CHAPTER SESSION: Engagement Through Events: 50 Tips in 50 Minutes

Do you want to keep members excited and engaged with your nonprofit chapter each year, but aren't sure where to get started, or don't have the time as a volunteer to find the easiest solution? This fast paced session will provide easy-to-implement tips to make your chapter’s next events more engaging.

As referenced in the membership lifecycle, members of nonprofit chapters will need to be provided continual opportunities for involvement in order to excited about their expereicne and continue to renew each year. The chapter also needs to provide a benefit to members in exchange for those membership dues. Providing dynamic events is one solution to engage members in a meaningful way that will have a benefit on their career, while also benefitting your chapter through renewal.

However, it can be difficult for volunteer leaders to know where to start when it comes to event planning for their nonprofit chapter. Luckily, an event planner provided tools, tips, and suggestions to ensure you are taking the right steps when it comes to planning your event! This includes surveying your audience (members) to determine the greatest need that needs to be met; preparing a budget; selecting a venue; communicating about the event and much more. The presenter will also share technologies that can make event-planning much easier and save you and your volunteers time and energy. This will allow your chapter to plan more and more events, to continually engage different subsets of your membership.

There will be sharing of resources through an STTI-staff driven presentation of best practices in chapter program planning, as well as an activity to allow attendees to share ideas and best practices with each other. The goal is to quickly share as many tips and ideas as possible, while providing resources that can be referenced, as well, for the chapter to utilize at a later time.