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Free Membership Tool
Churn is the quietest line item in membership — a leaky bucket you keep topping up. See exactly what it costs you each year, how it compounds, and what a small improvement is worth.
Your Numbers
The share of members who lapse or fail to renew each year.
Subscription plus ancillary spend, per member, per year.
How many percentage points you could realistically cut churn by.
The Leak
£45,000
Revenue lost every year · 150 members · 15% of total
Of this year's £300k member revenue
£116k
Lost over 3 years if unreplaced
£9.0k
Saved per year at 12% churn
Cutting churn by just 3 points keeps £9,000 in the bucket every year — usually far cheaper than acquiring the same revenue from scratch.
Plug the leak — book a free consultationEstimates only, for planning purposes. Figures are not stored and nothing leaves your browser.
How It Works
Every membership organisation runs a leaky bucket.
You pour new members in at the top through recruitment, and members drain out of the bottom through churn.
As long as the leak is there, you are spending to acquire revenue you already had.
This calculator puts a pound figure on that leak.
The headline is the annual loss: members lost times average revenue per member.
But the real damage compounds.
Left unreplaced, this year’s lapsed members would have renewed next year and the year after — so the three-year cost is materially larger than three times the annual figure.
And none of this counts the ancillary spend or referrals those members would have brought, all of which feed your lifetime value.
The encouraging side is leverage.
Because churn acts on your whole base, cutting it by even two or three points keeps a surprising amount of revenue in the bucket every year — and Harvard Business Review reports that keeping a member is five to 25 times cheaper than acquiring a new one.
In a membership-specific study, the IMPACTS Value Study found renewing members cost only $4–5 a year to retain versus $20–25 to serve a new one.
You can put your own numbers on that gap with our acquisition vs retention calculator.
For context, Marketing General’s 2025 benchmarking report puts the median association renewal rate at 84% (74% for first-year members).
That is the core case for investing in member retention and onboarding, where most renewals are really won.
How We Calculate This
Annual loss = members × churn rate × revenue per member · 3-year loss compounds the shrinking base · saving = (churn − improved churn) × members × revenue per memberThe three-year figure assumes lapsed members are not replaced, so each year's loss is taken from a smaller base. Benchmarks below are drawn from membership-sector research, not generic SaaS data.
Benchmarks & Sources
Questions & Answers
Members lost per year = members × churn rate. Multiply by average revenue per member for the annual loss. 1,000 members at 15% churn and £300 average revenue lose 150 members and £45,000 a year — before lost ancillary spend and referrals.
Marketing General’s 2025 benchmarking report puts the median association renewal rate at 84% (about 16% churn) and the first-year median at 74% (about 26% churn) — newer members lapse much faster. Strong, career-relevant bodies do better; discretionary memberships often run higher. Your own trend over time is the most useful benchmark.
Harvard Business Review reports acquisition is five to 25 times more expensive than retention, and retaining members also protects ancillary revenue and referrals. A few points of churn improvement usually beats the equivalent recruitment spend.
Model every lever of membership growth.
Book a free consultation and we’ll show you where members are slipping away — and the retention moves that keep the most revenue in the bucket.
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