Ready-made sessions
your chapters can run.
Every association says it develops its members. In practice that usually means an annual conference, a webinar series nobody attends live, and a chapter president trying to fill ninety minutes next Tuesday with whoever will say yes for free. The gap is not ambition. It is that real programming takes staff time, and staff time is the one thing an association never has more of.
These formats are built to close that gap. They are free, they are written so a volunteer can run one without staff support or preparation, and nobody in the room needs to have read the book first.
Where this comes from. Chris Sund is a keynote speaker and the bestselling author of You Are Capable of More. He is also Vice President of the NATHO board and serves on a membership committee, so this material was written by somebody who has sat through the board call about declining chapter engagement rather than somebody selling into it.
Seen On
Chris has taken this material onto morning television in seven markets, and writes for Forbes and Inc.
What this is
not.
Associations get pitched constantly. Here is what this does not pretend to be.
There is no accrediting body behind it and no certificate at the end. If your members only attend what counts toward a license, this is the wrong tool and you should say so up front rather than disappoint a room.
Nothing in the guides sells anything, to your members or to you. There is no upsell inside the material and no requirement to book a speaker to use it.
The point is that a chapter president, a committee chair, or a volunteer can pick it up and run a session cold. If it needed your education director, it would not solve the problem you actually have.
No license, no per-seat fee, no sponsor requirement. Print it, email it to twelve chapters, put it in the member portal. It is free and it stays free.
The concepts that land
in a member room.
There are ten in the book. You do not have to use all of them. These four are the ones that work hardest on the problems associations actually carry.
Lead Before You Are Asked
Almost every association in the country has the same quiet crisis: the same nine people have run everything for a decade, nobody under forty will chair a committee, and the nominating call each year gets a little harder. That is usually read as an engagement problem. It is more often a confidence problem. People do not volunteer to lead something until they already believe they are the kind of person who leads things.
This is the session for a chapter that needs a bench. Run it with the members you have been hoping would raise a hand, well before you need them to.
Read the concept →Time Is Your Edge
Your members are volunteers with day jobs. Every hour they give you is an hour they took from something else, and the ones who give the most are usually the ones closest to quietly burning out on it. Most association programming ignores this entirely and asks for more.
This session is about where a person’s time actually goes versus where they think it goes. It is the rare piece of member programming that gives something back instead of asking.
Read the concept →Seek Truth. Not Praise.
Boards and committees drift toward agreement. Everyone is a volunteer, nobody wants to be the difficult one, and after a few years the meetings get pleasant and stop being useful. The organization keeps approving things and stops deciding them.
Run this with a board, an executive committee, or a chapter leadership team before a strategic planning session. It gives a group permission to say the thing everybody already knows.
Read the concept →Leave People Better
This is the closest thing in the book to a description of why professional associations exist at all. People join for the education and the discount, and they stay for thirty years because of who they became inside the community and who they helped along the way.
The strongest closing session for a conference, an annual meeting, or the final night of a cohort. It is also the one that reminds long-tenured members why they are still in the room.
Read the concept →Five formats,
five slots.
Same material at different levels of commitment. Match it to the slot you are already trying to fill.
The Lunch and Learn
All ten concepts at about five minutes each, with a full run of show and the exact question to ask for every one. Nothing to prepare beyond printing a page, and the person running it does not need to have read the book.
Works for: a monthly chapter meeting, a virtual member session, a lunch slot at a state conference, or a new member orientation.
Open the Guide →The Book Club Guide
One session per concept, written so anyone in the group can facilitate. Honest questions to open, one that asks more of the room, and a challenge to carry into the month.
Works for: a chapter that meets monthly and needs ten months of programming solved at once, a committee, or an online member community. Everyone needs a copy of the book.
Download the Guide →The Workshop
One concept worked properly rather than ten skimmed. A question on the board, silent reflection, tables of four, and the group deciding together what it will change. Interactive from the first minute.
Works for: a chapter meeting with a real time slot, a conference breakout, a committee, or a board that needs to talk honestly before it plans.
Open the Guide →The Boot Camp
All ten condensed into a day. Each concept runs the same loop: short teach, silent reflection, table discussion, decision. The group leaves with a written plan instead of a tote bag.
Works for: a pre-conference day, a board retreat, a leadership institute, or the day before an annual meeting while everyone is already in the same city.
Open the Guide →The 10-Week Program
The deep version. One concept a week with real life in between, so members try something and report back. This is the format for building future chapter and board leadership rather than running an event.
Works for: an emerging leader or NextGen cohort pulled from across your membership, a mentorship program that needs a spine, or a leadership academy.
Open the Guide →Four slots you are
already trying to fill.
Running it across
chapters and states.
Things Worth Knowing Before You Send It Out
Send the format, not the assignment. If you email twelve chapter presidents a link and a paragraph telling them what it is, some of them will run it next month. If you email them a project, none of them will. The guides are written to be handed over whole.
The book is optional for three of the five formats. Only the book club guide requires everyone to have a copy. The lunch and learn, the boot camp, and most of the ten week program work with people who have never read a page, which matters when you cannot ask members to buy anything.
Mixed rooms are a feature. Association audiences are the one place where a twenty six year old and a thirty year veteran end up at the same table. Most development material assumes one or the other. This material is about the individual rather than the role, so both ends of the room get something.
Watch the closing session. Conferences end badly more often than they start badly. People are tired, half the room has a flight, and the last speaker gets a thin crowd. If you use one of these as a closer, run it at the point where attendance is still real.
If You Want Something Members Can Do Alone
The Comfort Ceiling Assessment runs on a phone in ten minutes and nothing is sent anywhere, so it is safe to put in a member newsletter or a conference app. The full introduction to the book is free to read and link to as well.
The highest level of success is helping others become more.
Or bring Chris
to the room.
State and national conferences, annual meetings, chapter events, board retreats, and leadership institutes. Bulk copies can be paired with a keynote so members leave with the material rather than the memory of it.
Bring Chris In
The keynote, a facilitated day, a breakout, or bulk copies for a conference or leadership institute.
Start a Conversation →Choose Your Sessions
Pick the concepts that fit your membership instead of taking all ten. Get a session order back.
Build It →For Emerging Leader Programs
The same material written for chambers, employer academies, and rising leader cohorts.
See the Page →The Printables
Worksheets for all ten concepts, ready to print for every seat in the room.
Print Them →
When I’ve got something worth sending.
Just a story or an idea I picked up that I think will help you.
Sometimes that’s twice in a month. Sometimes it’s not for a while.