Run the salary survey your members can’t get anywhere else
Salary and benefits survey software for trade and professional associations. Field a salary benchmarking survey under your association's name, protect every participant with Safe Harbor, and deliver a report members can only get from you.
Why associations run member studies
Only the Association Can Convene This Data
Your members compete with each other for the same specialized people, which means none of them can collect pay data from the others directly. National salary databases rarely cut the data by your industry’s actual roles, and a generic regional number does not answer what a second-shift machinist or a certified specialist earns in your sector.
The association sits in the one seat that works: a neutral body every member already trusts. When the invitation carries your name and the results protect every respondent, members share real numbers. An association salary survey turns that trust into the benchmark your industry actually needs.
Every sector names it differently. Bankers associations run a compensation and benefits survey, manufacturers associations a wage and fringe benefit survey, healthcare groups a salary and benefits report. Different names, same instrument, and many of the organizations we work with are manufacturers associations convening exactly this kind of study.
What the study does for the association
A member benefit, a revenue line, and an authority position
The same annual study can serve all three goals. Most associations lead with one and grow into the others.
Member benefit
A reason to renew
Gate the report to members who participate. The benchmark becomes something a member can only get by belonging and taking part, which gives the membership committee a concrete answer to “what do my dues buy?”
Non-dues revenue
Sell access to the results
Offer the anonymized report to non-members at a price, or make paid participation its own program. The platform’s subscriber access controls handle who sees what, so the business model is a setting, not a spreadsheet.
Authority
Become the source of record
When the industry’s pay question comes up, in a board meeting, a news story, or a member’s hiring decision, the answer cites your study. That position compounds every year the study runs.
The Salary Survey as Non-Dues Revenue
Most lists of non-dues revenue ideas come down to sponsorships and event tickets. A member salary survey is a different kind of asset: a data product only your association can produce, that gets more valuable every year it runs, and that employers budget for because it feeds real pay decisions.
The platform’s access controls turn the pricing model into a setting. Sell the anonymized report to non-members, charge non-participating members a fee while participants get it free, or offer paid subscriber access to consultants and site selectors. Price the gap deliberately and the survey does double duty: a non-dues revenue line and a standing argument for joining.
How a Member Study Runs
Invitations go out under your association’s name, because an email from you gets opened where one from an unknown vendor does not. Members answer on the platform, saving as they go, and returning members find last year’s answers pre-filled so the annual update takes a fraction of the time.
When the survey closes, results compile automatically into an internal view for your team and an anonymized view for your audiences. You decide who sees results and when: participants first, all members later, paid subscribers on their own schedule.
What the license includes
A year on the platform with up to three surveys included, so a wage study and a benefits study can run in the same membership year.
The full platform, one license
Question builder, branching logic, participant management, reminders, and compiled analytics, with no per-seat fees, so association staff and member contacts all work in one system.
A benefits instrument to start from
The 174-question benefits template covers PTO, insurance, retirement, wellness, and more. Cut it to what your industry actually offers, and add the questions only your sector asks.
Compensation analytics by occupation
Wage percentiles by standard occupation code, filterable by the questions you choose, so members can compare against the slice of the industry that looks like them.
Members Are Competitors. The Data Still Works.
Safe Harbor anonymization is applied to participant-facing results automatically: wherever a slice has too few respondents to protect identities, the numbers are hidden. No member ever sees another member’s submission, which is precisely why members are willing to submit real figures instead of rounded ones.
Helping Members Finish Their Surveys
Participation decides whether the report is worth publishing, and chasing it is real work. As add-on services, our US-based team can make intro and reminder calls to member companies, jump on video calls with anyone stuck on a question, and help you frame why participating is worth a member’s time. If you would rather hand off the whole operation, our done-for-you service runs the study end to end under your name.
Association FAQs
How do associations run a member salary survey?
The association convenes it: adapt the question set to your industry, invite member companies under your name, and let the platform handle reminders and compilation. Members report their own pay and benefits data, Safe Harbor anonymization protects every respondent, and you release the compiled benchmark to the audiences you choose. Run it yourself on the software, or have our team run it end to end.
Can we charge members for salary survey results?
Yes. Access is granted per audience, so common models all work: participants get the report free while non-participating members pay, all members pay a program fee, or results are bundled into a premium membership tier. Whatever you choose, it is a release setting rather than a manual process.
Can we restrict the report to members who participated?
Yes. Release controls work per audience: participants, all members, subscribers, or any combination, each on its own schedule. Making participation the price of the report is the most common setup, because it drives completion and makes the benefit tangible.
Can we sell the results to non-members?
Yes. External subscribers get paid access scoped to only the surveys you grant. Associations use this for non-member employers, and some price the gap deliberately so that joining the association costs less than buying the report twice.
What does it cost?
The software license is a flat $5,000 per year and includes up to three surveys, so a wage study and a benefits study fit in one year. Done-For-You, where our team runs the study, is quoted per survey based on how many member companies you are serving. See pricing for both.
How much of our staff time does this take?
Running it yourself, the work concentrates around launch and close: finalizing questions, loading the member list, and releasing results. The platform handles reminders and compiles results automatically. If staff time is the constraint, Done-For-You moves the operational work to us and your team approves the instrument and the release.
We already run a survey in spreadsheets or another tool. Can we bring the history?
Yes. We can import prior cycles from spreadsheet exports or other survey tools, quoted up front by the shape of your data, so year-over-year trends and returning-member prefill work from your first survey on the platform.
How is this different from the partner program?
An association running a study for its own members licenses the platform directly, which is this page. The partner program is for firms that deliver surveys to several separate client organizations as a service.
Keep reading
How to run a wage and benefits survey
The complete methodology, from instrument design through publishing results that hold up.
Benefits survey questions
The categories worth covering and how to word them, drawn from the 174-question template.
The organizations we work with
Manufacturers associations, development districts, and regional partnerships across the US.
Complex surveys to send and don’t know where to start?
Book a 20-minute demo. We’ll show you the system, talk through your goals, and tell you whether we’re a fit. No pressure.