Help! I’ve just started at my association…

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and discovered our membership systems aren’t fit for purpose!

There’s a particular moment that many newly appointed membership leaders experience — whether you’re a new Membership Manager, Director, or CEO. If any of this sounds familiar, this blog is for you!

You settle into the role. You meet the team. You begin understanding how the organisation operates — its renewals, events, communications, and day-to-day workflows. You start sketching out ideas for where you want to take the organisation. And then, gradually or all at once, something becomes clear.

The systems you’ve inherited are nowhere near capable of supporting the goals you’ve been hired to deliver.

Maybe you discover that renewals are processed through spreadsheets. Or that no one is entirely sure which version of the membership list is accurate. Or that the CRM — if one exists — is no longer fit for purpose, so the team relies on workarounds (or avoids using it altogether). Perhaps you’ve already tried running a report, only to realise the data can’t be trusted.

It is at this point that many new hires begin to feel the weight of the gap between intention and infrastructure. You arrive with ambition and ideas. What you find instead is a patchwork of manual processes, legacy systems, and workarounds that have accumulated over years of good intentions but limited capacity.

And this moment can feel overwhelming — but it doesn’t need to. Don’t panic. This is one of the most common scenarios we see across the membership sector, particularly in organisations where teams have worked heroically to “make things work” long after the systems themselves stopped keeping up with demand.

This blog is written for that moment. The moment you realise that if you’re going to deliver the growth, modernisation, and engagement improvements you were brought in for, you can’t ignore the reality of the tools sitting beneath your strategy.

Instead, you need a clear, calm way to understand what’s happening — and a structured path to begin the conversation about change.

Seeing the situation clearly

One of the first challenges newly hired Membership Managers, Directors, or CEOs face is emotional rather than operational. It’s the sense that you should be able to make things work, that the organisation hired you to “sort things out”, and that drawing attention to the system’s limitations too early might seem like deflection.

But this belief creates unnecessary pressure. Research from the Charity Digital Skills Report repeatedly highlights that digital capability gaps rarely arise from poor decisions; they arise from limited internal capacity and competing priorities — a reality most membership teams inherit, not create.

So the first step is to recognise this scenario as normal. Many organisations reach a point where their tools no longer match their ambition. You are not highlighting a failure; you are recognising an opportunity to create conditions for success.

Step 1 — Take stock of what you’ve inherited

Before you can talk about change, you need to understand what you are working with. This doesn’t require a technical overhaul. It simply requires curiosity and structure.

Spend time observing how processes actually run. Start by mapping your full tech stack — every system, tool, spreadsheet, and platform involved — and how these connect (or don’t) across the core workflows the team relies on.

Often what emerges is not a single problem but a web of small inefficiencies: duplicated effort, manual uploads, data entered differently depending on who is doing the task. These are the things people tolerate silently — not because they don’t care, but because they’ve learned to work around them.

Mapping this landscape gives you a clear, holistic overview. It also gives you language, because instead of saying “the systems are a mess”, you’re able to articulate specific, observable patterns, for example: renewals requiring manual intervention; inconsistent records across CRM and Mailchimp; event data trapped in third-party tools.

This is the point where frustration starts turning into understanding.

Step 2 — Connect system issues to your strategic goals

What turns a general concern into a compelling case for change is the connection between the system issues you observe and the strategic objectives you’ve been hired to deliver.

Most new Membership Managers, Directors, or CEOs arrive with a clear expectation placed upon them, some of which include: increasing membership numbers, improving retention, raising engagement, expanding member value, and enhancing reporting.. But systems that can’t support these ambitions quietly undermine your ability to deliver any of them.

Research published by Ipsos reinforces this link: organisations with inconsistent or fragmented data struggle disproportionately with decision-making, innovation, and member value delivery. The technology itself isn’t the challenge — it’s the impact on the organisation’s ability to understand its members and act confidently.

By framing issues in this way, you transform the conversation. You’re no longer describing system problems; you’re explaining how those problems restrict the organisation’s ability to deliver on its purpose.

