Is the future of member organisations at risk?
The challenges facing member and purpose-driven organisations today aren’t simple and they’re rarely solved by quick fixes.
In the Stakeholder Impact Forum podcast, Cosaris brings together a cross-sector community of engagement leaders, innovators and researchers to explore the deeper tensions shaping stakeholder ecosystems today.
If you’re responsible for engagement, strategy or stakeholder value in a member or purpose-driven organisation, this podcast is for you. A chance to hear how others are navigating the same pressures and what the future could bring, not through surface-level success stories, but by joining honest conversations with the people responsible for navigating the same issues as you in different sectors.
Together, we unpack questions many leaders are wrestling with:
Why does relevance sometimes decline despite increased activity?
Why do digital engagement initiatives not always translate into real connection?
Where does misalignment between governance, value and stakeholder expectations quietly emerge?
How can organisations navigate generational change, engagement fatigue and fragmented ecosystems?
The list goes on...
Through real experiences from organisations such as global associations, academic bodies and major industry alliances, each episode looks beneath the surface to understand what’s really driving change and what the underlying tensions are across every sector.
So be part of the conversation.
Listen, learn and explore the tensions shaping stakeholder engagement today.
Why change fails when organisations do things to people instead of with them
Sufina Ahmad MBE is Director of the John Ellerman Foundation, a leading UK grant-making charity that supports organisations tackling inequality, environmental challenges, and social change. Working at the intersection of funding, policy, and community action, Sufina helps charities and institutions build trust, strengthen participation, and create lasting impact through collaboration and systems-focused thinking.
Many organisations invest significant time and resources into change initiatives. Yet many still struggle to achieve lasting results. Sufina Ahmad argues that successful collaborative change making starts with involving people in the process, rather than imposing solutions on them.
Too often, organisations focus on policies, structures, and processes alone. While these tools matter, they cannot create lasting impact without genuine participation. Collaborative change making requires organisations to listen deeply, build trust, and work alongside the people they want to support.
When organisations co-design and co-deliver change, they create stronger ownership and better outcomes. This approach helps build trust, strengthens communities, and creates change that lasts beyond any single initiative.
7 May 2026
Why future-ready organisations are those that align innovation with talent, not just technology
Soumitra Dutta is a globally recognised expert in innovation, AI, and digital transformation, with leadership experience spanning Oxford, Cornell, INSEAD, and the World Economic Forum. As co-founder of the Portulans Institute and creator of internationally respected indices, including the Global Innovation Index, he helps organisations and governments understand emerging technological shifts and build future-ready capabilities.
Building digital transformation resilience has become one of the defining challenges for modern organisations. As Soumitra explains, the real barrier to technological adoption is rarely the technology itself. It is organisational inertia, legacy systems, and the ability of people and processes to adapt quickly enough.
True digital transformation resilience requires organisations to rethink how they approach growth, talent, and innovation. While technology is advancing exponentially, many institutions are still operating with mindsets that limit their ability to respond to change.
To remain competitive, leaders must develop the courage to embrace new models, expand ambition, and create organisations capable of scaling. Those that fail to evolve risk falling behind in an increasingly AI-driven world.
8 Apr 2026
Why engagement only cuts through when it’s driven by lived experience
Steve Hill is Chief Communications Officer at Auticon UK and a leading voice in purpose-led engagement and inclusion. With extensive experience translating social impact into organisational momentum, Steve focuses on how lived experience, belief, and advocacy turn engagement into sustained change.
The most effective engagement doesn’t start with strategy decks or campaigns; it starts with people. Lived experience engagement creates credibility, trust, and emotional connection that no top-down message can achieve.
When individuals with personal connection champion a cause, momentum builds organically. Personal experience engagement turns engagement into a movement, powered by belief rather than persuasion.
By activating internal advocates and existing communities, organisations amplify impact in ways traditional communication never can.
31 Mar 2026
You can’t retain early-career members if you don’t meet them where they are
Matthew Lovell is Head of Recruitment and Retention at the Institute of Physics, where he focuses on attracting and retaining early-career professionals within a scientific membership community. With direct responsibility for engagement strategy, Matthew brings a practical, channel-aware perspective on how organisations must adapt to stay relevant to younger members.
For many membership organisations, recruitment at early-career stages is strong, but retention is a bigger problem. The challenge lies in early-career engagement, especially when communication and outreach don’t match how younger members consume information.
Webinars and long-form content still have value, but they are rarely the entry point. Early career engagement increasingly depends on short-form, peer-led content that feels authentic, accessible, and easy to share.
By amplifying real member voices and meeting early-career professionals in their own digital spaces, organisations can turn awareness into ongoing participation.
31 Mar 2026
Can membership solve the world's issues?
Mervyn Pilley is a long-standing membership leader and advisor with decades of experience across professional membership bodies and is currently working with CIAT (https://architecturaltechnology.com/). Known for his candid, systems-level perspective, Mervyn explores how membership organisations must adapt to political, technological, and generational change to remain relevant and influential.
One of the most complex pressures facing organisations today is intergenerational membership. Expectations, behaviours, and motivations vary widely between age groups, making it increasingly difficult to design experiences that work for everyone.
