What Is Your Association's "Why of AI"?
Nearly nine out of ten associations are already using AI for content creation. More than four in ten are using it for data analysis. And yet, when asked how prepared they feel to navigate AI's impact, over 85% of association leaders say "somewhat" or "not very." [1]
How can this be? If adoption is already widespread, why does almost no one feel ready?
The answer, I believe, is that most associations jumped straight to experimenting with AI tools for tasks like drafting emails, summarizing meeting notes, and generating social media posts without first answering a more fundamental question:
Why are we doing this?
Not "why AI in general" (that case has been clearly made), rather, "why AI for your association, right now, given your mission, your members, and your strategic priorities?"
Without a clear answer to this question, AI initiatives tend to become a collection of disconnected experiments. Staff members try different tools in different departments. Some get excited, some get anxious. The board asks for an update, and it can be difficult for CEOs and Executive Directors to articulate what all this activity is adding up to.
I refer to this missing piece as an association's "Why of AI," and evidence shows that the organizations making the most meaningful progress are the ones that define it early. [2]
A Framework for Defining Your "Why of AI"
Defining your "Why of AI" doesn't require a lengthy strategic planning process. It starts with three questions that every CEO or Executive Director should be able to answer clearly before investing further in AI initiatives.
1. What problems does AI solve for us?
Associations need to begin not with what AI can do, but with what they need it to do.
The temptation is to start with the technology: "We should look into chatbots," or "Let's try using AI for our newsletter." But that approach puts the tool before the problem. A stronger starting point is your association's most pressing challenges and asking whether AI can meaningfully help address them.
For most associations right now, those challenges are well-documented. Member retention and engagement is the top concern for nearly a third of association leaders. Revenue diversification and new business models is the second. The accelerating pace of change rounds out the top three. [3]
These aren't technology problems on the surface, but AI can play a role in each of them. For member retention, AI can help you identify patterns in engagement data that predict which members are at risk of not renewing long before they lapse. For revenue diversification, AI can help you analyze which programs, events, and content formats are generating the most value, and where untapped opportunities might exist. For managing the pace of change, AI can give your team capacity back by automating routine tasks so they can focus on higher-value strategic work.
The key is to start with your specific problems, not a generic list of AI capabilities. What are the two or three challenges that keep you up at night? Can AI help address them? If so, how? Those answers become the foundation of your "why."
2. Why is adopting AI critical for our success?
This question moves beyond "AI could be helpful" to "AI is something we cannot afford to ignore." It's the urgency question, and it's one that many association leaders have not fully confronted.
There are two dimensions to consider here.
The internal dimension is about organizational capacity. Associations are being asked to do more with the same or fewer resources. Budgets are tight. Staff teams are lean. The demands on a CEO's or Executive Director's time are relentless: membership, revenue, advocacy, governance, board relations, events, and now AI on top of all of it. AI is not just a nice-to-have efficiency play; for many mid-size associations, it may be the only realistic way to close the gap between what the organization needs to accomplish and the resources it has available.
The external dimension is about your members and the industries or professions you serve. AI is already reshaping the fields your members work in. They're looking to their professional associations for guidance, education, and standards around AI. If your association can't provide what your members are looking for, it diminishes your relevance and opens the door to competing options. They will seek out this information elsewhere from places like LinkedIn Learning, free online communities, and AI-powered platforms that can deliver personalized content at scale.
There's another external dimension which I think associations are already aware of, but which is worth reinforcing. Members want to have the same kinds of low-friction, personalized, digital experiences with their associations that they have with the other organizations they interact with on a regular basis. Associations have tended to lag in this area, and the gap will widen as other organizations incorporate AI features into their experiences.
When you put these internal and external dimensions together, the case for urgency becomes clear. It is not that AI is the thing to do because it is trendy. It is that the cost of not building AI capability, both internally and for your members, is too great to ignore. The associations that define their "why" now and start building deliberately will be in a fundamentally stronger position than those that skip or defer this step.
3. How does AI connect to our mission and strategic plan?
This is the question that turns a "why of AI" from an abstract argument into an actionable direction. And it may be the one that gets skipped most often. When ASAE asked association leaders to rank their AI priorities, developing an organization-wide strategy came in third — behind identifying use cases and building staff capacity.[^4] That suggests most associations are prioritizing tactical steps over the strategic foundation those steps should be built on.
Many organizations treat AI as a separate initiative. In some cases, it's a technology project that sits alongside the strategic plan rather than flowing from it. But AI should be in direct service of your mission. If your mission is to advance a profession, then AI should help you do that more effectively. If your strategic plan prioritizes deepening member engagement, then your AI efforts should be evaluated against that goal.
There is a practical aspect to this as well. When AI is anchored to the strategic plan, it becomes easier to prioritize which initiatives to pursue, easier to explain to the board and members why you're investing in them, and easier to measure whether they're working. Without that anchor, every new AI tool or use case feels equally urgent and nothing gets the sustained attention it needs to deliver real results.
A useful exercise is to take your current strategic plan and ask, "For each major goal or priority, is there a way AI could accelerate our progress?" You don't need to find an AI application for every goal. But where the connections are natural and strong, those become your highest-priority AI initiatives and collectively, they form the backbone of your "Why of AI."
What Happens When You Skip the "Why"
The consequences of moving forward without a defined "why" are significant.
Without a clear "why," AI initiatives fragment. Different departments experiment with different tools, often duplicating effort or working at cross-purposes. Staff members who are enthusiastic about AI get frustrated by the lack of direction. Staff members who are anxious about AI get more anxious because there's no clear narrative about what it means for their roles.
The organization defaults to inaction. When the CEO or Executive Director has difficulty articulating a coherent story about what AI is doing for the organization and why, it becomes very difficult to build the case for moving forward with conviction. Budget requests stall. Board members ask harder questions that no one is prepared to answer. And in an environment where only about 8% of association leaders feel "very prepared" for AI, the path of least resistance is to simply wait, which, in a landscape moving this quickly, is its own form of falling behind.[^5]
Where to Start
If you're a CEO or Executive Director who hasn't yet defined your association's "Why of AI," here's what you can do to move forward:
Start a conversation, not a committee. Gather your leadership team for a focused discussion around the three questions above. You don't need a formal task force or a six-month planning process. You need honest answers about what problems you're trying to solve, why AI matters for your organization's future, and how it connects to the work you're already committed to in your strategic plan.
Write it down. Your "Why of AI" should be something you can articulate in a few clear sentences. If you can't, you haven't defined it yet. Writing it down forces clarity and gives you a communication tool for your board, your staff, and your members.
Use it as a filter. Once you've defined your "why," every AI opportunity that comes across your desk can be evaluated against it. Does this tool or initiative support our "why"? If yes, it's worth exploring. If not, it can wait — no matter how exciting the demo was.
Defining your "Why of AI" will not answer every question about how to move forward. But it will give you the foundation you need to move forward with purpose, confidence, and alignment. And in a landscape where most association leaders feel underprepared, that foundation is worth more than any individual tool or pilot project.
Contact Jonathan to start a conversation about defining your association's "Why of AI."
1 ASAE, The State of Associations 2026.
2 I'm borrowing the phrase 'Why of AI' from Section AI, whose work on AI transformation strategy first crystallized this concept for me and led me to adapt the idea significantly for the association context.
3 ASAE, Insight Update: Association Challenges.
4 ASAE, The State of Associations 2026.
5 ASAE, Insight Update: AI in Associations.
