2019 SWCS International Annual Conference July 28-31, 2019 Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

1. Reimagining Your Chapter or
Small Organization
74th Annual SWCS Conference
2019

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Session Agenda
• Touch on Chapters
• Review of “Bowling Alone:
The Collapse and Revival of
American Community”
• Tactics and Tools
• Discussion about Future

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Chapter Basics
What is a chapter?
• A chapter is a local branch of the International Soil and
Water Conservation Society (parent Society)
• Incredibly important, as our other locally led conservation
organizations, Districts, Extensions, not-for-profits, etc.
• Chapter Basics Document with chapter requirements,
activities, benefits and other information online

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Chapters - Past, Present, and Future
Past
Since the Society’s inception in 1945, a chapter model was used
to provide education, training, and networking at a local level,
where a diverse group of conservation-minded members meet to
discuss and address the environmental challenges facing their
particular landscapes and communities.
Nine chapters formed in the first year of the Society’s inception.
Chapters have continued to form during the Society’s history.

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Chapters - Past, Present, and Future
Present
• Today, the Society has 55 chapters.
• Chapters have different levels of activity and engagement.
• Common activities include holding meetings, engaging in
public outreach, giving scholarships and awards, etc.
• There are shared struggles among chapters and other
associations and service groups.

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Chapters - Past, Present, and Future
Future…
It is up to us.

7. “Trying to resist change is like
holding your breath. Even if you
are successful, it doesn’t end
well.”
– Michael McQueen

8. “It’s ok to drop a tradition if it’s
not working anymore.”
- Rotary Club of Coral Gables

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Chapters: A Labor of Love

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Bowling Alone: The
Collapse and Revival of
American Community
2000 (pre social media)

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Overview & Social Capital Defined
• Social capital is defined as “connections among individuals
– social networks and the norms of reciprocity and
trustworthiness that arise from them.
• Core idea of social capital is that social networks have
value
• We benefit from having a network of connections, others
benefit from having a network of connections
• Improves mental and physical health, child welfare,
creates safe and productive neighborhoods, economic
prosperity, more functional democracy
• We reciprocate good actions of others
• Bridge social divides
• Forge stronger bonds between members (not always
good)
• More likely to donate and volunteer (10x), even a
correlation between entertaining friends at your home and
volunteering

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Declines since 1960’s
Political participation
Attendance at public meetings
Membership or leadership within a club
Civic engagement
Religious participation
Professional associations/unions
Groups social activities (bridge clubs,
dinners with friends)
Social Capital Decline Measurement

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Guesstimated Explanation for Civic
Disengagement, 1965 - 2000

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Generational change
Decline in trust
Pressure of time, two people working full
time in the household (particularly with
educated and women, who contributed
most in past)
Sprawl
Technology and Mass Media (TV, says
phone could help)
Other reasons specific to professional
organizations (job satisfaction, changes to
career area)
Reasons for Decline

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Spectator sports
Museums (concerts?)
Giving: giving more, giving less of their
personal income
Self help groups
Voting on state ballot initiatives
What is growing?

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Number of groups have increased, but
not the memberships
What is growing?

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“My message is we desperately need an era of
civic inventiveness to create a renewed set of
institutions and changes for a reinvigorated
civic life that will fit the way we have come to
live. Our challenge now is to reinvent the
twenty-first-century equivalent of the Boy Scouts
or the settlement house or the playground or
Haddesseh or the united Mine Workers or the
NAACP. What we create may well look nothing
like the institutions Progressives invented a
century ago, just as their inventions were not
carbon copies of the earlier small town folkways
whose passing they mourned. We need to be as
ready to experiment as the Progressives
were. Willingness to err – and then
correct our aim – is the price of success of
social reform.”
Social Capital

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Simplify Your
Bylaws
• Are your bylaws restricting
you?
• Fewer officers?
• Larger geographic areas for
officers?
• Fewer meetings?
• Should timelines be extended
or realigned?
• Should specific actions be
removed?
Report changes in chapter bylaws to the parent Society Board of
Directors for approval. Modified bylaws may also require approval by
members and submission in line with federal and state laws.

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Streamline Your Operations
• Rehashing operational information can take time away
from mission work, can drive away new leadership
• Consider using Google Shared Drive for operational
items, ballots, election schedules, etc.
• Creates efficiencies
• Creates sustainability
• Eases leadership transfer

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Create an Action Plan
• Set up a strategic
calendar of yearly
meaningful actions
• Strategic but not
cumbersome
• Assign dates to
actions
• Fillable chapter
action plan and
calendar with
example

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Create an Action Plan
• Pick four actions
• Partner to host a technical or professional development event
(meeting, tour, training)
• Host a fun, social networking event (trivia night, bike ride, sports
event, kayaking, service event, family event)
• Hold quarterly membership recruitment activities (get a discount
from a local company for members, offer swag, offer meeting
registration costs to count towards membership)
• Create a new partnership (next generation, organization for
communities)

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Communicate with
SWCS Headquarters
• memberservices@swcs.org
• Send us your action plan
• Send us details on upcoming
actions, events, etc.

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Create a Decision Diagram
• Does it offer something new or
different?
• Is it thought-provoking or show
thought leadership?
• Does it meet a need of and
provide value to our existing
members?
• Does it engage a new audience of
conservation professionals?
• Is there a fun component to it?
• Fillable decision diagram and
example

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Ask Internally and
Externally
• Ask your members
• Ask potential members
• Ask the leaders in your state
• Engage a facilitator

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Get in a circle of success & celebration
• Take time to reflect on
accomplishments
• Set small, interim goals
• Share goals with others
• Record progress
• Repeat

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• Webinar, chapter tools
• Chapter Basics one pager
• Bylaw review and revamp
guidance
• Fillable chapter action plan and
calendar with example
• Fillable decision diagram with
example
• A recording of this webinar and
the PowerPoint presentation
Support from
Headquarters

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• New membership forms and
opportunities clearly define benefits
• Individual Members
• Community Partners
• Corporate Partners
• Chapter and Individual Gift
Memberships
• “Stick with Us” renewal campaign
• In the works:
• Value proposition
• Automatic withdrawals from bank
accounts
• Headquarter Hacks
Support from
Headquarters

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Leave a Legacy
• Our responsibility to
recruit those next
leaders
• We have to make
the ask

30. Thank you!!
Let’s discuss…