Too often, organisations respond by creating silos, separate groups for different demographics. But intergenerational membership works best when knowledge, experience, and mentorship flow across generations rather than being divided.
The future of membership lies in connection, not fragmentation. Bringing generations together around shared purpose creates resilience, relevance, and long-term value.
26 Mar 2026
How can storytelling help drive diversity, equity and inclusion?
Mo Kanjilal is Founder and Director of Edge of Difference (https://edgeofdifference.com/), where she works with organisations to embed inclusion, neurodiversity, and belonging into leadership and culture. With experience guiding organisations through complex change, Mo brings a clear view on how leadership behaviour shapes inclusion outcomes.
Inclusion does not happen by accident. Inclusive leadership is the difference between well-meaning intentions and meaningful impact that people can actually feel.
Real progress starts when leaders listen, collect stories, and respond to lived experience. Inclusive leadership turns insight into action by removing barriers, enabling participation, and empowering people to speak up.
When leadership commits visibly and consistently, belief grows. And belief is what drives sustained engagement and cultural change.
26 Mar 2026
The power of storytelling in engaging stakeholders
Mat Hunter is a design leader, strategist, and ecosystem builder with a career spanning IDEO (https://www.ideo.com/), the UK Design Council (https://www.designcouncil.org.uk/), and place-based innovation ecosystems. Mat brings a systems-level perspective on how collaboration, innovation, and shared purpose drive impact.
Traditional member organisations often treat collaboration as a project. Ecosystem thinking reframes it as something living, evolving over time, shaped by people, institutions, and shared ambition.
Rather than focusing only on fixed stakeholder groups, innovation ecosystems stay open. New voices, unexpected contributors, and diverse forms of participation bring energy, ideas, and resilience into the system.
The role of leadership is not control, but framing. By setting a clear direction and allowing collaboration to emerge, member organisations can move from managing complexity to unlocking collective momentum.
25 Mar 2026
How segmenting and providing for diverse member needs strengthens meaningful engagement
Organisations today are facing increasing stakeholder engagement challenges, particularly in navigating resistance, shifting expectations, and complex social dynamics. As Berkeley Wilde highlights, many organisations are no longer struggling with silence but with active pushback, making engagement more difficult and nuanced than ever before.
One of the key ways to overcome these stakeholder engagement challenges is through building trust over time, rather than expecting immediate buy-in. This requires organisations to move beyond surface-level initiatives and instead centre authentic voices, lived experience, and real community insights in their approach.
By combining research, storytelling, and direct community engagement, organisations can create meaningful dialogue that resonates. The most impactful engagement doesn’t come from top-down messaging, but from creating spaces where stakeholders feel heard, valued, and genuinely represented.
6 Mar 2026
What does meaningful member engagement look like in the charity sector?
Michelle Newell is Membership Manager at CharityComms, where she leads the design and delivery of member experiences for charity communications professionals. With a strong focus on listening, iteration, and practical value, Michelle brings a grounded, member-led perspective on how professional communities evolve in the digital age.
For membership organisations, the challenge is relevance. Engaging charity communicators depends on whether members clearly see value in how programmes support their real-world challenges.
By listening to feedback and redesigning services like mentoring for digital delivery, CharityComms has created more accessible, flexible ways for members to connect. This approach improves speed, choice, and participation without losing the human element.
Ultimately, engaging charity communicators means building experiences where members give as much as they gain; strengthening community, capability, and long-term connection.
6 Mar 2026
How to define your “why” and build active, engaged ecosystems
Liam Ward is Director of Venture Café London (https://venturecafelondon.org/) and a community builder with deep experience designing environments where people connect, contribute, and advocate. Working at the intersection of innovation, membership, and place-based ecosystems, Liam focuses on how authentic experiences turn participants into champions.
The strongest engagement doesn’t come from campaigns — it comes from experiences people believe in. creating engagement with impact starts when members feel proud enough to talk about what they’ve been part of.
Word of mouth is the real measure of success. When people share experiences publicly and bring others with them, it shows that creating engagement with impact has moved beyond messaging and into identity.
Designing for advocacy means focusing on moments people want to vouch for — not just attend.
6 Mar 2026
How The Wildlife Trust’s innovative engagement model builds trust, relevance and community
Nikki Williams is Director of Campaigning and Communities at The Wildlife Trusts, one of the UK’s largest federated membership movements. With deep experience in community organising, campaigning and stakeholder engagement, Nikki specialises in turning participation into widespread impact for all.
A shared challenge we’re hearing as part of the Stakeholder Impact Forum is low engagement and slow scalability for member growth. The Wildlife Trusts saw this stemmed from models which prioritise predefined results leading to repetitive, top-down systems limiting relevance.
With her team, Nikki has transformed this challenge into a successful new approach. Rather than prescribing outcomes, they created a supportive framework that allows communities to define what matters locally, build confidence and agency, and shape nature-based solutions that are meaningful in their own context.
