What Will You Stop Doing in 2027?

A stronger strategy starts with tougher choices.

INSIGHTS

10/27/20267 min read

A strategy can be full of good ideas and still lack clear priorities.

As association leaders prepare their 2027 plans, the temptation is understandable. Member expectations are evolving. Technology is creating new possibilities. Boards want growth. Professional communities need new forms of support. But every additional commitment requires something: funding, people, time, technology, or leadership attention. And those resources are not unlimited.

The real question is not whether an initiative is worthwhile. It is whether that initiative is more valuable than the opportunities your association may have to sacrifice to pursue it.

The Scenario

An illustrative boardroom conversation

The CEO had just finished presenting the association's proposed 2027 strategic plan. The priorities were ambitious: increase membership, expand professional education, explore international markets, strengthen employer partnerships, invest in AI, and improve the member experience.

The board was enthusiastic. Each initiative supported the mission. Each had a compelling business case. And each had someone advocating for it.

Then a board member asked: "If we're adding all of this, what are we taking off the table?"

The room went quiet. The association had spent months evaluating new opportunities. But almost every existing program, committee initiative, event, and service had carried over from the previous year. Nothing was obviously wrong with the plan. That was precisely the problem.

The Research

47.7% Of surveyed association professionals identified leveraging data for strategic decisions as a challenge.

Source: Naylor Association Solutions & Association Adviser, 2026 Association Benchmarking Report.

That third finding deserves particular attention. Associations are collecting more information about membership, engagement, programs, and revenue. Yet many still struggle to translate that information into confident strategic decisions. And without clear evidence of what delivers value, it becomes difficult to decide what to expand, redesign, or discontinue.

This is where an established principle of strategic management becomes especially relevant. In his Harvard Business Review article What Is Strategy?, Michael Porter emphasizes that strategy requires trade-offs. Organizations cannot pursue every attractive opportunity without making choices about where to concentrate their efforts.

For associations, those choices are particularly complex. A program may have limited financial returns but significant mission impact. Another may generate revenue while contributing little to long-term member engagement or professional relevance. The goal, therefore, is not to do less for the sake of doing less. It is to invest more deliberately in what creates the greatest value.

As 2027 planning begins, the research raises a question worth considering: Are associations evaluating new opportunities as carefully as they are questioning the commitments already consuming their resources? The answer could determine whether next year's strategy creates meaningful progress or simply adds another layer of activity.

More Opportunities. More Pressure. But Are Associations Making Tougher Choices?

Recent association research reveals a sector actively searching for new ways to grow, diversify revenue, and deliver greater member value.

According to ASAE's 2026 State of Associations report, nearly two-thirds of associations are pursuing partnerships, more than 60% are diversifying revenue, and over half are introducing new offerings. At the same time, financial pressures remain significant, with nearly 39% of association CEOs reporting financial decline compared with 10% reporting improvement.

These findings point to an important tension. Associations are responding to changing conditions by exploring new opportunities. But each new partnership, service, or revenue stream brings additional decisions about funding, staffing, capabilities, and execution. The challenge is not simply identifying where growth might come from. It is determining which opportunities deserve investment.

A second study reinforces this point. The 2026 Association Benchmarking Report from Naylor Association Solutions and Association Adviser, based on 665 responses from senior association professionals, found that:

51.9% identified generating non-dues revenue as a major challenge.

49.5% cited communicating member benefits.

47.7% identified leveraging data for strategic decisions as a challenge, placing it among the top three for the first time.

3. START — What deserves a place in our future?

New opportunities should be evaluated against strategic relevance, demonstrated demand, organizational readiness, and their potential contribution to the mission. For some associations, this may mean entering an international market.

For others, it may involve developing an employer engagement model, introducing a new credential, responding to emerging professional skills needs, or investing in a technology capability that fundamentally improves member value. The important distinction is between pursuing an opportunity because it is exciting and pursuing it because there is compelling evidence that it matters.

The test: If we could launch only one significant new initiative in 2027, which would create the greatest long-term impact?

