Engagement at all levels of experience is crucial to a healthy organization
By Katie Morell
Think back to the last association meeting you attended. Chances are the majority of members in attendance were over the age of 45 and paying dutiful attention to the general session speaker. And I’m sure you also remember a few younger members peppered through the back rows, eyes down on their smart phones.
This is the scene at all too many association meetings—an obvious division in membership demographics that threatens the future of organizations as a whole.
“There’s no question that we have a graying audience,” says Tom Bolman, CAE, executive vice president of IACC.
According to John Graham, president and CEO of ASAE & The Center for Association Leadership, the truth is in the numbers.
“In today’s professional associations, about 6 percent of members are 65 years old or older, 39 percent are 55 to 64 years old, 30 percent are 45 to 54 years old, 18 percent are 35 to 44 years old, 3 percent are 25 to 34 years old and only 1 percent are under the age of 25,” he says. “If you take the distribution out another 10 years, you are going to have about 39 percent of association membership over 65. This fact really requires associations to focus more on the younger demographic than ever before.”
And in addition to an emphasis on diversity of age, associations also need to pay attention to racial and ethnic changes in membership, Graham says.
“Look at the U.S. population. Right now, one in seven Americans is Hispanic,” he says. “That number is getting bigger every decade, and by 2050 one in three American will be Hispanic.
