Press release
NANA releases State of Associations 2024
The inaugural annual report surveys 690 member organizations on growth, renewal, and staffing.
NANA has released State of Associations 2024, the first edition of an annual report drawn from a survey of 690 member organizations. Fieldstone Data Partners, NANA's research data partner, fielded the survey between November and January.
The headline numbers
Median membership growth held at 2.1 percent, and median renewal came in at 93 percent across the 690 organizations surveyed. Inês Carvalho-Reyes, NANA's director of research, said the report is meant to give member organizations a benchmark they haven't had before.
"Most association staff have never had a number to compare themselves against," Carvalho-Reyes said. "They know their own renewal rate. They don't know whether 93 percent is good or average. This report exists so they stop guessing."
Carvalho-Reyes holds a PhD in survey methodology and has led NANA's data work since joining the organization. She said the survey took nine months to design, field, and analyze, working from a questionnaire tested with a smaller group of member organizations before the full launch.
What's in the report
The report breaks results out by:
Sector — health care, education, trade, and eight other categories
Staff size — under 10, 10 to 25, and over 25 employees
Region, matching NANA's six chapter footprints
Beyond the two headline figures, the report includes data on staff turnover, non-dues revenue as a share of total budget, and the share of associations that reported a formal strategic plan.
Why NANA built it
NANA's mission includes research alongside peer community and advocacy, and Carvalho-Reyes said the survey fills a gap she heard about constantly from member organizations before joining NANA's staff.
"Every association I talked to before we built this said the same thing: they wanted to know if they were normal. Not exceptional. Normal."
— Inês Carvalho-Reyes, Director of Research
An annual commitment
NANA plans to field the survey every year in early spring and publish results in March, giving member organizations a running benchmark rather than a one-time snapshot. Fieldstone Data Partners will continue as the fielding partner for future editions, and NANA's research team expects to add year-over-year trend data once a second edition is complete.
Copies of State of Associations 2024 are available now in the resource library, free to NANA members and available for purchase to non-members.
How the survey was built
The questionnaire took shape over nine months, starting with interviews of a dozen member organizations about what they most wanted to compare against peers. Carvalho-Reyes said staff size and renewal rate came up in nearly every conversation, which is why both anchor the report's headline findings.
Fieldstone Data Partners handled distribution and response validation, cross-checking self-reported membership figures against publicly available Form 990 data where organizations had filed one. Responses that couldn't be validated were excluded rather than adjusted, which Carvalho-Reyes said was a deliberate choice to keep the dataset honest even at the cost of a smaller sample.
What member organizations should do with it
NANA's guidance to members reading the report is straightforward: find your sector and staff-size band, then compare your own renewal and growth figures against the median for that group rather than the headline number for all 690 organizations. A national median of 2.1 percent growth means little to a 600-member trade association if its sector's median is running closer to zero.