What the 2026 Membership Marketing Benchmarking Report Tells Australian Associations (and What It Can't)
Marketing General Incorporated's Membership Marketing Benchmarking Report is the most widely cited membership benchmark in the world, and the 2026 edition, its eighteenth, makes sobering reading. Membership growth has fallen to one of the lowest levels since the report’s inception. Renewal rates are softening, and confidence in the value proposition is slipping.
Those headlines will find their way into Australian board papers over the coming months. Before they do, it is worth being clear about what this report is, who it surveys, and which findings translate to the Australian market.
What the 2026 report found
The numbers describe a sector under real pressure. Only 38% of associations reported membership growth in the past year, down from 45% in 2025 and 47% in 2024, and the lowest figure recorded outside the pandemic year of 2021. Meanwhile 30% reported declines, a share that has risen steadily for three years.
Retention is moving the same way. The median overall renewal rate now sits at 82%, down from 84%, and the median first-year renewal rate has fallen to 72%. Perhaps most telling, only 51% of executives rate their own value proposition as compelling, down from 57% last year, and 39% name the inability to articulate that value as an impediment to growth.
Read the sample before you read the numbers
The 2026 report is built from 491 participants representing 457 associations, surveyed by a US firm and described simply as coming from "the U.S. and worldwide". No country breakdown is published. There is no reported Australian proportion at all, and the sample composition suggests it is small.
Chambers of Commerce alone make up 9 % of participants, the median association holds 5,600 individual members, and two thirds of respondents describe their reach as national or global within a market of nearly 340 million people.
That is a very different organisation from the typical Australian association. Our market is smaller, memberships are typically more modest in scale, and many associations here carry accreditation, professional standards and advocacy roles that shape the value proposition in ways US benchmarks do not capture.
There is a second difference that matters just as much. The MGI report surveys association executives about their programs. It measures what associations say about themselves. It does not measure what members think, value or intend to do. Those are different questions, and in our experience they often produce different answers.
The trends are better than the numbers
None of this means the report should be ignored. The forces behind the American numbers are clearly visible in our work with Australian associations, and three stand out.
1. Generational turnover is repricing the value proposition.
Baby Boomers now make up 24% of membership in the MGI sample, down from 36% in 2019, while Millennials and Gen Z together account for 36%. The report finds Millennial presence is positively correlated with growth, so the generational handover is not a future risk. It is the current operating environment, in both markets.
2. The competition is no longer other associations.
Respondents point to free digital alternatives, AI-generated content and for-profit education providers filling roles associations once owned. When information is free and instant, the case for membership has to rest on things that cannot be commoditised: community, standards, advocacy and trusted evidence.
3. Engagement, not acquisition, is the engine.
The report's most consistent finding is that associations engaging members early and personally are significantly more likely to renew them and grow through them. Personalised outreach from staff is the single most used tactic for re-engaging inactive members, at 42%, and associations with higher renewal rates are significantly more likely to use it. Some 44% now run targeted campaigns for specific segments, and 43% expect AI to become important for personalising the member experience.
That third finding lines up closely with evidence from Higher Logic, 2025 Association Member Experience Report. This report found that 84% of members say personalisation matters to them, and members who receive a personalised experience are far more likely to feel engaged and intend to stay. The executive data and the member data are pointing at the same conclusion from opposite directions. Relevance drives renewal.
How Australian associations should use this report
Our suggestion is to treat the 2026 report as a set of hypotheses rather than a set of targets.
1. Read the US figures as directional signals about pressure and practice, not as benchmarks to be met. A median renewal rate from a sample of large American organisations is not your target.
2. Test the trends against your own member evidence. If generational change and engagement are the forces at work, your member data will show where and how they are appearing in your organisation.
3. Benchmark against local norms where they exist. Australasian member sentiment, satisfaction and renewal intention behave differently from US executive-reported figures, and comparisons are only useful when the reference point resembles your organisation and operating environment.
4. Act on the findings that clearly transfer across the Australian and US markets. Invest in engagement before acquisition, build targeted strategies for early-career members, and make personalisation an insight project before it becomes a technology project.
The MGI report is a valuable reminder of where the sector is heading. What it cannot tell you is what your members value and how you can keep them engaged. That takes evidence gathered from them directly, benchmarked against associations that look like yours.
If you would like to talk about what member-voice benchmarking could look like for your association, we would welcome the conversation. And for research translated for Australian associations each month, subscribe to Associations Matter.