What’s Broken with Association Education Revenue?

In our 2025 survey of the learning business landscape, association respondents ranked “increasing revenue” as #1 for both their primary and secondary strategic goals for the year ahead. Early returns for our 2026 survey show similar results.

We have consulted with organizations over many years, and we have seen the pressure to grow education revenue increase significantly. Boards expect it. Staff want it. Vendors promise it. And yet most education portfolios continue to underperform. Market dynamics and poor execution are only partly to blame.

In this article, we’ll look at seven key issues that hinder education revenue performance in associations. This underperformance stems from deep structural and strategic issues which, in turn, lead to failures in the market and, ultimately, an erosion of value.

Structural Issues

Association education is impacted by three key structural blind spots. Together, these weaken education’s footing before it ever faces the market.

Lack of Organizational Focus

The education function in associations suffers from the same “Be all things to all members” mentality that afflicts associations generally. Harrison Coerver and Mary Byers highlighted this issue more than a decade ago in Race for Relevance, noting that “‘The bigger, the better’ and ‘The more, the merrier’ seem to describe the common bias” among association leadership and management.

This bias cascades down to education, where we hear repeatedly that organizations want to be the “one-stop shop” or, better yet, the “Amazon.com” of their markets, seemingly ignoring the vast amount of resources and decades of losses it took for Amazon to achieve its unique positioning in the retail world (or the fact that there is little indication anyone is looking for an “Amazon of education”).

Most associations in our experience try to serve too many audiences with too many products, resulting in a smorgasbord of courses, conference sessions, and other offerings that are difficult to manage and maintain effectively and for which quality levels often vary dramatically from product to product. As I have argued before, associations have a responsibility to support learning across their member bases, but that is very different from providing a comprehensive set of formal education products for every segment of membership.

The Nonprofit Versus For-Profit Tension

The second issue often goes hand in hand with the first. Most associations are mission-driven nonprofits, which contributes to the compulsion to provide education for everyone. But most education departments, based on our experience and research, are expected to break even, and many are expected to generate a surplus to contribute towards fulfilling the broader mission.

Basically, associations want it both ways, but the education-for-everyone mentality tends to maintain an upper hand. Governance structures and leadership pipelines are rarely designed for true entrepreneurial risk-taking or driving profitability. Without clarity, education gets caught in the middle—not subsidized enough to serve mission in a clear, compelling way but also not invested in sufficiently to stand on its own commercially in the face of growing competition and heightened customer expectations.

It’s rare, in our experience, for associations to have modeled out, on a product line by product line bases, what the true profit-and-loss numbers are on their educational offerings. Even rarer is visibility into metrics like expected cashflow from specific products. Arguably, this is visibility an organization should have even if education is treated purely as a member benefit that supports mission. If the aim is profitability, this kind of visibility isn’t optional—and commercial competitors most definitely do not ignore it.

Non-Dues Revenue Marginalization

Associations talk a lot about non-dues revenue, but, in our experience, education is rarely at the center of that discussion. Sponsorship and advertising dominate. You can see this, for example, in the agendas and typical attendees for major non-dues revenue events or in social media postings on the topic.

Some of this marginalization is no doubt owing to the background of the people who tend to drive non-dues revenue discussions and organize related events. They tend to come from the events and tech sides of associations. Arguably, another key cause for this marginalization is the muddled state of education focus suggested earlier (mission? profit?) and the shortage of educational leaders with a business orientation and corresponding capabilities.

The disconnect, of course, is that education is quite clearly central to non-dues revenue. ASAE, citing its own Operating Ratio Report, says that educational programming fees are one of the sources on which associations rely most heavily for non-dues revenue. And that accounts only for education as a direct source of revenue. Education is very often a driver for sponsorship, whether for discrete offerings like Webinars or as a critical part of the overall value proposition for events.

Associations talk a lot about non-dues revenue, but, in our experience, education is rarely at the center of that discussion.

Market Failures

Compounding the structural issues are key weaknesses that tend to characterize association education in the broader market for adult learning. When the market compares association education to other providers, these weaknesses become glaring.

Declining Perception of Competitiveness

Learners often compare association offerings—whether consciously or not—to LinkedIn Learning, Coursera, Duolingo, and similar “Big Learning” providers, even if associations tell themselves they’re in a different category. For some of the reasons already cited, associations cannot match those platforms on scale or polish. Even an organization that is fully focused, has resolved the nonprofit/for-profit tension, and takes education seriously as a source of non-dues revenue is unlikely to ever have the resources needed to compete as a large catalog player.

This doesn’t mean associations can’t be competitive, only that they are unlikely to be seen that way if they allow the yardstick against which they are measured to be Big Learning providers. As already suggested, most associations would benefit by greatly narrowing their catalogs and focusing on a few high-priority segments of their audience. Additionally, they need to tightly align their educational offerings to the authority assets that differentiate them from commercial providers—things like standards, credentials, research, and advocacy.

Worn-Out Business Models

The “one course, one learner” model is exhausted, but too many associations still rely on it as their main, if not their only, way of selling their educational offerings.

Subscriptions, bundles, and cohort-based approaches are proven ways to generate higher sales volumes and more predictable revenue. To the extent they serve to keep learners more engaged over time, these approaches can also contribute significantly to learning effectiveness—i.e., making learning stick. Still, associations have been slow to adopt such approaches and/or to leverage them to their full potential. Our survey of the 2025 learning business landscape found that only 31 percent of respondents had introduced a subscription for all or part of their catalog, and less than half of respondents were leveraging bundling as a revenue model.

