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What a Community Does for Your Association

Six Things Your Online Community Can Run (So Your Staff Doesn't Have To)

Compared to non-members, association members are more likely to feel a sense of professional community. The latest research has found that 54% of members feel connected professionally at their association versus 32% of nonmembers.

With the right online community, your association staff is equipped with a powerful tool for recruiting and engaging members. It helps you deliver greater member value, in turn helping you attract new members and engage at a deeper level.

A well-built online community redistributes work for your staff, moving routine operational tasks off your staff's plate and closer to the members themselves. Here's what that looks like
in practice:

1. Member recruitment

Begin by giving non-members limited access to your community. Let them observe discussions, find resources, and see how peer connection inside your organization looks. The community becomes a live demonstration of membership value — before the ask is ever made. A prospective member who has spent time in your community already knows what they're joining.

2. New member onboarding

Create a newcomer group where new members can ask questions, introduce themselves, and find their footing without feeling lost. Assign a staff member or an engaged veteran member to participate. New members who feel at home in their first 90 days renew at dramatically higher rates than those who don't. And a dedicated space for them is one of the easiest ways to create that experience.

3. Committee and chapter collaboration

Your committees are already meeting; albeit they are coordinating over email threads that bury sharing documents across three different platforms. However, through private community groups, you can replace that fragmentation with organized, searchable conversations. Every decision, update, and resource lives in one place. And the right people will have access automatically.

4. FAQ and self-service support

Build a resource section in your community where members find answers to the questions your staff answers on repeat. Promote it in your member communications. Over time, members answer each other's questions, too — and your team's inbox gets quieter.

5. Non-dues revenue

Your community is a high-value, targeted audience. Sponsors and industry partners know it. Offer sponsored content, promoted posts, and advertising placements within the community. It's an earned benefit of your organization's reach, as well as a revenue stream that doesn't require another event.

6. Member research and insight

Pay attention to what your members are talking about. The discussions happening in your community are an unfiltered signal of what your members actually care about right now (not what they said they cared about on a survey you sent six months ago). That intelligence shapes better programming, better content, and better benefits decisions.

The AMS Advantage — Why a Standalone Platform Falls Short

There are community platforms that any organization can get up and running in a few days. But the problem isn't implementing a community; it's keeping your online community connected to the rest of your member data.

When your community lives in a separate system from your AMS, you get two records per member instead of one. You get access permissions that drift out of sync when someone's membership lapses. You get staff manually reconciling which members belong to which groups. You get an engagement picture that never quite connects to your renewal data.

However, when your community data lives alongside member data, that changes. Here’s what you get:

Two-way sync between your online community and AMS ensures the data flows in both directions.
Community engagement connects back to your AMS, which means you can see which members are active in the community and which ones have gone quiet.
You can trigger outreach to members who haven't logged in.
You can build a renewal campaign around the members who are most engaged — and a re-engagement campaign for the ones who aren't.

Two Way sync between Momentive Community and Momentive AMS products — including Nimble AMS, YourMembership AMS, Cobalt AMS, NetForum, MC Professional, and Aptify — keeps membership
access, renewal status, and group permissions
current automatically.

An online community that syncs with your AMS offers one member login, one record, and no manual reconciliation.