A new report finds that active members of an association’s online community are more likely to engage more in the association’s activities, and that there are opportunities to better communicate events, mentorship, and volunteer roles.

The 2024 Association Community Benchmark Report was released last month by the technology firm Higher Logic. It’s based on an analysis of anonymized data from approximately 1,500 associations and nonprofits using the company’s community software. The survey found that overall, a relatively small proportion of members demonstrate high engagement: 15 percent of users have joined one group or participate in a discussion in a 120-day period.

However, the analysis found that certain activities can inspire more engagement. Communities with a job board, for instance, see “88% more community logins, 84% more discussion activity, and 87% more unique contributors,” according to the report. Those that build mentoring and volunteering groups into their community see 124 percent more community logins.

“The more you add what you do to communicate to members, the more it helps everything else,” said Higher Logic CEO Rob Wenger. “If you add jobs to the community, it helps the jobs and the community. If you add marketing, it helps marketing and the community.”

A key element of the value of the community is seen through digest emails from the communities that are pushed to members’ inboxes. Because members aren’t necessarily motivated to visit an association’s website weekly or daily, and because digests aren’t marketing pitches for products and events, they play an important role in authentic engagement with an association. “Making the community a central hub where members can access different benefits from the organization makes it so much easier for members to find what they’re looking for, and that gives them more reasons to log in to the community,” said Kelly Whelan, content marketing manager at Higher Logic.

To that end, the report recommends that associations autosubscribe members up for digest emails from their online communities, when possible. (Some countries have restrictions requiring that all email signups be opt-in.) Open rates for those emails, according to the report, are around 50 percent. Few members tend to opt out of those autosubscriptions, Wenger says, and they reap engagement benefits. “It all goes back to the idea that being in front of the member every day, or as often as possible, yields participation,” he said.

The report notes that there are certain tactics that can further stoke participation in online communities, such as automated reminders or gamification. What works best for each association will depend on its own community needs, and Wenger notes that analyzing what members are talking about—and, better still, searching for—will help identify those needs. 

“Between what they’re searching for and what they’re talking about, that’s a snapshot of where the industry represented by the association seems to be going,” he said. “You definitely want to look at that, because it can drive programming. If everyone is searching on AI, you can say, ‘Let’s get some AI sessions at our event. Let’s put something about AI in our newsletter this month.’”