Associations, franchisors and buying groups
Your members keep asking for benefits. Now you have an answer.
Most of your members are small employers who cannot buy a benefits package on their own. They are losing people to companies that can. An association is the one entity positioned to fix that at scale, because the whole point of a group is buying what no single member could buy alone. The Edgility Benefits Membership, powered by Exectras, is built to be offered exactly that way.
Why this fits an association
The problem your members have is the problem a group exists to solve.
Ask any executive director what members complain about and hiring is near the top. Ask what the association can do about it and the honest answer is usually a job board and a wage survey. Both are useful. Neither closes the gap between a member with four employees and a regional competitor with 400.
Benefits close that gap, and they are the one thing an association can deliver that a member cannot arrange alone. Traditional group health is not that thing, because it requires underwriting, headcount and a broker your members do not have. A membership program is, because the cost sits on the group rather than on an enterprise contract each member has to qualify for.
That is the whole mechanism. It is also the reason this works for a trade association, a franchisor, a buying group, a chamber or a professional society without any of them changing how they operate.
The honest version
What we will not tell you
That every member will take it. They will not. Adoption in programs like this depends far more on how the association introduces it than on the program itself, and any partner who quotes you a take rate before seeing your member list is guessing.
That it replaces health insurance. It does not, and a member who hears otherwise from your newsletter will be an unhappy member later.
That it is free to run. It is light, but somebody on your side has to own the announcement and answer the first few questions. We will tell you exactly what that looks like before you commit.
What each side gets
Two audiences, one program.
For your members
A benefits package at a size that never qualified before
Virtual urgent care at no cost and primary care at low to no cost around the clock, prescription savings, accident and critical care protection, a $10,000 group term life policy at no cost to the employee, behavioral health, peer support, and wellness and financial tools. Plus everyday savings and discounted business services.
Priced as one monthly membership by company size, so a five-person member firm can buy it and a 50-person one is not paying enterprise rates.
The full programFor the association
Member value you can point at, without an administrative burden
A benefit that answers the hiring complaint directly, delivered by an outside party so your staff is not running enrollment, fielding claims questions or owning a vendor relationship they did not ask for.
Structures vary. Some groups offer it purely as a member benefit at no cost to the association. Others take a role in the economics. Which one applies to you is set in a signed agreement before anything is announced to your membership, and we will not describe a structure to you that does not exist.
How it runs
Four steps, and the first one is not a contract.
Talk
Who your members are, how many, what size they run, and what they have told you about hiring. Twenty minutes. We will tell you on that call whether your membership profile is a fit, including when it is not.
Design
How the program is presented to your members, what the association's role is, what the economics look like, and what gets said in writing about what the program is and is not. This is where the structure gets agreed rather than assumed.
Launch
The announcement written for your voice and your channels, the enrollment path set up through Exectras, and a named contact your members reach directly rather than through your staff. A pilot with a subset of members first, if that is how your board prefers to move.
Support
One point of contact for the association and one for the members. Reporting on uptake so you know whether it is working, because the number that matters is how many member employees are using it, not how many members signed up.
Good fit
- Members are owner-led businesses with roughly five to 100 employees
- Hiring and retention already come up in member surveys or at meetings
- You have a channel that reaches members directly and gets read
- Your members are in service, trade, retail, healthcare or hospitality, where hourly turnover is the constant
- You want a benefit that differentiates membership rather than another discount code
Not a fit
- Members are mostly sole proprietors with no employees
- The association already endorses a competing benefits program and would be splitting its own message
- Nobody on staff can own the announcement, in which case it will not reach anyone
- You need something that replaces major medical coverage, which this is not
What we need from you
Three things, and we can tell you whether this is worth a meeting.
Start here
Bring your members something they cannot buy alone.
Twenty minutes with whoever owns member value at your organization. No cost, no obligation, and a plain answer on fit.