DECA Inc. announced today it has been recognized by ASAE with a 2025 Gold Circle Award in the video category. The Gold Circle Awards competition is the premier association marketing, membership, and communications award that recognizes excellence, innovation, and achievement in association/nonprofit marketing, membership, and communications programs. This year’s competition received more than 150 applications across 16 categories, including convention/meeting campaign, member retention campaign, print magazine, and video.
DECA’s video entry featured the 2024-2025 DECA Inc. Membership Recruitment Video. Building upon the theme of our annual integrated marketing campaign, “Be The One,” the video showcases that when you join DECA, you're not just another member; you're part of a global network of emerging leaders and entrepreneurs who are shaping the future. Combining exciting b-roll, captivating student testimonials, a catchy music track and colorful animations, the membership video portrays how DECA empowers members to Be The One who makes a difference in the world.
The video generated impressive statistics, both through the original version and the version shared on social media. During the first six months since the video was released on August 13, 2024, there were over 73K views and 277K impressions. However, the most impressive result is our unprecedented membership growth. To date, our annual membership goal of 275,000 has been exceeded by 17,385 members, for a total membership of 292,385—smashing our previous record.
Christopher Young, Chief Program Officer of DECA Inc., shares the excitement behind receiving the award:
"Earning a Gold Circle Award celebrates DECA’s mission of engaging more student members to help them prepare for college and careers. DECA’s membership recruitment video empowers our associations and chapters to build membership at the local level, which in turn led to a record-breaking membership year, and the Gold Circle Award is a great way to recognize the success of our associations and chapters."
Entries for the Gold Circle Awards competition are judged consistently in each category based on criteria established by the ASAE Gold Circle Award Committee for excellence in association marketing, membership, and communications programs.
Brandi McIntyre, IOM Chair of the ASAE Gold Circle Awards Committee, congratulates all 2025 ASAE Gold Circle Award recipients:
"The Gold Circle Awards honor the creativity, execution, and ingenuity of outstanding marketing, membership, and communications campaigns in the association community. Each winning campaign was chosen with a specific purpose in mind, to showcase the best practices in our industry, tell meaningful and compelling stories, and be a testament to innovation that drives results. We are thrilled to have received so many submissions and look forward to celebrating the winners at MMC+Tech 2025, May 12-13, in Washington, DC."
For more information on the winners, visit Gold Circle Awards.
About ASAE: The Center for Association Leadership
ASAE is a membership organization of more than 50,000 association executives. Since it was established 100 years ago, its members have and continue to lead, manage, and work in or partner with organizations in more than a dozen association management disciplines, from executive management to finance to technology. With the support of the ASAE Research Foundation, a separate nonprofit entity, ASAE is the premier source of learning, knowledge, and future-oriented research for the association and nonprofit profession and provides resources, education, ideas, and advocacy to enhance the power and performance of the association and nonprofit community. Visit ASAE at asaecenter.org.
