By Joost Visser, CEO and co-founder, TIAO
Joost will lead a workshop on this important topic at the UIA Round Table in Brussels, 21 November.
As traditional government support becomes uncertain, associations everywhere are facing a new financial reality. In his opening keynote of UIA Round Table Europe 2025, UIA President Cyril Ritchie will go directly to the heart of this challenge with his questions: do associations depend too much on governments, and how can they navigate the power of the state without losing their independence?
In the workshop on 21 November we will explore the answers to these questions together. Participants will experience what happens when people start designing and planning actions that they cannot take alone, but only together. This unleashing of collective human ingenuity is one of the most powerful forces we know. It creates positive energy and gives people confidence that they can deal with change.
Associations are confronted with unforeseen financial, political and cultural challenges. Some have even disappeared because they could not adapt to changing support from governments. When funding agreements are changed or stopped, associations that are too dependent can suddenly become very vulnerable.
For this reason, associations need to develop alternative funding approaches and make better use of the resources and networks they already have.
TIAO, the organization I co-founded, works as a service provider on projects with people who want to bring about positive change in their communities, networks and organizations. Our clients are organizations that need to design and embed systemic change.
Our name stands for Trust Is An Outcome. We believe that trust is not a prerequisite for collaboration, but a powerful result of working together. And trust is not the only outcome: by collaborating, associations can align their interests, learn from each other and create new knowledge that empowers them to act.
There is no single best way to collaborate. The right approach depends on the context and the challenge. But there are clear success factors that can be observed again and again: clear purpose, intentional design of collaboration and structured follow-up of outcomes.
The good news is that associations and the UIA already have many assets: members, their expertise, their networks and the wider UIA community. These assets can be linked, aligned and recombined. By doing so, associations can generate new knowledge and create actions that would not be possible alone by themselves.
From my experience of more than 20 years working with associations and networks, I have seen that many operate mainly as service providers for their members. This ‘hub and spoke’ model can work well, but when it is too dependent on individual sources of funding, resilience is limited.
Associations become stronger when they embrace a leadership role as initiator, designer and facilitator of collaboration. By convening members, inviting them to learn from each other and creating opportunities to try new things together, they generate new knowledge that can be shared and applied. This makes them more resilient to shocks, more innovative and more independent.
The funding landscape is changing and will continue to change. Associations cannot rely only on traditional support. They need to leverage the strength of their members and networks to create new possibilities. By facilitating collaboration and building trust as an outcome, they can create additional value, reduce dependency and increase resilience.
This is the opportunity we will explore together at the UIA Round Table in Brussels on 21 November.
Issue #19 – October 2025