How Often Do You Increase Your Membership Dues? - Results from the 2011 Membership Benchmarking Report

Recently I've been asked by several Executive Directors and Membership Marketers how often they should raise their dues?

This is obviously an important question and one that is unique to each association given its market, its penetration within the market, number of competitors, current dues rate and when the last dues increase was performed.

However, its been our experience that a small (10% or under) increase will, in most cases, have little to no impact on your membership numbers.

Respondents to the 2011 Membership Benchmarking Report seemed to fall in line with this as well.  When asked:

• "How often does your association raise membership dues?"
• "When was the last time your association raised membership dues?"
• "What was the average percentage of your last membership dues increase across all membership catagories?"

We found that "...30% of the associations reported that they will raise membership dues in 2011 and 71% will increase dues rates between 1% and 10%."

"How often does your association raise membership dues?"

17% responded "Annually"

4% responded "Every other year"

58% responded "As needed"

9% responded "Never"

12% responded "Other"