The association boom of 1960s-1990s was organizational growth without mass membership

Evidence

In fact, relatively few of the tens of thousands of nonprofit associations whose proliferation is traced in figure 7 actually have mass membership. Many, such as the Animal Nutrition Research Council, the National Conference on Uniform Traffic Accident Statistics, and the National Slag Association, have no individual members at all. A close student of associations in America, David Horton Smith, found that barely half of the groups in the 1988 Encyclopedia of Associations actually had individual members. The median membership of national associations in the 1988 Encyclopedia was only one thousand. … In other words, over this quarter century the number of voluntary associations roughly tripled, but the average membership seems to be roughly one-tenth as large—more groups, but most of them much smaller. The organizational eruption between the 1960s and the 1990s represented a proliferation of letterheads, not a boom of grassroots participation. — Robert D. Putnam, Bowling Alone The Collapse and Revival…, 151

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Even booming professions saw their associations’ market share collapse in sequence — Robert D. Putnam, Bowling Alone The Collapse and Revival…, 274; American associational membership collapsed across all major voluntary groups — Anton Jäger, Hyperpolitics: Extreme Politicization…, 93; Cooperative social groups must balance growth benefits against interdependence costs at an optimal size — Roderick M. Kramer, Geoffrey J. Leonardelli, Robert W. Livingston, Social Cognition, Social Identity, and…, 2506 (+1 more)

Broader Connections

• Even booming professions saw their associations’ market share collapse in sequence #exemplifies (0.85) — Robert D. Putnam, Bowling Alone The Collapse and Revival…, 274
• American associational membership collapsed across all major voluntary groups #corroborates (0.80) — Anton Jäger, Hyperpolitics, 93
• Cooperative social groups must balance growth benefits against interdependence costs at an optimal size #expands (0.70) — Roderick M. Kramer, Geoffrey J. Leonardelli, Robert W. Livingston, Social Cognition, Social Identity, and…, 2506