Economic Benefits Associations Bring

• Associations employ 260,000 people full-time and another 35,000 part-time.
• Although largely tax-exempt entities, associations still pay more than $1.1 billion in local, state, and federal taxes each year.

How Associations Foster Volunteerism

• Through association programs, Americans active in the 8,000-plus organizations represented by the study devote more than 173 million volunteer hours annually to charitable and community service projects.
• This volunteer time is valued at more than $2 billion annually, based on current median hourly earnings.

What Associations Do - And How They Spend Money

• 95 percent of associations surveyed offer education programs for members, making that service the single most common association function.
• Other key functions associations offer: convention planning and other convention activities (which 89 percent provide); using Web sites and e-mail to share information with members (81 percent); public information and education activities (71 percent); and setting product/service standards (59 percent).
• Associations provide a variety of benefits to their members. ASAE member associations are the source of health insurance for more than 8 million Americans, while close to 1 million people participate in retirement savings programs offered through associations.
• Associations spend $1.7 billion on public information and education activities. One of every four dollars associations spend goes to either member or public education - about three times the amount they spend on direct lobbying of government.

The Ripple Effect of Association Activities

• Association activities have a substantial ripple effect on other sectors of the economy.
• While associations themselves spend nearly $2.5 billion annually on convention planning and other convention-related activities, the impact on the travel and hospitality industry is enormous. For example, association-sponsored meetings and conventions now account for more than 26 million overnight stays in U.S. hotels each year.
• Association members themselves spend more than $10 billion annually to participate in association education and training programs.
• Association members spend more than $1.1 billion complying with association-set standards, which safeguard consumers and provide other valuable benefits.

This research was conducted in 1998 for the Foundation of the American Society of Association Executives by Public Open Strategies and Greenberg Quinlan Research. The findings were based on 600 mail/telephone interviews from a sample of 8,662 associations whose CEOs are ASAE members. Most of the economic data is based on 1996 association spending and all projections are based only on the activities of the 8,662 organizations from which the sample was drawn, making the projections conservative for the entire universe of associations in the United States, which number well over 100,000. The margin of error for the study is +3.9 percent.

www.asaenet.org