguely unpleasant sense of the word. Selling is about moving others.

That’s association work.

You are trying to move someone from awareness to participation. From passive member to active contributor. From event attendee to volunteer. From “I joined because my boss told me to” to “this is where I belong professionally.” From renewal hesitation to renewed commitment.

You are trying to move people.

But people do not move just because you send them a renewal notice.

They move because trust has accumulated.

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