SUCCESS METRICS
Besides being clear on the purpose of your virtual chapter, you must know whether your chapter is meeting that purpose. Identify goals you’d like the chapter to reach in the first, second, and third years—and, of course, feel free to tweak those second and third year goals once you’ve assessed the first year’s performance.
For example:
- How many members will you recruit?
- How many official chapter activities will be held?
- What participation rates would you like for different types of activities?
Once you’ve identified goals, you can establish metrics or KPIs that will illustrate how well you’ve met those goals. Develop these goals and metrics in partnership with the members involved in organizing the chapter with you.
LEVEL OF SERVICE PROVIDED BY NATIONAL
Start with a needs assessment of prospective members to find out what they need, want, and expect from a virtual chapter. What will they participate in? What will they pay for?
Decide what level of service your association can provide to a virtual chapter. What kind of bandwidth does your staff have? How will you divide responsibilities between staff and member volunteers?
- Who will select monthly meeting or webinar topics, find speakers, work with speakers, handle registration, and assign CEUs?
- Who will handle membership applications, dues payments, and renewals?
- Who will work with corporate partners on sponsorships?
- Who will handle member service issues?
Determine what technical resources the virtual chapter will need, for example, website (CMS), webinar hosting platform, email platform, financial management/dues processing software, and membership management software (AMS). You must also budget for technology maintenance, upgrades, and training.
As they do for all their chapters, NIGP provided seed money to help their virtual chapter with technology. But they soon realized the usual several hundred dollars wouldn’t be sufficient. Jennifer said, “We decided very quickly that our seed money had to be several thousand dollars so they could have a visual presence on the web when they went live instead of having to wait until they collected dues.”
CHAMPIONS
Before committing any resources (time, money, technology), you need to gain the support of your leadership—the CEO and board. “Leadership support was extremely important,” said Jeff Dansdill, past president of NIGP’s virtual chapter. “Without [the CEO’s] executive backing, we probably wouldn’t have gone anywhere, so his and Jennifer’s involvement and excitement about our idea for a virtual chapter was critical to its success.”
Jennifer said, “I think the reverse side of that is true too. You need a champion within the volunteer realm as well—somebody who is willing to put in the amount of time and effort to start not only a chapter but something brand new. As important as it was for NIGP to buy into this, we really needed a volunteer or group of volunteers who were going to drive it. We couldn’t have done it on our own.”
The virtual chapter also received support from within the NIGP chapter community. The Rocky Mountain chapter walked them through virtual meeting and video conferencing tools. The Central Florida chapter provided sample documents and financial support. Encourage your chapters to share their knowledge and experience with the new virtual chapter team. They’ll benefit from watching and learning since the chapter experience will likely become more virtual for everyone in the future.
In our next post, we’ll look at other issues to consider before launching a virtual chapter: membership, leadership, volunteering, and sponsorship.