The Member Engagement Show

Today’s episode of The Member Engagement Show is a special presentation of a recent webinar covering the release of Higher Logic’s 2025 Association Community Benchmark Report: “From Data to Action.” Kelly and her guests Eileen Quinn and John Micah Yates, strategic advisors on the Higher Logic customer success team, walk through the results of the study and offer strategies to increase member participation and engagement. Topics include:
Highlights from the report
Strategies for increasing engagement in your online community
Average community size, logins, and discussions
The most common types of engagements
What kinds of engagements are lagging
Community digest open rates
How many users make use of resource libraries
If AI is pulling people away from online communities
Login trends based on months of the year
The inverse trend between size and participation
The relationship between community age and engagement
How automation rules impact engagement
How gamification impacts engagement
How volunteering, mentoring, and job boards impact engagement
Tactics for growing communities
Ways to increase discussion and contribution activity
How much, if any, of your content should be gated
Tips for avoiding over-emailing
 
Some Helpful Links:
Webinar Recording
2025 Association Community Benchmark Report
Podcast episode with Christin Berry of ASAE
Podcast episode with Karen Saverino of Smithbucklin
 

Our guest this episode of The Member Engagement Show is Brian Scott, President and CISO of 501CISO, who talks about the increasing prevalence of cybercrime targeting nonprofits and associations. We discuss the industrialization of cybercrime, the unique vulnerabilities of smaller organizations, and the importance of cybersecurity education and training. Topics covered include:
Why cybercrime is worse than it’s ever been.
The global industrialization of cybercrime.
How AI is helping cybercriminals be more effective.
Why nonprofits and associations are becoming a bigger target.
Are Managed Service Providers (MSPs) always reliable protection?
Tips for hiring and using MSPs.
The impact of being the target of cybercrime.
Key things associations should do to protect their security and data.
The '501 CISO Big Six' essential protections to implement.
Why cybersecurity is not just an “IT problem.”
 
Some Helpful Links:
Episode on AI use and data privacy with guest Amanda DeLuke.
Explore more resources from Brian Scott & 501CISO: cleartoneconsulting.com/publications/

Our guest on this episode of The Member Engagement Show is Christin Berry CAE, VP Business Analytics and Data services at ASAE. Christin recently presented a session at ASAE’s annual conference on how to use data to gain meaningful insights that can help you ask better questions and make better decisions. This tied in nicely to Higher Logic’s own recently released 2025 Association Community Benchmark Report, so we thought this was the perfect time to help associations more effectively collect and leverage data. Topics covered include:
The ways data can be most helpful to associations.
Gaps in the way we approach data.
Getting beyond just numbers to help foster faster decision-making.
Using different formats to get information out to constituents.
How offering fast answers can lead to broader content discovery.
Organizing information infrastructures to facilitate fast answers.
Data setup for internal use.
Data mining to combat low survey response rates.
Why data, in isolation, isn’t enough for good decision-making.
The importance of knowing why you’re gathering data.
Why it’s okay if your data just helps you ask better questions.
Why watching the pattern can be more powerful than watching the numbers.
The need for curious people.
How to not get overwhelmed with data.
Building automations off your data.
 
Some Helpful Links
ASAE
Higher Logic's 2025 Association Community Benchmark Report

On this timely and informative episode of The Member Engagement Show, Dorothy Deng, Partner at Whiteford, Taylor & Preston discusses AI and copyright law, especially as it relates to association management. There are many legal considerations for associations using AI and this is an excellent primer on the copyright fundamentals to stay safe and within the law. Topics covered include:
Fundamental copyright considerations and how they that relate to AI use.
The embedded principles of copyright law - human authorship and fair use.
Does writing AI prompts afford you ownership of the AI output?
Why you’re on (a little) safer ground if your prompt includes pre-existing human created copyrighted material.
Why those “This material was AI generated” labels might prevent you from having a copyright claim.
Does the percentage of human vs. AI involvement in a work matter to the copyright office?
How to protect yourself from unwittingly infringing on other people’s copyrights.
How associations should keep copyright in mind when using AI.
The licensing opportunities for associations as LLMs seek higher quality data.
 
Some Helpful Links:
The U.S. Copyright Office’s Report on AI
 

On this episode of Higher Logic’s “Member Engagement Show,” Higher Logic Strategic Advisor Bekah Weidner talks about ways to bring in non-dues revenue (NDR) in uncertain economic times or times of economic change. Looking for ways to boost revenue at your organization? Topics covered include:
The importance of having diverse sources of revenue.
Sponsorship and advertising strategies and tactics.
Non-dues revenue from newsletters, emails, events, job boards and more.
The right way to use your community to benefit sponsors, partners, and the association.
Exploring all of your association content assets as sponsorship opportunities.
The importance of keeping sponsorships aligned with your association’s tone and mission and protecting the integrity of the content assets.
Helpful Links:
For more revenue generation ideas...
Join us on September 10, 2025 for our free webinar: From Engagement to Non-Dues Revenue: Monetizing Your Online Community
Check out our Non-Dues Revenue Success Kit
 
 

In this episode of The Member Engagement Show, we talk with Bettina Fowler, Senior VP of Customer Success at Higher Logic to get the very best of her popular session at Higher Logic's annual Super Forum conference, “45 Ideas in 45 Minutes.” Bettina has been involved in customer success at Higher Logic for 11 years and has tons of great insights from working with customers on implementation, member engagement, and marketing strategies. Kelly chats with her about quick and easy ways to level up the way in which associations and nonprofits serve their communities. Topics covered include:
Top things to check regularly and make sure you didn’t miss in your platform setup.
Tools and strategies associations can easily use to improve member engagement.
The features in your platform that you might not even know about or might be underutilized.
Are you maximizing AI functionalities in your community management?
All the reasons not to fear upgrades to your platform.
 
