Why You Should Focus On Attracting Younger Members To Your Club Or Association

One of my favourite things is listening to people in newspapers, on the news, and in breathlessly written opinion pieces complaining that the younger generations are lazy, entitled, self-involved, rude, don’t want to work, etc. 

Think of comments like:

“Many [young people] were so pampered nowadays that they had forgotten that there was such a thing as walking,”.

“There is, as never before, an attitude on the part of young folk which is best described as grossly thoughtless, rude, and utterly selfish,”.

“Modern fashions seem to keep on growing more and more debased … The ordinary spoken language has also steadily coarsened,”. 

“[Young people] are high-minded because they have not yet been humbled by life, nor have they experienced the force of circumstances.

…

They think they know everything, and are always quite sure about it,”.

I’m sure you’ve heard comments just like these, levelled quite a lot at those damn dirty avocado-munching, house-not-buying millennials. But it may or may not surprise you that none of those quotes are about millennials; instead, those quotes are from 1951, 1926, 1330, and the 4th century BCE. 

It turns out that since humans first put pen to paper, we have been complaining that the next generation is, to quote one angry Frenchman from the 1700s, “a race of effeminate, self-admiring, emaciated fribbles,”. 

At this point, I wouldn’t be surprised if this 30,000-year-old cave painting is actually a complaint about how kids are too lazy to hunt mammoths and sabre-tooth cats anymore. 

 

 

My point is that the younger generations are here to stay, and fighting against or complaining about them won’t help. Instead, embracing them and getting them involved in your club or association can really help your organisation. They bring fresh ideas, new energy, and different viewpoints that can breathe new life into your organisation.

I’ve discussed ways to encourage younger members to join your club or association, but today, let’s examine why it's crucial to attract younger people and the benefits they can offer.

Defining The Generations Of Potential Members

First, I think we need to look at the current generation breakdown because I think many people get confused and don’t realise exactly who the “younger generations” are.

For example, former PM Scott Morrison was our first Gen X Prime Minister, David Pocock, former Wallabies captain, two-time world player of the year nominee, and current independent senator is a Gen Y (Millennial), and Laura Nuttall is Australia’s first Gen Z to be elected to an Australian parliament.  

 

 

So when I say younger members, I don’t mean kids whose hair is still wet from the womb; I mean full-functioning adults in their 20s, 30s and 40s.

Below is a graph showing population breakdown by generation and age as of the start of 2025.

 

 

From this, you can see that Gen Z, Millennials, and Gen X make up 61% of the population. In fact, millennials alone make up more of the population than Baby Boomers and the older two generations combined. In theory, then, Millennials should make up the largest proportion of members, closely followed by Gen X, and then in a roughly tied third place, Baby Boomers and Gen Z (roughly half of whom are over 18). 

This is not reflected in reality. The graph below presents the current member distribution by generation in blue, while the green bars represent what the proportional distribution would look like if all generations were targeted equally. 

 

 

As you can see, Gen Z and Gen Y (Millennials) are significantly underrepresented in clubs and associations, and that’s accounting for the fact that half of Gen Z are under 18. Gen X is represented by the proportion you’d expect. In contrast, Baby Boomers and the Silent Generation are significantly overrepresented in club statistics. That is a significant proportion of potential club members being missed out on just because of their age. 

This could mean that older people are disproportionately interested in clubs and associations and that younger generations are disproportionately disinterested in them, but this is a bad take. No evidence supports the idea that Gen Z and Millennials are disinterested in clubs or hobbies, and I highly doubt that the new generations have suddenly become disinterested in clubs and associations after hundreds of years of them being successful. 

However, there is evidence that clubs and associations are not doing a good enough job of targeting younger generations as members. Unless your member age breakdown looks like the one in green in the graph above, you are leaving a lot of potential members on the table. 

Why Attracting Younger Members is Important For Your Membership Organisation

Attracting new members is essential for any club or association to thrive. However, no one can stay a member forever; people will always have to leave your organisation for one reason or another. If you do not consistently add new members, you risk stagnating or declining member numbers.

You always need new members, and if these new members are younger, that's all the better. This is not to take anything from older members; it’s just to say that younger members have the potential to stay for much longer. 

Younger members offer several advantages beyond just longevity:

• They tend to be more open to new ideas.
• They are generally better at adopting new technology.
• They can introduce fresh perspectives and more efficient methods of doing things.
• They are likely to be more adaptable to change.
• They make excellent candidates for future committee roles.
• They can help connect your club with even younger generations.

Again, none of this is exclusive to younger members; older members can still offer all of this; it is just more likely that younger members will have these benefits. Either way, you need to try to attract more members of all generations, but focusing on readdressing the underrepresentation of Millennials and Gen Z is a really good place to start. If you reach out to these generations in the right way, there are likely plenty of members waiting.

How To Recruit Younger Members 

As I mentioned, I have already discussed in detail how to attract younger members to your club or association, and I will link to that article below. However, I want to give you one example that has come up since I wrote that first article, and I think it will be very helpful. 

I am a pretty avid kayaker. I go out at least once a week, and my local area has a kayaking club. You’d think that it would be a match made in heaven. 

However, this kayaking club only hosts paddles at 8 am on Thursday mornings. I'm sure this makes sense for them; the wind is always calmer in the morning, Thursdays will be less affected by weekend traffic, and 8 am is late enough that it will always be daylight at 8 am, no matter the season. From what I can see, all the members are of retirement age, so for them, 8 am on a Thursday makes sense. But for me, someone working full time, I do not have the time or money to be taking half days every other Thursday. Their scheduling of events is convenient for them, but it is directly stopping them from getting younger members. 

So when you are looking at your events and other activities, consider if they will be at times that allow people who work full time, are still at uni, or have school pick up to deal with. Otherwise, you may well be losing out on (what the statistics show us) a pretty sizeable group of potential members. 

If you want much more information on attracting younger members to your club or association, please read How To Attract Younger Members To Your Club. 

How To Get More Members Into Your Membership Organisation 

Now that we’ve covered why it is important to focus on recruiting younger members, we should look at how to achieve that. As I said above, check out How To Attract Younger Members To Your Club, for more info on that. 

Also read The 5 Best Ways To Recruit More Members To Your Club, for even more tips.