The Wire
Influence 100 report maps the money at the sector's top
The finances of the UK’s hundred largest membership bodies have a fresh benchmark. The Influence 100 Financial Benchmarking Report for 2025/26, compiled by MemberWise and authored by accountancy firm Price Bailey, sets out income, expenditure, reserves and governance across the sector’s biggest organisations.
The report sits alongside MemberWise’s Influence 100 list, the network’s annual ranking of the UK’s largest membership schemes, and its companion list of the UK’s ten largest professional bodies. Together they offer the closest thing the UK sector has to a public league table of scale.
The Influence 100 Financial Benchmarking Report 2025/26 benchmarks the UK's largest membership bodies on income, expenditure, reserves, governance and EDI. Authored by Price Bailey for MemberWise, it is free to network members and Recognised Suppliers, and £849 plus VAT otherwise. The 2025/26 list shows membership figures up but costs rising.
What does the report contain?
Five core sections, according to the report’s MemberWise page: income analysis, expenditure analysis, reserves, governance (including equality, diversity and inclusion), and conclusions with signposted resources. Price Bailey authored the report as official benchmarking partner.
MemberWise pitches it at senior professionals running leadership and C-suite roles, and prices it accordingly for everyone else. Network members and Recognised Suppliers download it free; unaffiliated readers pay a one-off fee of £849 excluding VAT. The network also invites corrections where organisations are missing or figures are inaccurate, an admission that benchmarking a sector with no single registry is partly a crowdsourced exercise.
What does the top of the sector look like?
Bigger, and more expensive to run. MemberWise reports that this year’s Influence 100 list shows overall membership figures up, which it calls cause for celebration, while warning that costs have risen and the business environment is more challenging than ever. Its conclusion is blunt: for many organisations, annual membership fees will need to rise, value will need to be demonstrated, and engagement will need to improve.
That pairing, growing membership against growing cost pressure, mirrors what we found in our state of UK associations analysis. The financial picture at the top of the Influence 100 is not the financial picture of the median body, and the gap between the chartered giants, with their exam revenues, training arms and reserves, and the long tail of small trade associations remains the defining structural fact of the UK sector. Our UK association sector statistics page tracks that concentration.
Why does a top-100 benchmark matter to the other 99%?
Because concentration sets the weather for everyone below. The largest bodies anchor supplier pricing, conference economics and salary bands across the sector, and their reserve positions determine how much shock the sector can absorb. A benchmark that shows the top hundred growing membership while margins tighten tells smaller bodies two things: scale does not exempt anyone from the fee-rise conversation, and the membership model itself is holding, at least at the top. Our membership model briefing examines how far down the sector that holds.
What happens next
MemberWise is inviting corrections to the list from organisations that are missing or misreported, ahead of the next edition. The report’s sections on reserves and governance will repay reading before budget season: the 2026/27 benchmarking cycle is already under way.