Associations, particularly those with individual members, have also been relatively slow to embrace business-to-business, or B2B, selling. The obvious advantage of selling to companies, organization, and other institutional purchasers is that you can sell many offerings to many learners in one fell swoop, substantially increasing revenue. Combine this type of selling with models like subscriptions and bundling, and you can amplify the revenue impact while simultaneously building valuable long-term relationships with both learners and employers.

Waning Product Formats

Webinars remain the workhorse of association online education, and most conferences still look much as they did decades ago. Neither Webinars nor conferences are likely to disappear overnight, but that doesn’t mean they can’t be significantly revamped and that associations can’t simultaneously be moving toward other models.

The issue is not technology adoption—it’s the lack of design discipline. Low-tech improvements in how content and experiences are structured could dramatically improve learning outcomes and perceived value but are ignored too often. Simple changes to learning experiences like factoring in time for reflection, incorporating opportunities for self-testing, and providing simple resources to help learners more easily apply what they have learned back at the office can make a huge difference. And approaches like coaching and cohort-based learning can provide a high degree of personalization and interactivity without requiring a heavy investment in technology.

All these suggestions require subject matter experts who are prepared to deliver on them. As we have argued many times before, investing in training subject matter experts and presenters to be better educators is one of the highest-leverage actions learning businesses can take.

Erosion of Value Perception

The cumulative, highly damaging consequence of the preceding factors is that association education sends weak signals of value to both learners and employers.

Weak Signaling

There’s a well-established—indeed, Nobel-prize-winning—body of economic theory that the value of education often lies less in direct skill transfer and more in the signals it sends, particularly to employers. While this theory is mainly associated with secondary and higher education, it can be applied to associations.

Very often, the education that associations offer is seen as a grudging necessity (e.g., for compliance) or a nice-to-have perk (e.g., much professional development). If it is associated with a credential of some sort, it is possible—though far from a given—that the credential is seen as having economic value, but association educational offerings rarely signal strong value in their own right. The fact that associations often do not market their offerings effectively and frequently underprice or give away education only serves to reinforce this situation.

Very often, the education that associations offer is seen as a grudging necessity (e.g., for compliance) or a nice-to-have perk (e.g., much professional development).

Economist Bryan Kaplan has suggested three key elements of signaling: intelligence, conscientiousness, and conformity. Associations tend to come up weak in all three:

• Few measure learning outcomes, resulting in a weak intelligence signal.
• Few impose rigor (e.g., tests, projects, renewals), creating a weak conscientiousness signal.
• Few build coherent pathways or standardize content, leading to a weak conformity signal.

The result is the education is perceived as hours of credit rather than serious professional formation.

The Way Forward

The problems outlined here are not new. What is new is the urgency. Learners have more choices than ever, and commercial competitors are raising expectations for value, convenience, and quality. If associations continue to underinvest or to straddle the line between mission and margin, they will see their education portfolios decline in both relevance and revenue.

The path forward requires clarity and discipline in multiple areas.

1. Make an explicit strategic choice.
Decide whether education will function primarily as a subsidized mission multiplier or a commercial business line. You can make that choice for the portfolio as a whole or vary it by product or product line—positioning some offerings as mission multipliers and others as profit-driven. What matters is clarity. Either model is viable, but drifting between them is not. A clear stance enables offerings, investments, and measures of success to align with the chosen model.

2. Align education with authority assets.
Associations cannot win by trying to be Coursera or LinkedIn Learning. They can win by tying education directly to what differentiates them: standards, credentials, research, and advocacy. Education that extends and amplifies these authority assets is harder to displace and easier to monetize.

3. Modernize the business model.
Move beyond “one course, one learner.” Subscriptions, bundles, B2B licensing, and cohort-based learning are proven models that increase both engagement and revenue predictability. Microlearning and coaching, when integrated into broader pathways, can provide ongoing touchpoints that build loyalty and impact.

4. Strengthen the signal.
Education that sends weak signals of rigor, relevance, and achievement will always be undervalued. Associations must invest in assessments, pathways, and marketing that communicate intelligence, conscientiousness, and conformity. Strong signals not only attract learners but also employers and sponsors who want to be associated with high quality.

5. Invest in capacity.
Revenue growth is not just about models and products; it’s about people and process. Training subject matter experts to teach well, building pricing and marketing capability, and developing partnerships with employers are all necessary steps. Associations that treat education as a core business will invest accordingly.

Taken together, these moves require clarity and courage, not just more effort. They challenge long-held habits—of trying to serve everyone, of underpricing to avoid criticism, of treating education as ancillary. But associations that are willing to make these shifts will find themselves not only with stronger education revenue but with a renewed role as essential leaders in the professional development of their fields.

About the Author

Jeff Cobb is a co-founder of Leading Learning and a co-founder and managing director of Tagoras, the company behind Leading Learning. He has nearly three decades of experience working as a consultant, researcher, author, and entrepreneur in the market for adult lifelong learning and has witnessed first hand how it has evolved over that time period. Jeff is also the founder and host of Learning Revolution, a site that supports entrepreneurial subject matter experts. You can find out more about him on the Tagoras and Learning Revolution Web sites.