MemberWise Digital Excellence 2026 Report: reading between the lines

I read the MemberWise Digital Excellence Report every year. I’ve been doing that for the best part of a decade, and it remains the most honest benchmark the membership sector has. Nearly 480 professionals responded this year, and the headline numbers look encouraging. The largest 100 membership bodies now spend a combined £250 million a year on digital. CRM and website integration is up. CMS satisfaction has improved.

On paper, things are moving in the right direction. But a few of the findings this year gave me pause, and I think they’re worth exploring.

Acquisition is up. Engagement isn’t keeping pace.

New member acquisition is back as the sector’s top priority. Given the economic pressures most organisations are dealing with, I understand why. Revenue needs to grow, and new members are the most visible route.

The concern is what happens after they join. Measuring member engagement has risen to become the sector’s number one challenge, and the report is blunt about it: this is something that should have been resolved well before now. Only 61% of organisations measure engagement at all, and most of those rely on surveys and email marketing tools rather than behavioural data. Personalisation has barely moved in five years, up just one percentage point to 43%.

I see this regularly in our work. An organisation is acquiring members successfully, but when you ask whether those members are engaging with web content, or events, nobody can answer with confidence. A CRM that captures joining data but can’t tell you what a member has done in the last six months is giving you half the picture. And at renewal time, half the picture is a risk.

AI adoption is rising quickly. Strategy isn’t.

AI use across the sector has jumped from 5% to 26% in two years. The report compares this pace to early social media adoption, and I think the parallel is a useful one. Social media was adopted quickly and rationalised slowly. AI is following the same trajectory, potentially with higher stakes.

The most telling stat for me is that only 6% of organisations have a formal AI strategy. That number was zero last time. So, the sector is adopting AI tools rapidly, but almost none of it is governed by a documented plan for how those tools will be used, what data they’ll access, or who is accountable for what they produce.

Among those using generative AI, 60% are using ChatGPT. Microsoft Copilot follows at 41%. Some organisations have started using AI for legal, compliance and policy document drafting. The report notes it is too early to report statistically significant positive outcomes, which feels about right to me. The potential is real, but most of the sector is still finding its feet.

In our own work, I’ve seen what AI can do when it’s done thoughtfully. We built an AI chatbot for Epilepsy Action that handles 76% of enquiries and supports people outside office hours when no one else can. But that project started with a clear purpose, a defined scope and a conversation about data governance before any technology was chosen. The tool came last.

For most membership organisations, the honest question is not whether to use AI. The answer to that is probably yes, eventually. The better question is whether your data is in a state where AI can do anything reliable with it. If the CRM and website are not connected, if member data is fragmented across separate systems, if engagement data lives in spreadsheets, then AI will amplify the mess rather than solve it.

Technology investment is growing. Alignment isn’t.

The sector is spending more on technology. Most organisations report budgets of 2 to 5% of annual income, rising to 6 to 10% among medium and large membership bodies. That’s meaningful investment. The concern is that only 14% have it firmly aligned to a documented digital strategy with planned investments. The rest is happening project by project, driven by whichever need is most urgent at the time.

The report highlights a pattern I recognise well: different departments managing different technology budgets without coordinated oversight. The result, as the report puts it, is poorly integrated solutions and an inconsistent online member experience.

I understand why it happens. Membership teams are under real pressure. 77% of organisations in this report say costs and workload have increased. 64% are being asked to generate more income without a proportionate increase in resource. When something breaks or a board member asks about AI, the natural response is to fix that specific problem. The broader question of how all the pieces fit together gets deferred.

The consequence shows up in integration. CRM-to-website integration has improved to 78%, which is good news and reflects years of work across the sector. But LMS integration sits at 19%, unchanged. Email marketing tool integration is flat at 54%. The systems that hold the richest behavioural data, the ones that could tell you whether a member is becoming more or less engaged, are still disconnected from the central member record.

What I’d encourage you to think about

I’ve been working exclusively with membership organisations for over twenty years. The pattern I see most often is organisations investing in the right technology but in the wrong order. A new website without addressing the data underneath it. An AI pilot without connecting the CRM to the member portal first. A dashboarding project without agreeing what the organisation needs to measure.

Connected systems produce better outcomes than isolated ones. That has been true for as long as I’ve been doing this work, and the DX2026 data confirms it again. The organisations making measurable progress are the ones that got the foundations right before adding complexity.

If you’re reading this report and recognising some of these patterns in your own organisation, that’s normal. Most of the sector is in the same position. The question is where to start, and in my experience the honest answer is usually simpler and less expensive than people expect.

I’m always happy to talk it through.

Read the full report on the MemberWise website: Memberwise Digital Excellence Report 2026

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