The platform problem nobody talks about
A CMS held together with plugins. A CRM that half-talks to the website. A renewal flow that only one person in finance truly understands. A comms lead hand-coding HTML because the theme won't bend.
This is a conversation I have with membership managers all the time.
Because when we talk about member experience, retention, lifetime value, the conversation almost always drifts to programmes, content, events, community.
Underneath all of that sits a piece of software, and too often the software decides what's possible.
Marketing General's 2024 benchmarking report found that only 13% of associations describe their value proposition as "very compelling". That number gets quoted a lot, usually as a prompt to rethink messaging or benefits.
I think it's often a platform story in disguise.
If a member can't find the resource they need, the perceived value drops. If a staff member can't publish an update without raising a ticket, the cadence of value drops. If the renewal flow breaks on mobile, the whole relationship wobbles at exactly the wrong moment.
The platform isn't the whole story. But it's the floor that everything else stands on. And if the floor is uneven, no amount of brilliant programming above it feels steady.
Here's what I notice about organisations that have quietly cracked this.
They stopped treating the platform as an IT decision.
They moved it into the growth conversation, alongside retention, engagement, and advocacy.
They gave it a seat at the table where strategy actually gets made. Not because technology is the answer, but because the absence of decent technology is very often the bottleneck.
Community Brands found that 63% of association professionals believe organisations that don't digitally transform now won't survive long-term. That's not a scare stat, it's a quiet acknowledgement from inside the sector that the gap between ambition and infrastructure is widening.
The organisations I see thriving are the ones who closed that gap.
They're not always the ones with the biggest budgets. They're the ones who got honest, early, about what their current setup was actually costing them. Not just in licence fees, but in staff hours, member frustration, missed events, lapsed renewals, and ideas that never shipped because shipping was too painful.
When was the last time you added up the real cost of your current platform?
Not the invoice. The hidden tax. The hours your team spend working around it. The features you've quietly shelved. The members who churned because something felt harder than it should have been.
I'm not suggesting every organisation needs a bespoke build. Plenty don't. Renting a venue is often the right call when you don't need to own one.
But I do think the platform deserves a more honest conversation than it usually gets. Not as a procurement exercise.
It's always a pleasure to chat about these things. If you want to have a further conversation with me, hit reply!
You can always read more about our thoughts on community and platforms at steadfastcollective.com.
