I've been a member of a number of organisations which have succumbed to 'folies de grandeur'. Some have been in the conservation field.
An activity becomes fashionable, and a national body, with regional roots, feels it should reflect that growth. The membership contains ambitious young professionals, who identify inertia in the governance, focusing on surpluses. The younger members take control, and initiate a prestige project. The prestige project drains the coffers, and there's a financial crisis. The young Turks retire with their fingers burnt, and someone from the old guard is left carrying the can.
Where the organisation has regional roots, largely autonomous groups local groups continue the work. Those groups often mirror the political problems at the centre, but not all at the same time, so the whole system is relatively stable.
The central group seeks to address its financial problems by applying for lottery grants or the like. Those grants tend to carry duties to promote diversity, or address disadvantage. That tends to give rise to a demand for images of unlikely participants, to indicate progress towards those goals.
The current fashion in this type of social outreach through community groups is 'Men in Sheds'.
https://www.ageuk.org.uk/services/in-your-area/men-in-sheds/ Such initiatives have identified retired and unemployed older men as a group in need of activities which provide companionship and exercise.
The current Cycle magazine from the rebranded CTC features a group of this type in the Glasgow area. It may have occurred to Cycling UK that they've got a membership which conforms to the criteria for funding, without needing to recruit from a more diverse base.
AUK is in a position to deliver a kind of outreach work for older men, as that's what it does already. It would require bit of creative work on a lottery bid, probably promoting phase 2 and 3 of the IT contract as needed to enhance social functions. Cycling UK are probably going down that route already though.
The alternative is to rely on the regional roots of long distance cycling, and to coordinate central functions through another platform. Sites such as YACF might do that, as an extension of current activity.
Another possibility is being subsumed by Cycling UK, as OCD was by AUK. Audax could be marketed as the home of cussed hardriders.
AUK's membership profile is an advantage in the current climate, not a disadvantage. I'd see the main problem being that funding opportunities might create more 'folies de grandeur'.
In the 1980s I was unemployed, and found salvation in the British Trust for Conservation Volunteers. That organisation had a local grassroots function, but the centre advertised more adventurous 'working holidays' in remote areas. The feel of long Audaxes recalled the rigours and camaraderie of those 'Tasks' as they were called. BTCV rebranded itself as TCV, and now the National Trust is the group providing residential working holidays in remote areas. The activity continues, but not where it originally did. There are also expensive quasi-commercial equivalents.