Our guest on this episode of The Member Engagement Show is Georgina Donahue, Higher Logic’s Director of Community Innovation and AI Strategy. With over 10 years in community leadership (having started out as a community manager) Georgina shares her wealth of expertise in community leadership, and user-focused community advocacy. Topics covered include:

• How community is the engine that drives alignment between organizations and members.
• Tips for growing online communities, based on Georgina's experience taking a community she managed from 0 to 50,000 members.
• Key metrics for measuring the success of a community.
• How to get leadership buy-in for community
• Busy vs. meaningful engagement.
• Engagement myths…busted!
• Tips to drive the member journey, from onboarding to advocacy
• Selling the importance of community internally.
• Community and member engagement trends for the year ahead.
• A sneak peek from Kelly at some insights from the upcoming Member Engagement Report.

Helpful Links

Peggy Hoffman episode on community volunteering

Community Manager Toolkit

Today’s episode of The Member Engagement Show is a special presentation of a recent webinar covering the release of Higher Logic’s 2025 Association Community Benchmark Report: “From Data to Action.” Kelly and her guests Eileen Quinn and John Micah Yates, strategic advisors on the Higher Logic customer success team, walk through the results of the study and offer strategies to increase member participation and engagement. Topics include:

• Highlights from the report
• Strategies for increasing engagement in your online community
• Average community size, logins, and discussions
• The most common types of engagements
• What kinds of engagements are lagging
• Community digest open rates
• How many users make use of resource libraries
• If AI is pulling people away from online communities
• Login trends based on months of the year
• The inverse trend between size and participation
• The relationship between community age and engagement
• How automation rules impact engagement
• How gamification impacts engagement
• How volunteering, mentoring, and job boards impact engagement
• Tactics for growing communities
• Ways to increase discussion and contribution activity
• How much, if any, of your content should be gated
• Tips for avoiding over-emailing

Some Helpful Links:

Webinar Recording

2025 Association Community Benchmark Report

Podcast episode with Christin Berry of ASAE

Podcast episode with Karen Saverino of Smithbucklin

Our guest this episode of The Member Engagement Show is Brian Scott, President and CISO of 501CISO, who talks about the increasing prevalence of cybercrime targeting nonprofits and associations. We discuss the industrialization of cybercrime, the unique vulnerabilities of smaller organizations, and the importance of cybersecurity education and training. Topics covered include:

• Why cybercrime is worse than it’s ever been.
• The global industrialization of cybercrime.
• How AI is helping cybercriminals be more effective.
• Why nonprofits and associations are becoming a bigger target.
• Are Managed Service Providers (MSPs) always reliable protection?
• Tips for hiring and using MSPs.
• The impact of being the target of cybercrime.
• Key things associations should do to protect their security and data.
• The '501 CISO Big Six' essential protections to implement.
• Why cybersecurity is not just an “IT problem.”

Some Helpful Links:

Episode on AI use and data privacy with guest Amanda DeLuke.

Explore more resources from Brian Scott & 501CISO: cleartoneconsulting.com/publications/