StarChapter of October: ARMA Greater Los Angeles

The ARMA Greater Los Angeles Chapter has been serving the needs of Records and Information Management professionals since 1956 with educational programs, networking, and leadership opportunities through seminars and monthly meetings.

The Greater Los Angeles Chapter of ARMA International has over 140 members representing large and small businesses, government agencies, and nonprofit organizations located throughout Southern California. We were able to connect with their board to learn how StarChapter has been able to help them with their new membership engagement plan and streamlining the management of their chapter.

1. What was ARMA Greater Los Angeles’ strategy for engaging new members in the past year?

We have several strategies for engaging new members. Within the first month of membership our Members Director reaches out with a welcome email. We invite new members to their first meeting for free. For that meeting, we try to pair them with a board member or other chapter veteran to welcome them and provide useful information about the chapter.

This past year we had a Happy Hour Social. This was a purely networking event without educational content. New members were sent a special invitation to encourage them to come and meet new colleagues. This event was free for all members and was sponsored by some of our business partners.

2. Tell us about a successful event/meeting you organized last year.

Our first meeting of the year was a great success with over 50 attendees. We brought in an expert on digital preservation from a movie studio and held the meeting at SAG/AFTRA headquarters. She discussed digital preservation from a film/cinema perspective, but shared tips and ideas that were relevant to many in the records management industry.

We shared our meeting information with members of the Society of American Archivists as well as an archivist list serve. We had attendees who had never been to one of our events before, which is always one of our goals. They came from cities and non-profit organizations focused on special archival projects. They came away with new knowledge for archiving, and also learned about our chapter and its benefits.

3. The ARMA Greater Los Angeles network is extensive. Does the board get ideas on how to improve membership value from other chapters?

Our board members get ideas from several sources. Once a year we attend the ARMA Pacific Region Leadership Conference. At this event we meet and talk with chapter leaders from 5 states. We share successes and failures so that we can learn from each other and become stronger.

We don’t limit our input to just ARMA chapters. We network and partner with chapters from other organizations whose values, goals, industries, and membership base align with our own. It often gives a fresh perspective on what we can offer our members.

4. Do you have any tips/advice to share with other board volunteers?

Don’t forget that your chapter board is a team. You are there to make your chapter stronger and ensure that it is a powerful resource for your members. Although we all have our titles, job descriptions, and responsibilities, we are there to help out the rest of the board. If one person is extra busy during the month, they can ask for help so that another board member or volunteer can pick up the slack.

Communication is the most important tool of any board. Share knowledge and experience with each other. Some of your board members may have performed other roles or been on boards from other chapters. They can provide new perspective, or a more thorough institutional history that can benefit newer members.

And don’t forget to say thank you!

5. What is in store for your members this year?

This year we are partnering with the hosts of the MER Conference (Managing Electronic Records). The MER Conference has held annually in Chicago for 27 years, and is a well-respected event in the records and information management industry. Our chapter is helping to bring MER to the West Coast with a full day of education and networking.

Aside from our normal monthly educational meetings, we will continue to expand our roundtable sessions. The roundtables are more relaxed than our other meetings and allow attendees to ask questions, share experiences, and sometimes “vent” frustrations to others who can sympathize.

6. How have you been able to utilize StarChapter to run the ARMA Greater Los Angeles chapter and reach its goals?

In the past we have gone through many website iterations. Some of them were in HTML and required extensive programming knowledge to maintain. Others, while easier to manage, required us to use a variety of platforms to meet our requirements, such as Wordpress, Eventbrite, Paypal, and MailChimp.

StarChapter makes it easy to manage our site, post new content, and reach out to our members. Not only does it provide a website, marketing, emailing, event planning, reporting, and payment capabilities all in one, it is easy to use even for those that are not tech savvy.

We haven’t even used all of our StarChapter capabilities, although we are planning to do more later this year. We hope that the blog and newsletter features enable us to add more value to our members. We want our website to be a resource where people can help each other and share ideas, as well as network and enhance their career.