Step 3 — Gather stories and evidence from the team

One of the most effective ways to build internal understanding is through the team’s own experiences. When you speak to colleagues, you may hear the same things repeated: time lost to admin tasks, delays responding to members, manual reconciliation between platforms, difficulty retrieving accurate data.

These everyday stories provide the human context that numbers alone can’t capture. They illustrate how much time is being spent on work that could be automated, how often staff are relying on intuition rather than insight, and how member frustration sometimes slips through unnoticed simply because the organisation can’t see the whole picture.

Evidence doesn’t need to be formal. It can be as simple as keeping note of the time spent on manual tasks each week. Many organisations don’t realise how cumulative these hours become until someone new arrives with fresh eyes.

When you gather these reflections, they become a solid foundation for change — because they show that the system isn’t just an inconvenience, but a barrier to the team being able to focus on what matters most: serving members well.

Step 4 — Begin shaping the conversation with leadership

Talking to boards, trustees, or senior leadership about system change can feel daunting, particularly when you’re still relatively new in post.

Rather than describing the system as “broken”, focus on outcomes: efficiency, risk reduction, confidence in decision-making, and alignment with strategic goals.

Leadership teams respond well to structured, evidence-based thinking. If you can show them the connection between system limitations and organisational risk — especially around data accuracy, member experience, and financial reporting — the conversation becomes constructive rather than confrontational.

The NCVO Civil Society Almanac reports that administrative inefficiency remains one of the most persistent sources of waste across the sector. When you position system improvement as a way to reduce that waste, you shift perceptions from “additional cost” to “essential infrastructure”.

Your goal in this stage is not to secure immediate approval. It’s to create alignment — to help leadership see what you see, understand the risks and opportunities, and recognise that reviewing the organisation’s digital foundations is part of delivering the ambitions they’ve set.

Step 5 — Decide how you want to shape the path forward

Once you have a clear overview and alignment, the next step is to explore what “better” might look like. This doesn’t mean selecting a replacement system immediately. It means creating a shared understanding of the criteria that matter.

• What does “accurate reporting” mean for your organisation?

• What would it look like to have renewals run smoothly?

• How should the experience feel for members?

• How much manual work should be removed from the team’s day-to-day?

This is where tools like a CRM readiness planner or a membership-specific health-check can give structure to your thinking. They help you evaluate whether your current system can realistically support your goals and identify areas of risk before they become critical.

The important thing is not to rush. Many organisations begin with a small step: defining their goals, identifying their pain points, and clarifying what a future-ready membership operation might require. These early reflections often become the basis of a more formal review later in the year.

You’re not alone — and you don’t need to have all the answers

Perhaps the most reassuring thing we can say to you is this: you are not expected to immediately fix years of accumulated complexity. What matters is your ability to create clarity, build understanding, and guide your organisation towards decisions that strengthen — rather than strain — your membership strategy.

Your role is not to know everything on day one. It’s to help your organisation see what’s possible and work towards it steadily. If you’ve recognised that your systems are not fit for purpose, that recognition is the beginning of progress, not the end of it.

A gentle path forward

If you’d like a structured way to assess where you are, our Membership CRM Health-check can help you begin gathering information and turning observations into a clear narrative.

And if you’d like to explore what modern membership operations could look like for your organisation, you can book a conversation with one of our experts for an open, informal discussion about your options.

FAQ

• I’ve just joined and discovered our systems are a mess — where do I start?

  Begin with observation. Map what tools are being used, where the pain points are, and how they affect your ability to deliver your objectives. Small, structured steps are more effective than reacting all at once.

• How do I talk to my board about changing our CRM?

  Frame the conversation around outcomes: accuracy, efficiency, reporting, member experience, and strategic readiness. Use evidence from staff experiences to support your case.

• How do I show that system issues are affecting membership growth?

  Connect each barrier to a strategic impact: inability to track retention, manual renewals limiting scale, poor data affecting campaign performance, or lack of insight restricting decision-making.

• Do I need to replace everything immediately?

  No. Most organisations begin with understanding, alignment, and planning. The path toward improvement is gradual — and entirely manageable when approached step by step.