The Future Is Watching: Engaging the Next Generation of Members

In this episode of Associations NOW Presents, guest host Lori Zoss Kraska, founder and CEO of Growth Owl, sits down with Brian Miller, vice president of strategic partnership at Multiview, Kimberly Tuttle, executive director of the American Institute of Architecture Students, and Gilberto Lozada Baez, AIAS board vice president, to explore new research on how students perceive associations. The conversation highlights key opportunities for associations to build stronger connections with young professionals—through targeted social media, mentorship, and small-scale in-person events. They also discuss the importance of digital fluency, university partnerships, and creating meaningful volunteer roles to foster long-term engagement and a true sense of belonging.

Check out the video podcast here:

https://youtu.be/HLTuvHAxkd4

This episode is sponsored by Multiview.

Associations NOW Presents is produced by Association Briefings.

 

Transcript

[00:00:00] Lori Zoss Kraska: Welcome to episode 12 of Associations NOW Presents, an original podcast series from the American Society of Association Executives. I'm Lori Zoss Kraska, founder and CEO of GrowthOwl, LLC, a consultancy that empowers associations with the best practices they need to connect with Fortune 1000 companies and other large organizations for corporate sponsorship, partnership and philanthropic funding.

You also might know me as the author of The Boardroom Playbook, a Not So Ordinary Guide to Corporate Funding for Your Purpose-Driven Organization and host of my own monthly LinkedIn Live that features both association and non-endemic thought leaders who provide insight in new ways of thinking in the area of sponsorship and non-dues revenue.

You can find out more at thegrowthowl.com. But hey, enough about me. Let's take a moment to thank our episode sponsor Multiview today. We're excited to welcome Brian Miller, vice president of strategic partnerships with Multiview. [00:01:00] Also joining us today is Kimberly Tuttle, executive director of the American Institute of Architecture Students, also known as AIAS.

And Gilberto Lozada Baez, AIAS Board Vice President. They're all here to discuss key findings from new research on student perceptions of associations and how we can better engage the next generation of members. Welcome everybody to the podcast. Let's start with you, Brian. 

What influenced your team to look into this topic? 

[00:01:31] Brian Miller: Great question. Well, we always look for ways to help our associations improve their competitive advantage within their organization and any insights that we can provide along the way. It's very interesting for us 'cause we have roughly 850 association partners that span. 30 different industry verticals. Obviously it's a mixture between trade associations and professional societies and professional associations. So when we look at the professional societies, that's really what [00:02:00] we're talking about today with this topic. We conducted some research and we looking at years old problem of how do you. Engage the next generation of members, particularly in professional societies. So that's really why we commissioned this report in the first place. The other thing that was really interesting that when you look at the landscape is this is the first time we've got five generations working in the workforce, right?

You've got the traditionalists, you've got the baby boomers, you've got of course Gen X, and then you have millennials and Gen Z, and. From what we understand is this is the largest graduating class as well in, in foreseeable history that we look back at. So it's really important when you look at the.

Really important message of how do the associations look for that next generational member? How do they find them? How do they keep them throughout their professional career and their journey as members of the association? So that's really the main reason we wanted to, to talk about this topic today and really understand the importance of content and [00:03:00] education when it comes to looking at those different member segments.

And as we continue to talk. In this discussion, we're gonna find that young professionals, students, recent grads, and particularly early in their career, they have different needs, right? From a membership perspective, it's really important to understand this segment and how as an association you engage with those younger members and be able to offer them what they need and what they're looking for in an association.

So that's really the main reason why we did all of this. 

[00:03:29] Lori Zoss Kraska: That's great, and I want to delve in a bit more, Brian, into the research. A sizable amount of this next generati