The International Society for Research on Aggression (ISRA) faced a decision no association wants to make. Their 2026 World Meeting, planned for Atlantic City, had to move. After polling members, it became clear they could not hold a conference anywhere in the United States. The meeting is now at Brock University in Ontario, Canada in July.

They are not alone. Associations are polling members, reconsidering contracts, and asking questions about venue selection that were never on the agenda before.

According to EY-Parthenon, nearly 75% of CEOs are actively changing how their organisations operate in response to geopolitical pressure. For car manufacturers, that means moving production closer to home. For pharmaceutical companies, it means rethinking where they source ingredients. 

For associations, the impact is more personal. The members are the supply chain.

A member who can no longer get a visa to attend the annual congress. A delegation that quietly withdraws because of the event’s location. A working group that cannot meet because half its members are from countries on opposite sides of a conflict.

Many associations are finding they were not prepared for any of it.

When Your Members Are on Different Sides

A 2026 think piece published on the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization’s (UNESCO) IdeasLAB platform describes what is already happening across research communities worldwide. Geopolitical competition and tightening research security policies are fragmenting the global research architecture. The result, as the platform describes it, is the erosion of “the collaborative spirit that has underpinned modern scientific progress for decades.” The world is moving toward a two-track system where knowledge flows are restricted and researchers are increasingly forced to choose sides.

Associations are a neutral space, which has become increasingly rare. In many cases, it is the only place where professionals from rival countries still meet and advance shared work. The scientists still want to collaborate, the researchers still want to share data, and the industry leaders still want to be in the same room. That role is what keeps members renewing and meeting.

It also makes the next decision harder. Everyone is watching what the organisation says and does. Associations that take public positions on geopolitical events risk alienating members on one side of a dispute. Stay silent, and members in conflict zones feel abandoned. Speak up, and you risk losing half your board.

Many associations have long considered themselves apolitical by nature. But can they afford to be anymore?

These situations rarely make headlines. Associations navigating member polarisation across conflict lines tend to do so quietly, precisely because publicising it would make the problem worse. The dilemma is real and widespread. It just does not come with a press release.

Associations that have thought through where they stand before a crisis hits are better positioned when one arrives. In the current environment, most haven’t.

Venue Decisions Are Strategy Decisions

Where an association holds its flagship event is a statement about values and access, whether it intends it to be or not.

ISRA’s experience makes that concrete. When the society polled its members, the response was unambiguous. It would be “untenable to hold the meeting in the USA,” they wrote, citing “changed patterns of international travel for scholars.” Three Canadian academics stepped in to organise an alternative. 

The question of where to meet has become a question of who can show up. Peter Van Daele, Secretary General of the International Union of Radio Science, described the same shift in a recent Boardroom podcast. His organisation now examines visa requirements and travel restrictions as a formal part of every venue selection process. 

“This has become an important part of the selection process,” he noted. The consequences are already visible: harder access to conferences in the US for some regions, and a noticeable rise in Far East attendance at European events. He also raised a second concern. Diminishing government funding for research organisations means potential attendees increasingly have limited resources to travel, making it harder to justify attending.

When members from certain regions cannot obtain visas to enter a host country, the event is not truly international, regardless of what the programme says. The composition of the room changes, and once that happens, it is hard to undo.

The decisions are consequential for who shows up and who doesn’t. What are the visa and travel barriers for your membership? What happens if the political situation shifts between signing the contract and the event date? Is there a hybrid access plan for members who cannot attend in person? Most associations leave these questions until they’re on the phone with a lawyer, scrambling.

Many associations have long considered themselves apolitical by nature. But can they afford to be anymore?

Building a Geopolitical Resilience Framework

EY-Parthenon finds that organisations that actively incorporate geopolitical analysis into their decisions build greater resilience and are better positioned when things get harder. For associations, that means building the capacity to respond when the environment changes, rather than reacting to each disruption from scratch.

A few practical areas are worth building:

Scenario planning. Not a lengthy formal exercise, but a set of honest questions asked in advance. What happens to the congress if the host country introduces travel restrictions six months before the event? What is the communication plan if a geopolitical development directly affects a significant portion of the membership? Thinking through these scenarios early is the difference between a prepared response and a panicked board call at midnight. Generative AI is making this easier. Tools that track geopolitical signals and model potential impacts are now accessible to organisations of any size, not just large corporations with dedicated risk teams.

Regional structures. According to the WEF Global Cooperation Barometer 2026, cooperation is holding up best where it is targeted, interest-based and regional. Multilateral approaches are weakening, while regional ones are gaining ground. Associations that have invested in genuine regional infrastructure are better positioned to maintain member engagement when international operations become more complicated. Regional chapters and distributed governance are what keep the association functional when the centre cannot hold.

Flexible membership access. For members who face real barriers to in-person participation, whether due to visas, travel costs, or political context, the options exist: digital access, hybrid events, and regional programming. The associations that have invested in these are the ones that kept their membership connected when borders tightened and travel became uncertain.

Governance review. When did your board last look at your membership map and ask whether your governance reflects it? Most associations conduct governance reviews. Few ask the geopolitical questions: does your board reflect where your members actually are? Can those members travel freely to meetings? Are regions that face the most access barriers represented in your decision-making? Most haven’t asked. Most should.

Some associations are already asking these questions. In 2025, the International Association for College Admission Counseling completed a full board restructure, creating eight regional representative positions to ensure governance reflects where members actually are. The redesign explicitly addressed concerns that the previous model allowed single countries to dominate entire regions.

The Strategic Opportunity

Geopolitical fragmentation is pulling professional networks apart. The cooperation that is surviving is the kind rooted in shared professional purpose and genuine regional relationships. Associations that remain genuinely international and keep that space open and functional become something their members cannot easily find elsewhere.

Getting there does not require an overhaul. It starts with one question applied to the next significant decision on the table: have we thought through the geopolitical dimension of this? The associations that start asking it now will define what international membership means in the next decade.