Before there was a software platform, there was a roll of dimes. In 1969, Brent Naylor and Michael Moss could not afford long-distance telephone service in their office. They went to a pay phone and pitched directories, membership rosters and advertising space to Canadian unions, associations and the businesses around them. A sales session lasted until the coins ran out. It was a remarkably literal operating budget.
- Naylor sells the work behind association publishing, events, career centers and membership software.
- Its customers are professional and trade associations; its sales teams also serve their advertisers, sponsors and employers.
- The central bargain is better member services financed partly by income beyond dues.
- The useful lesson: improve the thing people want before asking someone to pay for access to it.
Today, the company serves an association market in which belonging has several price tags. Members pay dues. Employers pay to recruit. Suppliers pay to advertise. Exhibitors pay for a place on the trade-show floor. Naylor works across those transactions, helping the association deliver something worth joining while doing much of the commercial and operational work required to support it.
The company reports more than 1,600 association clients across over 80 industries. That breadth matters because its expertise is unusually specific: understanding how a professional community communicates, hires, gathers and buys. A fleet manager and a park professional have different concerns. Both may need an organization with enough staff and income to keep serving them.
A magazine that needed fewer issues
In 2008, NAFA Fleet Management Association faced an awkward problem. Its publications were attracting insufficient interest, while commercial publishers were making themselves heard. Naylor’s response was concrete: redesign the magazine, rename it FLEETSolutions, cut the annual schedule from eight issues to six, add advertising pages and offer a digital edition. The published case study reports nearly 25% magazine revenue growth and 7% higher online readership within six months.
“It’s about keeping the dialogue going continuously.”Phil Russo, NAFA executive director, in the published case study
The copyable decision was to change the offer. Publishing more often would have been an easy activity to defend and a poor substitute for fixing relevance. The lesson for another association is to examine the audience’s problem, the publication’s promise and the advertiser’s reason to return together. Treating those as separate meetings can produce a very busy magazine that nobody especially needs.
Somebody still has to sell the advertisement
Naylor’s communications business combines editorial, design and publishing with advertising sales. It can work on print publications, newsletters and digital channels. This pairing is the point. A handsome publication consumes money; an advertiser-supported publication also requires prospecting, negotiation, renewals and reporting. The cover photograph rarely does the cold calling.
Its advertising page describes more than 70 association advertising sales professionals and says 51% of the sales staff have been there for more than ten years. Those are company-reported figures, but they suggest where part of the business’s expertise resides. Knowing a narrow industry’s suppliers and buying habits is accumulated work. It cannot be installed as a browser extension.
Naylor’s NSSGA case study makes the money flow explicit: a portion of publication revenue went back to the National Stone, Sand & Gravel Association for activities including education, conferences and government lobbying. Revenue sharing gives the association a commercial partner with a reason to sell. The agreement still matters: the percentage, expenses and responsibilities determine what the association actually keeps.
This places Naylor between several markets. It is a publishing partner for one client, an event contractor for another and a software supplier for a third. The alternative may be the association’s own employees, a specialist publisher, an event operator or an association software vendor. The sensible comparison depends on the work being purchased, rather than the longest list of features.
The job board earns its place
A career center is a particularly tidy expression of the model. Members get a place to find relevant work. Employers get access to a professional audience. The association gains a reason for people to visit between conferences and renewal notices, plus the possibility of job-posting revenue. Naylor supplies the platform and sales support, with integrations and career-fair options.
The company says its career center is endorsed by ASAE and has been each year since 2002. Its public offer includes custom packages and implementation support. Naylor’s homepage carries testimonials from the National Recreation and Park Association and the National Association for College Admission Counseling about their career centers. These describe customer experience; they are not a forecast for the next buyer.
The practical question is whether the association has a recruiting audience employers value. A dormant job board does not become attractive merely because a new vendor hosts it. Someone must attract listings, keep job seekers returning and make the service visible. Naylor’s proposition is that it can supply more of that ongoing work.
The database is part of the business
Naylor AMS handles membership records, dues, websites, event registration, email, reporting and professional development. Its public software page lists prices starting at $195 a month, with record tiers reaching 45,000. Standard implementation is included with AMS contracts; a concierge option adds hands-on configuration for an additional fee. The advertised starting price is an entry point, not a budget for every service in the company’s portfolio.
For buyers, the useful distinction is between a platform and the staff time around it. An association choosing AMS software should map its dues rules, data, registration needs and reporting before comparing subscriptions. Membership software alternatives include products such as MemberClicks and Novi AMS. A broader Naylor engagement may also involve outsourced services, making a software-only price comparison incomplete.
The move beyond publishing has a visible acquisition history. Clarity Partners and ZelnickMedia bought Naylor Publications in 2005 on undisclosed terms. RLJ Equity Partners acquired Naylor in December 2013. Boxwood Technology followed in April 2014, adding career services; the Timberlake Membership Software acquisition was announced in January 2015. Buying adjacent capabilities gave the company more ways to work with the same association customer.
One relationship, several kinds of work
The company calls its integrated approach One Naylor: one association strategy and one primary account manager, with access across its services. That is an operating promise worth testing. An association can otherwise end up explaining the same members to its publisher, conference contractor and software provider, while its own staff attempt to connect the pieces.
Events bring another set of responsibilities. Naylor’s full-service offer includes venue selection, contract negotiation, registration, floor plans, contractor coordination and exhibit and sponsorship sales. An association can purchase help with the machinery of a gathering as well as its commercial side. This is labor with deadlines, physical constraints and vendors, which helps explain why the company fits imperfectly into a single software category.
MemberReach, launched in April 2025, adds digital campaigns and creative services. Its announcement emphasizes support without long-term commitments. The offer gives an association a narrower starting assignment: a recruitment campaign, an event promotion or creative work. It also makes the company’s expansion intelligible. Once it helps produce the publication and run the event, helping attract the audience is a neighboring task.
The next shortage is judgment
The 2026 Association Benchmarking Report puts the company’s market in perspective. Among 665 senior association professionals surveyed across North America, 51.9% identified generating non-dues revenue as a top challenge, while 47.7% cited using data for strategic decisions. The figures describe respondents, not all associations. Still, they connect two sides of Naylor’s offer: earning more money and understanding which activity earns its place.
In June 2026, Naylor appointed KiKi L’Italien Vice President of Marketing, with responsibility across its portfolio and a focus on a unified customer-facing message. That assignment reflects a practical challenge of breadth. A company can offer many useful services and still need to explain how the buyer should begin.
An association considering Naylor can begin with one defined problem: weak publication economics, a neglected career center, an event its staff cannot comfortably run or membership administration that absorbs too much time. Ask who will do each task, what success will mean and how the association’s net proceeds will be calculated. Keep editorial standards, member trust and responsibility for the relationship explicit. Commercial access has value only while the community remains worth reaching.
The pay-phone story survives because the underlying task survives. A professional audience can be valuable, but value does not collect itself. Someone has to create the useful thing, identify the buyer and make the call. Naylor has spent its history adding things to sell and work to perform. The roll of dimes has become a portfolio; the next conversation still needs a reason.