A new survey finds that associations see a strong correlation between their educational programs and member recruitment and retention, but are struggling to determine how to upgrade those programs.

Future-Proofing Association Learning, published last week by the online education company Boundless Learning, is based on a survey conducted last fall of 208 association decision-makers in the United States, United Kingdom, Australia, and Canada.

According to the survey, a majority of organizations (57 percent) use a “mid-range” learning management system (LMS). Substantial proportions of respondents see upgrades as playing an important role in their value proposition: Sizable majorities say it would have a positive impact on member retention (82 percent), membership growth (80 percent), and revenue generation (81 percent).

How to achieve that growth, however, is an open question. “One of the things the associations told us was the importance of education programs to their member retention and recruitment,” said Dr. Andrea Marcinkus, Director of Research and Insights at Boundless Learning. “But while they want to make sure that education programs attract and retain learners, they didn’t necessarily have the expertise to do that.”

To handle the expertise piece, many respondents said that they’ve outsourced support for their programs: 70 percent use a mix of in-house and outsourced program support, but only 17 percent say they plan to outsource in the future. Many associations seem to be pinning some hopes for efficiency and transformation on artificial intelligence: Half of respondents cited AI as a key emerging trend in training needs.

But Marcinkus said there’s some uncertainty about what role AI might play. “Everybody wants it, but they’re not really sure what it is, how to implement it and what the benefits are,” she said. 

The interest in AI, regardless of how it might be implemented, reveals an eagerness among associations for cost-efficient and relatively simple ways to improve their LMSes. Nearly half of respondents (48 percent) said that “budget constraints” are a barrier to education goals, followed by “complexity of implementation” (36 percent).

“Folks in the association space really understand the importance of their education programs in learner retention, or member recruitment, or member retention, and they seem to be fairly satisfied with their mix of educational technology as well,” Marcinkus said. “But there do seem to be some gaps in the financial area. They know that education brings in more members, they know that education brings in revenue, but there’s really a question of, how do we expand?”