ASAE wrote last year some remarks on GrowthZone’s Annual Association Survey and published a number last year that should have caused more discomfort than it did.
ASAE pointed out that the survey said only 11 percent of associations described their value proposition as “very compelling.” The other 89 percent were somewhere between lukewarm and uncertain about what they’re actually selling.
The association sector’s response to that number has been, almost universally, a messaging response. Better copy. Clearer benefits communication. More compelling renewal language. Value prop workshops. Brand refreshes.
The honest diagnostic question isn’t “how do we communicate our value better?” It’s “do we know what our value actually is, and do we believe it’s enough?”
None of that is wrong (or new for that matter). But it’s treating a lot of symptoms as diseases themselves while leaving the underlying condition untouched.
The 11 percent figure isn’t a marketing gap. It’s a self-awareness gap — and underneath the self-awareness gap is a question most associations have been carefully not asking: Is what we’re actually providing and/or selling actually sufficient?
Why the question doesn’t get asked
I’ve been in rooms where this question was the obvious next step and didn’t happen because asking it out loud required someone, or more importantly, simultaneously everyone and also no one specific, to own the answer.
In that case and all like it, the answer implicates staff, implicates the board, and requires a conversation that nobody in the room has been authorized — or particularly motivated — to start because it’s a bit painful to hear that all of your hours, your effort, and your energy might have been given in honest effort toward something not quite right.
The proximate cause is usually competitive.
A competitor emerges, or a competing resource appears, and members start making direct comparisons that weren’t possible before. Suddenly the value proposition that lived comfortably in the abstract has to hold up against something specific. That’s when the question surfaces — because the environment forced it.
What happens next matters more than what prompted it. In most cases, the question gets deflected back to marketing. The conclusion comfortably, like a snug blanket, is that the value is there — it’s just being communicated poorly. The brief goes out. The copy gets refreshed. The renewal email gets rewritten. And twelve months later, the retention numbers haven’t moved.
That’s because the copy was never the problem.
What the 11 percent are doing differently
The associations in that 11 percent aren’t necessarily more articulate about their value. They’re more honest about what it is — and what it isn’t. That honesty usually came from somewhere difficult: a membership decline that couldn’t be explained away, a board member who asked an uncomfortable question in public, a competitive threat that made the comparison unavoidable.
The ones who came out the other side with a compelling value proposition did something the other 89 percent are still avoiding. They audited the value before they tried to articulate it. They looked at what members were actually getting — not what the benefits page said they were getting — and made choices about what to invest in, what to cut, and what to build.
That’s not a marketing exercise. It’s a strategic one. And it requires organizational honesty that most associations don’t have the structure — or the appetite — to produce on demand.
The fix isn’t better copy
If your value proposition isn’t compelling, there are two possible explanations. Either the value exists and you’re failing to communicate it — or the value itself is insufficient and communication isn’t the variable that matters.
Most associations assume they’re in the first category. Some are right. A meaningful number are not, and they’re spending money on messaging work that can’t produce the outcome they’re after because the product underneath the message isn’t there yet.
The honest diagnostic question isn’t “how do we communicate our value better?” It’s “do we know what our value actually is, and do we believe it’s enough?” If the answer to the second part is uncertain, no amount of copy refinement closes the gap.
The 11 percent figure is a useful number because it’s specific enough to be embarrassing. But the more important question it raises isn’t about the 89 percent who are underperforming on value communication. It’s about how many of that 89 percent are treating a product problem like a marketing problem — and how long they can sustain that before members stop tolerating the ambiguity.
Better copy is a lever. It’s just not the lever most associations think it is.
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