From Data to Decisions: Helping Associations Better Understand Members

In this episode of Associations NOW Presents: Industry Partner Edition, guest host Sharon Pare of HighRoad Solutions sits down with Georgina Donahue, Director of Community Innovation and Strategy at Higher Logic, and Rachel Mace, CAE, Director of IT and Database at the National Pest Management Association, to discuss how associations can better understand members and use that insight to drive smarter strategy. They explain how most organizations have plenty of data but little usable intelligence because systems don’t integrate and staff lack a unified, individual-level view across programs, leading to decisions based on gut instinct and missed warning signs like “silent churners.” The guests distinguish reports from behavioral signals and patterns that predict engagement and renewal, share examples of targeted outreach and pandemic-era webinars boosting recruitment and retention, and discuss using engagement scoring, dashboards, and guidance to act at scale. They recommend auditing where data lives, focusing on high-signal sources, and making incremental improvements rather than chasing perfect data.

Check out the video podcast here:

https://youtu.be/QCQXIDc_cYI

Associations NOW Presents is produced by Association Briefings.

Transcript

Sharon Pare: [00:00:00] Welcome to this episode of Associations NOW Presents: Industry Partner Series, an original podcast from the American Society of Association Executives. I'm Sharon Pare, Partnerships Director at Highroad, and your host of this series throughout the year. This episode is sponsored by Higher Logic.

Today, we're excited to welcome Georgina Donahue, Director of Community Innovation and Strategy at Higher Logic, along with Rachel Mace, CAE, Director of IT and Database at the National Pest Management Association.

Our conversation today is about how associations can better understand their members and turn that insight into smarter strategy. Georgina, Rachel, welcome to the show.

So I think this is something a lot of associations are quietly dealing with, so why don't we jump in? So let's start with something most associations don't want to say out loud. Most of them are making decisions about their members based on very [00:01:00] little actual insight. Why is that, and how common is it?

Georgina Donahue: I think that most associations have more data than they've ever had, right? They have data coming in from all over the place. They have their AMS records, their event history. They have a community p