Helpful Links:
Higher Logic customers can access the full Super Forum session recording in the Higher Logic User Group (HUG).

Our guest on this episode of The Member Engagement Show is Higher Logic’s own Senior Product Manager, Aaron Novelle. Aaron has been a leader in the development of AI enhancements to the Higher Logic Thrive platform. With those enhancements now in beta, we wanted to catch up with Aaron about how associations can leverage AI to continuously improve the member experience. Topics covered include:
What Higher Logic AI tools are available now and what’s on the horizon.
What AI search assistants are and what they can do when connected to online communities.
A primer on RAG (Resource Augmented Generation) LLMs vs. the global LLMs that power general AI tools like ChatGPT.
How associations can deploy AI while keeping their data safe.
Associations as the bastions of specific expertise and knowledge.
The importance of aggregating and categorizing your association’s knowledge base - and how to make that easier.
Some Helpful Links:
Learn About Higher Logic's AI Search Assistant (and Turn it On in Your Community!)
Higher Logic's AI Toolkit
ASAE Webinar: Embracing AI Safely (with Higher Logic's Amanda DeLuke)

On this episode of Higher Logic’s award-winning “Member Engagement Show,” we talk with Karen Saverino, CMO at Smithbucklin. Karen has over 25 years of experience in marketing and communications, most with nonprofits and associations. She is one of the authors of Smithbucklin’s recent report on the Perceptions and Evolving Role of Associations. Listen to the episode for insights from that report and to hear ways associations can apply those insights to attract and retain members.
Topics covered include:
What are members' most valuable benefits from their association?
Do members currently trust their association?
The importance of education and professional development.
Is AI a threat to online community participation?
What prevents people from becoming members?
Four fundamentals you should focus on based on the report’s data.
Some pointers on doing your own member research.
 
Helpful Links:
Smithbucklin’s Perceptions and Evolving Role of Associations Report
Learning management and trends podcast episode with Bluesky

Our guest this episode of the award-winning Member Engagement Show is Romeo Talento, Customer Success Advisor at Higher Logic and a career expert in SEO strategies, who talks about some of the ways associations and non-profits are approaching and should approach those SEO strategies. Prior to his role at HL, Romeo managed membership and marketing for associations like the American Bar Association and the Merchant Risk Council. Topics covered include:
A primer on what SEO is (and isn’t).
How search engines work.
The importance of keyword research and wording things correctly.
The steps to incorporate into your day-to-day work to optimize content for search engines.
Recommendations for one-person marketing teams juggling multiple hats.
The three types of SEO you need to know.
The importance of alt text in images, page titles, and working links.
Tips for page design and backlinks.
The power of data and numbers in your web content.
Suggestions for long-term SEO wins.
How AI and voice searches are changing SEO
 
Helpful Links
On-Demand webinar with Alec Cole, Founder of Salt Rock SEO, on AI’s Impact on SEO
SEO Checklist: 41 Tips to Optimize Your Website
Higher Logic Thrive

Our guest on this episode of The Member Engagement Show is Peggy Hoffman, Founder of Mariner Management. Mariner Management is an association management company providing full management services to small associations and counsel to global associations seeking to improve member communities and volunteer development. Peggy also works as a member community strategist, volunteer management consultant, national speaker and trainer for volunteers and staff.
In this episode, we discuss the current state of association volunteer systems, with topics covered including:
What research tells us about the current landscape of association volunteer programs.
What are the reoccurring challenges?
What adjustments to volunteer systems make a difference?
The demand for shorter-term volunteering.
What keeps volunteers engaged?
What kind of information do volunteers really want when it comes to a program’s goals and achievements?
What draws in and engages the next generation of volunteers?
Why you should ask volunteers to “get milk on their way home, not go out of their way.”
Determining when to sunset a volunteer program that's not performing.
The critical role of the staff liaison.
Just how important is it to have a volunteer program?
Peggy will be presenting a session at Higher Logic's Super Forum Conference, March 26-28 in Nashville, TN, on "Igniting Engagement: Empowering Members to Lead." Join this interactive session to learn how to shift your perspective and your strategy around volunteering to ignite engagement.
 
Helpful Links & Resources Mentioned in the Episode:
Article: Why Volunteering Needs a Transformation
Article: Create Better Volunteer Experiences Through Feedback
Report: A Holistic Approach to Association Volunteer Management
Executive Summary: A Holistic Approach to Association Volunteer Management
Report: Mutually Beneficial Volunteerism
Guide: The Decision to Volunteer - Why People Give Their Time and How You Can Engage Them
Simplified Engagement Loop from MCI's Engagement Index
Report: Chapter Performance and Benchmarking Report