4. MEASURE — What needs evidence before we commit further?

Not every initiative can be confidently classified as successful or unsuccessful. Some may have strategic potential but lack clear performance data. Others may be relatively new and require more time to demonstrate results.

Rather than automatically renewing or canceling them, associations can establish a defined evaluation period. Agree on the outcomes that matter, the evidence required, the resources available, and when a decision will be made. This prevents uncertain initiatives from becoming permanent commitments simply because nobody has established a decision point.

The test: What evidence would convince us to increase, redesign, or discontinue this investment?

What This Means for Associations

Four Decisions to Make Before Approving Your 2027 Plan

Rather than starting with a blank page and a list of new initiatives, associations should evaluate their existing portfolio alongside emerging opportunities. Every significant program, investment, or strategic initiative should fall into one of four categories.

1. STOP — What no longer justifies the investment?

Some activities continue because they have become part of the annual calendar, have an established internal champion, or have simply never been challenged. Consider programs that consistently attract limited participation, duplicate other offerings, require disproportionate resources, or no longer respond to members' changing needs.

Stopping does not always mean eliminating. It may mean consolidating two programs, retiring an outdated service, transferring delivery to a partner, or redesigning an activity to achieve the same outcome more effectively. Before making that decision, associations should also consider mission-critical services whose value may not be reflected in revenue alone.

The test: If we were launching this activity for the first time today, would we still choose to invest in it?

2. STRENGTHEN — What is already working but has greater potential?

Strategic planning often focuses on what's new, while overlooking opportunities to build on existing strengths. An established credential may have untapped demand among employers. A successful education program may be relevant to professionals in another market. A strong institutional relationship may provide access to an entirely new professional community.

Instead of creating something from scratch, associations should ask where additional investment could generate greater returns from capabilities they already possess.

The test: What could deliver significantly more value if we gave it greater attention, investment, or reach?

The Discipline Behind the Decisions

The four categories are useful only if they lead to actual choices. For every significant new priority, leadership should identify:

The outcome it is expected to deliver.

The resources and capabilities it will require.

The existing activities it will complement or replace.

The measures that will demonstrate success.

The point at which the investment will be reviewed.

This creates a direct connection between strategic ambition, resource allocation, and accountability. It also changes the nature of the board conversation. Instead of approving an increasingly long list of initiatives, directors can evaluate the choices that will define the association's future.

A strong 2027 plan should make it just as clear what the association will not pursue as what it intends to achieve.

Question for Your Next Board Meeting

If we could pursue only three strategic priorities in 2027, which would we choose? And what are we prepared to stop, change, or postpone to make them possible?

Consider asking each board member to identify their three priorities independently before discussing them as a group. Where do their choices align? Where do they differ? And which existing commitments are preventing the association from investing in its most important opportunities?

The answers may reveal more about the organization's strategic direction than another round of budget discussions.

Talent at Work Perspective

Sometimes the most valuable strategic decision is to delay an attractive opportunity until the right local relationships, resources, and execution capabilities are in place. Our role is to help associations make these decisions with stronger market intelligence, local insight, stakeholder relationships, and a clear path from strategy to execution.

As leaders prepare for 2027, we would encourage them to look beyond the number of initiatives in their plans and ask a more fundamental question: Are we investing our resources where they can create the greatest value? Or simply spreading them across everything we want to accomplish?

Because sustainable growth is rarely about pursuing every opportunity. It is about knowing which opportunities deserve to become priorities.

At Talent at Work, we see strategic prioritization as one of the foundations of sustainable international growth.

Associations frequently have more opportunities than they can realistically pursue: new geographic markets, institutional partnerships, membership channels, professional education, credentials, and emerging technologies. But international expansion is not simply about identifying where demand exists. It is about understanding where an association has the strongest potential to translate that demand into meaningful and sustainable results.

That requires choices. An association may achieve greater impact by deepening its presence in an existing market rather than entering three new ones. Another may find that strengthening employer partnerships creates more opportunity than investing in another membership campaign.