I had the opportunity to speak with three different groups of volunteer leaders this week and in each case we talked about the challenge of increasing member engagement. What struck me was that the focus of engagement is on the “big ticket items” of event attendance or volunteer leadership (read serve on committee or board). It will be difficult if not impossible for us to increase engagement if we keep this focus so narrow.  And there is a lot at stake.

It's 2010, what are your plans for your chapters and other components? What - just updating last year's? Well, in the words of Oliver Blanchard "Soft goals create soft strategies. Soft strategies turn into weak tactics. Weak tactics turn into bogus metrics."

That tells you why your chapter program is getting your association nowhere. So do you still want to just update last year's goals?

Now here's an interesting thought on the question of determining value of chapters ... I reread an interesting posting about social media technologies which quoted a presentation by Janet Hall, CMO of TMNG Global. Janet said research indicates "that the companies actively exploring social media technologies in the B2B marketplace are evaluating the success of their efforts based on a Return on Engagement (ROE) instead of an Return on Investment (ROI)."