The Chapter Outreach department held its annual department meeting offsite in St. Augustine, Fla., recently. This meeting has been held the past three years at the site of the upcoming conference and show. However, since all staff in the department had attended an event in Orlando, we moved this to St. Augustine, where staff toured the World Golf Hall of Fame and was introduced to some of the World Golf Foundation staff.
Here are the highlights of the meeting:
Chapter Delegates Meeting – Main agenda items were highlighted. Staff will be expected to facilitate small group discussion and assist with various duties. We discussed membership recruitment, the development of a political action committee, the proposed dues increase and member engagement updates which will be a focus of the meeting.
GCSAA's “Working for Me” Campaign – Field staff from the region of the monthly winner will follow up with the facility winning the promotion. It would be ideal to have the field staff representative there to provide lunch or another concept to the facility. This would provide an opportunity for GCSAA's field staff to be present and show the value of membership.
Best Management Practices (BMP) Rollout/Ideas – Fifty states by 2020 is the vision and message provided. The concept is already being pre-launched as field staffers update chapters and attendees during meetings. Relationships that our department developed will be key in helping achieve 50 by 2020.
Board Outreach Template – Emily Bradford, our senior manager of executive operations, has developed a template for GCSAA's board of directors' outreach visits. The template helps fill in the blanks and streamlines the agenda for the visit. All department team members are onboard with the template and will be used for remaining official board outreach visits.
Department Metrics – The team will be proposing revised metrics to be implemented in 2017. Some of the metrics, including A, B, C, and EM membership recruitment, Rounds 4 Research participation and chapter donations to the Environmental Institute for Golf will remain. However, a chapter engagement process (which indicates where chapters participate in GCSAA services/programs) is being proposed, as are tracking the number of chapter/individual member and non-member visits and total overall contacts per month. More detail will be provided in the coming weeks.
Chapter Assessment Tool – Questions are being revised for the chapter assessment tool. This is a “dashboard” concept to see where chapters are effective and how our team can assist chapters in areas of need. This tool has been distributed every three years as the affiliation agreement cycle was structured. It has proven to be effective in pinpointing areas chapters would like help in and for our outreach team to focus.
SCOR Analysis – Each year we have conducted a strengths, challenges, opportunities and risks exercise. It has been fascinating to see how the items in the SCOR have evolved over the past three years. Here are the main items unveiled in the SCOR and a homework assignment that is due late next week.
Strengths (top areas noted):
- Relationships established in the regions
- Strong team, diverse personalities and abilities
- Provide a face and personality for the association
- Gaining recognition among the golf industry/allied groups
Homework assignment:How can we leverage GCSAA through the chapter outreach department with various allied groups (for example the GCBAA have invited field staffers to speak at their regional events).
Challenges (top areas noted)
- Changing environment
- Reaching non-members with GCSAA Value
- Balance – Are we spending too much time in one or two programmatic areas?
Homework assignment: How can we reflect proper balance, both from a working standpoint and with travel and other demands put on the position?
Opportunities (top areas noted)
- Leveraging our messaging to members/golfers
- Leveraging industry recognition
- Government affairs and messaging
Homework assignment: Thoughts or story ideas for GCM/Communications team that can continue to leverage what GCSAA provides?
Risks (top areas noted)
- Decline in membership
- Forgetting who we are and offer
- Messaging getting redundant/stale
Homework assignment: How can we influence enhancing our identity and prevent industry decline
Ultimately, the meeting continues to help GCSAA prioritize focus areas. We appreciate your input and feedback. Please let me know if you have any questions.
Steve Randall
