Through its conferences and publications, the Society offers individuals a means of following the many-sided growth of the clay sciences and of meeting fellow scientists with widely different backgrounds and interests.

[3] The primary activities of The Clay Minerals Society consist of publication of the bi-monthly journal Clays and Clay Minerals[4] (publishing both subscription and open access articles, it is a hybrid open-access journal), organization of the annual conference, workshop, and field trip, student research grants, publication of a workshop lecture series, slide sets, and special publications, the providing of clays for research purposes through the Source Clays Repository, and publication of the society newsletter[5] in the bimonthly Elements.

[6] Various committees within the Society deal also with such matters as regulatory issues, liaisons with other countries, and nomenclature.

Awards given by the Society include Distinguished Member, the George W. Brindley Lecture, the Pioneers in Clay Science Lecture, and the Marion L. and Chrystie M. Jackson Mid-Career Clay Scientist Award.

The society has about 700 members, one half of whom represent countries outside the United States.