The results demonstrate how community-led impact can scale when organisations invest in process rather than fixed outcomes. Through the Next Door Nature programme, an expected reach of 200 communities grew to 1,600 in three years, increasing diversity, participation and long-term ownership. While harder to capture in spreadsheets, this approach delivers significantly greater value across their ecosystem and has made the organisation more relevant than ever.
6 Mar 2026
How to grow an engaged community built upon trust and economic evolution
Matt Dabrowski shares how building trust-driven communities, listening closely to members’ changing expectations, and creating new routes to opportunity have helped OutBritain grow rapidly while delivering real value to its network.
Membership organisations everywhere are facing the same challenge: members expect more than networking and information. They want belonging, opportunity and real impact. Matt explains how OutBritain has responded by creating a trust-based membership model that prioritises community first and opportunity second.
By building a space where members feel safe to connect, collaborate and grow, OutBritain has created a powerful ecosystem that spans industries, regions and stages of business growth. The organisation’s trust-based membership model is helping unlock new partnerships, strengthen member engagement and generate measurable economic and social impact.
For membership leaders navigating changing expectations in 2026, Matt’s experience offers practical lessons on how trust, community and relevance can transform the role of a member organisation.
6 Mar 2026
How strategic storytelling drives member trust and retention
Lesley Sillaman is a highly respected voice in PR, communications and storytelling for member-driven organisations. As Managing Director of leading global comms agency, Havas Red, Lesley brings a deep understanding of how organisations can cut through noise, build trust and communicate value in an increasingly fragmented media landscape.
In this conversation, Lesley explores how the role of PR has evolved beyond traditional earned media, why credibility and third-party trust matter more than ever for member organisations, and how storytelling must adapt across generations, channels and attention spans. She shares practical insights on “one story, many shapes”, the role of video and emerging media such as podcasts and Substack, and how AI can support -but not replace – strategic communications expertise.
This video is essential viewing for leaders, communicators and strategists in member-led, professional and purpose-driven organisations looking to strengthen engagement, articulate their value proposition, and reach diverse audiences without losing clarity or authenticity.
6 Mar 2026
Allowing your network to ‘Thrive Together’ can solve engagement, value and capacity challenges
Building a strong charity partner network is about far more than funding. It requires trust, clarity of mission and a commitment to strengthening the entire ecosystem. Josephine explains how The Childhood Trust moves beyond transactional relationships to create genuine partnerships across London’s grassroots sector.
This interview focuses on how staying focused on a shared purpose and resisting “mission creep,” can pave the way for engaged partnerships for the trust’s members, funders, partners and, crucially, for the children they are working to protect.
Through research, advocacy and the launch of a new digital hub, Thrive Together, the organisation is enabling charities to share resources, collaborate more effectively and amplify their collective voice. Whilst Josephine doesn’t view her network as a traditional member organisation, her interview highlights some powerful learnings from their powerful charity ecosystem of stakeholders around value proposition, relevance and much more.
6 Mar 2026
Engaging your network’s “diversity of thought” enables value-led leadership
Dr I.Stephanie Boyce CBE FKC is a renowned authority on ethical leadership in member organisations, governance and inclusion, and the former President of the Law Society of England and Wales. In 2021, she made history as the first person of colour to lead the organisation, representing over 200,000 legal professionals.
Member organisations are operating in an increasingly fragmented and polarised environment. Trust is eroding, debate has become reactive rather than constructive, and many organisations struggle to remain relevant and inspire their diverse stakeholder voices to be part of their vision.
Focusing on this shared challenge, Dr. Boyce looks to leaders to head up the solution. Her ideas and lived-experience highlight how organisations can navigate complexity with integrity, inclusion, and impact.
6 Mar 2026
If members don’t see relevance, they won’t renew
Chris Mason is CEO of FISITA, the global federation for mobility systems engineering. With experience leading an international membership organisation through industry disruption and economic uncertainty, Chris brings a clear, value-led perspective on how relevance underpins long-term member commitment.
In uncertain times, members reassess where they invest their time and money. Membership relevance becomes the deciding factor, whether individuals clearly understand what they gain and why it matters to them now.
Industries evolve, roles change, and historic assumptions about member needs quickly fall out of date. Maintaining membership relevance requires organisations to regularly revisit who their members are becoming, not who they used to be.
By listening closely to members and adapting priorities accordingly, organisations can stay aligned with real-world challenges and remain essential.
6 Mar 2026
How “uncommon strategies” drive participation and create long-term value
Amanda Lea Kaiser is a hugely respected voice in member engagement and community strategy. Author of Elevating Engagement: Uncommon Strategies for Creating a Thriving Member Community, Amanda brings over a decade of qualitative research with hundreds of in-depth member interviews to help organisations elevate their community.
In our conversation, Amanda explores the shift from transactional engagement to emotional engagement, why onboarding and first impressions matter more than ever, and how member organisations can design experiences that move people from passive observers to active collaborators and leaders. She shares practical frameworks, real-world examples, and actionable insights drawn from her six stages of member engagement, alongside reflections on segmentation, digital community, collaboration and the future of membership.
This podcast is essential listening for leaders and strategists in member-driven, professional and purpose-led organisations who are navigating declining participation, rising expectations and increased competition for attention.
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