StarChapter of September: CMSA Chesapeake

The Case Management Society of America Chesapeake (CMSA Chesapeake) is the official chapter for Chesapeake Bay and Baltimore Metropolitan area. They represent registered nurses, licensed practical nurses, social workers, and allied healthcare professionals dedicated to the practice of case management. CMSA Chesapeake has grown to over 150 members. We were able to connect with their board to learn how StarChapter has been able to help them with membership growth.

1. What was CMSA Chesapeake’s strategy for engaging new members in the past year?

CMSA of the Chesapeake’s strategy for engaging new members in the past year were discounts, emailing, newsletters and our annual conference. Our national CMSA board is willing to send out discounts for chapter membership.  We use these to attract new members, and renewing members receive discounts of up to 20 percent off for CCMs. We communicate these discounts by emailing all the expired and expiring members from the dashboard of StarChapter’s administrative side of our website. We also use free or discounted memberships to CMSA as prizes at our annual conference.  In addition to membership discounts and prizes, we set up a booth at our annual conference where we advertise membership opportunities.  Last, our Newsletter is mailed out every month with at least one free CEU and a list of meetings we offer that can also be located on the website. 

2. Tell us about a successful event/meeting you organized last year.

Every year we organize an Annual conference for our members and non- members in the spring.  StarChapter has been a huge help with the organization and structure of the registered guests for this event.  The Annual conference is our big thank you for our members and guests that have always supported us.  It is held at the Hotel at Arundel Preserve.  We offer amazing speakers and at least 5 CEUs for all of the attendees.  The past two years we have been utilizing the StarChapter website by having our members and non-members fill out the survey to receive their Annual Conference CEUs online only.  

3. The CMSA Chesapeake network is extensive. Does the board get ideas on how to improve membership value from other chapters?

We have always had an extensive network of professionals following us over the years.  We rely on their input and relationships to decide how to improve our membership.  CMSA of the Chesapeake takes ideas and programs from other chapters and brings them up to the board at monthly meetings.  Our chapter has a strong presence nationally, and that allows for strong relationships with National and other chapters.  It also allows us more access to haring about other chapter’s great ideas and successful initiatives. The survey answers from our annual conference have a lot to do with our membership year for CMSA of the Chesapeake.  We make sure we take our members and non-members suggestions and opinions to the planning of each year.

4. Do you have any tips/advice to share with other board volunteers?

What has helped us in the last two years is giving our members easy access to items on our website.  The registration process online has given us the ability to improve our membership and attendance.  We are able to keep better account of our money and how much we can or need to make for each education meeting/conference.  Utilizing the structure and organization that StarChapter allows has made our engagement activities easier and more accessible.  You can improve your entire chapter by utilizing the website to streamline your communication, engagement and operational activities. 

5. What is in store for your members this year?

Every year we are improving our Annual conference and this year will by far be the best one yet.  We use feedback from the previous year to continuously improve.  We are always pushing to keep education meetings that our members/non-members can attend throughout the year.  We as a chapter try to organize about 6 education meetings a year, not including the annual conference.  These meetings are always free to our members.  We are trying to connect with more companies for corporate partnership, so that we can offer sponsorship through our meetings during the year. 

6. How have been able to utilize StarChapter to run CMSA Chesapeake and reach its goals?  

(Everything listed above also) StarChapter is the major reason our membership has increased as fast as it did these past few years.  We have utilized everything from their member importing, newsletters, announcements, classifieds, and especially the emailing function of the website.  We have improved the money handling and registering of our meetings, so our payment rate is as close to 100% as it has ever been.  The newsletter won an award for publishing from our National CMSA at the 2019 conference in Las Vegas.  We have been able to offer nominations for our board members online.  Each year our nominations for Case Manager of the Year increase due to the ease of having it online.  Our email base has increased 20% over the last two years because we can email all of the visitors that have registered for our meetings.  We developed a relationship with a close chapter, so that they can utilize the perks of registering online for meetings.