Most membership organisations aren’t struggling because they don’t understand their audience. They’re struggling because they understand multiple audiences but are still trying to serve them through a single, fairly static experience.
That worked when expectations were more aligned. It doesn’t anymore.
Today, it’s entirely possible for a Baby Boomer, a Gen X professional, a Millennial manager, and a Gen Z graduate to all be members of the same organisation and to all expect something completely different from it. Not just in terms of content, but in how they access it, how often they engage, and what “value” actually means in practice.
That’s where the tension sits.
Membership data is starting to reflect this gap more clearly. Research shows that members under 55 are significantly less likely to recommend their association than older cohorts, with advocacy rising sharply from the mid-50s onwards. It suggests that while long-standing members continue to see value, younger and mid-career professionals are harder to engage and less likely to promote that value to others.
Membership organisations often talk about generational differences in broad terms, but in reality those differences tend to show up in how value is prioritised.
For more established members, value is often tied to professional recognition, structured learning, and a clear sense of progression over time. Engagement is more deliberate and often happens at specific moments.
For mid-career members, flexibility becomes more important. What matters is less about formal pathways and more about access, whether that is being able to engage on demand, fit learning around a busy schedule, or move in and out of content as needed.
For younger members, priorities shift again. Expectations become more immediate and more social. Content needs to be easy to access, often through mobile, and engagement is shaped as much by peers as by the organisation. Career support is not just long-term; it needs to feel relevant in the short term as well.
None of these perspectives are in conflict. But they do require different ways of accessing the same underlying value.
For a long time, generational differences have been approached as a segmentation problem. The assumption has been that if messaging is tailored through different emails, campaigns, or content, then engagement will follow.
In practice, that only solves part of the issue. What matters just as much is where those messages lead – the experience a member lands in, how consistent it feels, and how easy it is to navigate.
This is where many organisations are starting to fall behind. Member behaviour has evolved, but the underlying digital experience often hasn’t kept pace. Over time, organisations have added what they needed, whether that’s a CRM to manage data, a website to host content, a member portal, a community platform, or an app. Each addition makes sense in isolation, but very few of these systems were designed to work together from the start. From a member’s perspective, that lack of cohesion is obvious.
It doesn’t usually present itself as a major issue. More often, it shows up in small moments.
A member logs in more than once to complete a single task. They’re sent to a page that doesn’t quite match what they expected. They find the same information repeated in different places, or struggle to pick up where they left off.
None of these things feel significant on their own, but taken together, they shape how easy or difficult your organisation is to engage with. And that ease, or lack of it, is increasingly what defines value, particularly when expectations differ so widely across generations.
This helps explain why engagement often looks healthier on the surface than it really is. While around two-thirds of members consume content regularly, fewer than a third engage actively on a monthly basis, and only a small proportion contribute on a weekly basis. The gap between passive and active engagement is particularly pronounced among younger members, where time and effort become a much bigger barrier.
This is where generational differences start to matter more in practice, not just in theory. Older members who have an established relationship with your organisation are often more willing to work around those gaps. They know what they’re looking for and they’re prepared to take a slightly less direct route to get there.
Younger or newer members tend to behave differently. They are far less likely to go looking for value if it is not immediately accessible. If something feels slow, disconnected, or difficult to navigate, they disengage early, even if the underlying offer is strong.
The latest Digital Excellence research highlights that online engagement remains one of the biggest challenges facing membership organisations, alongside the increasing pressure to grow and retain members simultaneously.
Expectations around digital experience also continue to rise, particularly as mobile becomes the default mode of engagement for a growing proportion of members.
This points to something more fundamental – the issue isn't a lack of digital capability, but a lack of connected experience. That gap tends to be felt most strongly by the very members organisations are trying hardest to attract.
A lot of organisations still talk about a “typical member journey”, but that journey is becoming harder to define. Some members engage occasionally, dipping in when they need something specific. Others expect more regular interaction, whether that’s content, updates, or opportunities to connect with peers. Some prefer a structured path, while others expect a more flexible, on-demand experience.
Trying to force all those behaviours into a single journey inevitably leads to compromise. More often than not, that compromise ends up favouring the members the organisation already understands best, typically those who have been members the longest.
This is why just adding more channels doesn't always solve the problem.
Launching an app can be a strong step, particularly when trying to reach younger members. But if that app sits separately from the rest of the experience, it becomes another place members have to go, rather than a natural extension of how they already engage. The same applies to community platforms, learning systems, or any other digital investment.
What starts to make a difference is not adding more, but connecting what already exists.
When systems are properly integrated, whether that involves your CRM, your CMS such as Umbraco, your app, or your community platform, it becomes much easier to deliver value in ways that match different expectations.
That might look like the same content being surfaced in different ways. A structured article accessed via desktop for one member, and a shorter, more immediate version delivered through a mobile notification for another. It might mean events that are still planned in the same way, but supported by reminders, updates, and follow-up interactions that keep members engaged before and after. It might mean learning that remains in-depth, but is broken into formats that can be accessed more flexibly.
Community also plays a different role. For some members, it's an added benefit. For others, particularly younger cohorts, it is central to how they build connection and relevance.
None of this requires a separate strategy for each generation. It requires a more flexible way to deliver the same core value while removing unnecessary friction. If a significant portion of members want to be more actively involved, but far fewer feel encouraged or able to do so, then making it easier to participate is where many organisations have the biggest opportunity to improve.
Member value isn't just defined by what you offer. It's defined by how easily different people can access it and how naturally it fits into the way they already engage.
As expectations continue to diverge across generations, achieving that becomes harder without a more connected approach. If your digital ecosystem only works well for one generation, it isn't just a missed opportunity; it's an early warning sign that the next generation may never engage in the first place.
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Whether you're modernising your website, launching a member app or connecting your wider digital ecosystem, we help organisations create joined-up experiences that make it easier for every generation to engage.