Webinar Recap: How HFMA Co-Developed A New Model For Member Engagement

On June 30, 2026, RallyBoard hosted a webinar with two leaders from HFMA: Stephanie Denvir, Chief Member Value Officer, and Tracy Benway, VP of Member Experience. Alongside RallyBoard co-founder and CEO Jackson Boyar, they walked through a peer cohort model the organizations built together over the past year, one designed to deliver trusted, relevant connection to members at every career stage.

HFMA was one of five design partners RallyBoard worked with in 2025, and the largest organizational membership model in the group. What follows are the highlights from the conversation, along with the takeaways most relevant to association leaders thinking about member engagement, member retention, and year-round value.

Why cohorts, and why now

Boyar opened by naming two macro trends that drew RallyBoard to the association space. The first is the loneliness epidemic. The U.S. Surgeon General's 2023 advisory put forward research suggesting that a lack of social connection can be as harmful to health as smoking a pack of cigarettes a day. The second is a workforce navigating tumultuous change, from AI adoption to career pivots happening all at once.

Associations sit at the intersection of both. Roughly 90 million Americans belong to an association or professional society, and inside every one of those organizations is latent social capital, networks that could be catalyzed but too often are left to a serendipitous seatmate at the annual meeting.

Denvir came to cohorts through personal experience as a member of CHIEF, the women's executive network:

"I had this amazing cohort that we were on this journey together for several years. And to be honest, it helped me prepare and propel my career. I found that was the greatest value I got out of the organization." — Stephanie Denvir, HFMA

That resonated because it matched what HFMA hears from its own members. As Benway put it:

"Events are important and education is important. But what members consistently tell us is that relationships are what keep them engaged over time." — Tracy Benway, HFMA

What made this a design partnership, not a vendor relationship

A distinction Denvir drew early in the conversation is one worth sitting with:

"The allure was that we weren't shopping for software. We weren't shopping to create cohorts. The aha was that we're trying to solve a member problem." — Stephanie Denvir, HFMA

For RallyBoard, a design partnership means learning is the outcome. Over the first year, the teams tested a lot of things. Some worked, some didn't, and that was by design. Boyar noted that more than half of what exists in RallyBoard today is the direct result of design partners guiding the team toward what to build.

That requires real investment from both sides. HFMA dedicated a staff resource, Brianna, who had protected time to co-design the program rather than squeezing it in around other duties. Benway's advice to peers considering a build:

"We were flying the plane and learning all at the same time. We had to be a little vulnerable during that, and that's why having that dedicated partnership has been what's going to make our next version successful." — Tracy Benway, HFMA

How HFMA structured the pilots

HFMA started small and deliberately, focusing on two member segments historically underserved by traditional programming:

• Volunteer leaders — Regional Executive Council members and chapter leaders, HFMA's most engaged members, matched across regions to benchmark and share best practices.

• Emerging leaders — Early- to mid-career finance professionals navigating epic upgrades, AI integration, and career pivots simultaneously.

Two choices stood out. First, HFMA started with volunteers because they'd give honest feedback:

"Being that we were in a platform that was being helped to develop, we knew that the members in our volunteer community would give us their truth and not hold anything back." — Tracy Benway, HFMA

Second, matching mattered more than anyone expected. For emerging leaders, HFMA asked whether members wanted to be grouped by demographics, region, or chapter, and found they didn't. Many preferred to be placed with peers across the country, where they could raise questions that might feel uncomfortable closer to home. What members were navigating mattered more than their title, age, or tenure.

What surprised the team

Some of the most valuable findings weren't in the original plan.

The biggest surprise for HFMA was that members kept meeting without staff in the room:

"The members meeting without us, that's a big surprise. We always think we have to be there, we have to direct things. And the answer is, will they meet if we don't have someone there? Yes. That was an aha moment." — Stephanie Denvir, HFMA

Cohorts self-organized between scheduled sessions. Conversations went deeper, faster, because structured matching created immediate trust. And several cohorts asked to keep meeting after the pilot formally ended, setting their own agendas without any prompting.

The pilot numbers tell part of the story: 25,000+ minutes of peer engagement, 100+ live cohort sessions, 300+ member-driven agenda topics, and roughly 50% average attendance across scheduled sessions. But as Benway noted, the real measure was momentum:

"The members keep asking, can we keep meeting? That is one thing that defines success for us." — Tracy Benway, HFMA

From conversation to intelligence

An unexpected second value emerged. Because cohort conversations surface what members actually care about, in real time, they function as a standing focus group, one HFMA could never staff or replicate through surveys alone.

"It gives us data we could never get from all these focus groups. And they probably wouldn't be so honest. When there's psychological safety and trust, members share how they really feel." — Stephanie Denvir, HFMA

Benway connected this directly to a persistent membership challenge:

"The conversations are providing more detail to us than our traditional surveys have. And we struggle with our percentage of surveys being taken. This is another area that will enrich." — Tracy Benway, HFMA

For a financially minded board, that dual value, member connection plus organizational intelligence, maps cleanly to the KPIs leadership already tracks.

What this means for other associations

For association leaders weighing a similar move, three principles from HFMA's year of piloting stood out.

1. Start with the problem, not the technology. As Denvir advised: figure out what you're really trying to solve and work backward. If it's engagement, cohorts are worth a look. If it's something else, name that first.

2. Choose your pilot population deliberately. Start with members who are both underserved and ready to engage. Their feedback is the most useful, and their participation makes the pilot credible to your board.

3. Invest staff time, not just budget. Design partnerships run on weekly co-design, not quarterly check-ins. A dedicated resource with protected time is the difference between a pilot that sprawls and one that scales.

The through line from HFMA's experience is that engagement is a relevance problem. Members don't need more programs. They need programs designed for who they are, what they're navigating, and where they are in their careers.

Boyar framed the closing contrast with the legacy approach to community management built around online forums:

"This is why people keep going to the annual meeting, because they sit next to somebody at lunch and spark a life-changing conversation. That can happen year round if you're intentional in designing the experience." — Jackson Boyar, RallyBoard

The takeaway for associations: you don't need 145,000 members to begin. Choose one underserved segment, prove the value, and scale once you have evidence.

Watch the full conversation

The complete webinar recording is embedded below. For a deeper look at HFMA's pilots, read the full case study, and to explore what this could look like for your association, book a call with the RallyBoard team.