This piece was co-authored by Brand Response and NationBuilder.
Over the past six months, Brand Response and NationBuilder have supported independent research across unions, political parties, and professional and civil society organisations to better understand how membership is evolving. At last week’s Political Tech Summit in Berlin, we brought together practitioners to explore what the report’s findings mean in practice, including what’s working, and what’s not.
The problem: We can recruit, but we can’t retain
The data tells a clear story. While most leaders say their membership numbers are stable or growing, 54% also report that most members aren't active. Only 27% of organisations have more than three-quarters of members actually participating.
One organisation we interviewed gained 5,000 members in weeks during protests - then lost most of them. Organisations can recruit. What they struggle with is converting that surge into sustained participation.
We tested this in the room in Berlin. "Raise your hand if your organisation has experienced a membership surge - a campaign, a crisis moment where sign-ups spiked." Hands went up. "Keep your hand up if you successfully converted most of those people into active, ongoing members." Many hands dropped.
Why this happens: We're investing in the wrong things
Only 18% of organisations dedicate more budget to membership development than to campaigning and advocacy. Half allocate more to campaigns. Just 5% have achieved balance. As one interviewee told us: "We invested in CRM, payments, branding. We haven't been investing in relationship management with members."
Rebekah Ison from Better Politics Foundation reframed the challenge through the lens of behavioural science and how habits are built - they require a cue, a routine and a reward. But there's a catch. You also need to provide a supportive environment for people to move through the habit loop. "Membership is a habit," says Ison, "if you cannot spare 10 € a month for fees, you've lost them at sign-up. If they have two kids under seven and you're asking them to attend a weeknight meeting, you've lost them between cue and routine. You have failed to provide a supportive environment."
Belonging definitely matters, Ison argued, but it's a reward and creating the conditions for people to even reach that reward requires investments most organisations aren't making.
What actually works: Human trust over digital scale
When we asked what recruitment method works best, 56% said referrals from existing members - not digital advertising or social media. Human trust drives growth.
Sam Lockwood from Brand Response shared how D66 in the Netherlands approached their recent progressive campaign victory: the success was rooted in planning well ahead of the election with time dedicated to UX design, website infrastructure and data. By designing robust user journeys from the start, they moved beyond generic outreach - instead, they asked members for their input via automated surveys and used those insights to drive a personalised engagement strategy.
The results? Member journeys where people could see their progress from interested supporter to active volunteer. Tiered pricing that shattered the fixed-fee model, with donor clubs reaching 10,000 €. And frictionless UX: "Kill the password. Use one-touch login links,” Lockwood explains Even small design changes as this can have a massive participation impact.
Lockwood emphasised that D66's success came from destroying silos, explaining that people don't think of themselves in those boxes, so why should our systems. “Your tech stack must let people move fluidly between roles - donor, volunteer, candidate - at key moments.”
But Lockwood was also blunt about technology's limits: "Tech and data can actually take us away from relationship-building. In the end, sustaining membership is simply human relationships." Technology should enable not replace authentic, human connection.
Belonging takes time (and intention)
During our event, Rebekah Ison shared a key lesson she learned from the Better Politics Foundation’s work building the Political Leadership Entrepreneurial Network (PLEN), a group of more than 120 organisations across 43 countries hoping to build better politics around the world: "We really cracked a sense of belonging last year when we brought about 50 members together in Berlin. That was three years into [our work as a] network."
What made the gathering so successful? Two design principles: Maximising in-person peer connection for isolated practitioners, and keeping the programme intensely practical - "sessions with real exercises they could take home and use."
"A huge part of the value was that it was in person," Ison noted, acknowledging this can create a cost element. "Online communities are possible, but they take much longer to build depth."
Ison highlighted that the report had mentioned capacity building as a method of retention, something that aligned with the Foundation’s experience with the PLEN and its thinking on political parties. The org is piloting a self-paced Learning Management System (LMS) for a few members at the moment and hopes to roll it out to the wider network this year. When it comes to communicating, she noted it was important to actually ask members what works for them. Often this means getting back to basics, as it has with a Whatsapp group created out of last year’s PLEN gathering.
The three fundamental shifts
As our event came to an end, Sam Lockwood left us with this closing thought: "To make your membership more human, you must first make your organisation more human." This is the key overarching takeaway that we found when looking at what organizations breaking through are doing differently to grow and sustain their membership. And, to recap, they’re making progress by going…
- From transaction to capacity building: Stop taking from members (asking them to pay fees, show up, volunteer) and start investing in their development. Create supportive environments where people can learn and grow - not just when it serves the organisation's campaign calendar.
- From digital-first to human-first: Use technology to facilitate offline organising, enable peer-to-peer recruitment, and remove friction but never as a replacement for human trust or in-person relationship-building. As Lockwood put it: "People trust people. Technology can scale a message, but only humans can scale trust."
- From control to decentralisation: Create identity-based networks where people see themselves represented. Go to where people are - community dinners, WhatsApp groups, dog walking, for votes rather than expecting them to come to your meetings or central committee.
If you’re interested in learning more about The Future of Membership, sign up to receive the report here.