Sit back and enjoy this post about chapters in crisis. We’ll cover all kinds of troublesome scenarios from chapter financial mismanagement and fraud to AWOL chapter officers and everything in between.
If we’ve done our job well, you’ll either be reaching for your legal counsel’s phone number (and maybe a drink too) or basking in a glow of self-satisfaction because your chapters are all teacher’s pets—in which case, can we talk?
Your association’s approach to chapter crisis management and prevention depends on your relationship with your components—whether they’re subsidiary or independent. If your chapters are independent, think of them as adult children. You can’t control their life or force them to do anything, but their behavior affects your happiness and reputation. You can only provide advice and support—and hope they choose to receive it.
We assume chapters are subsidiaries, a situation that brings more risk to National, but also supposedly provides more control. Even if your components are independent, you (and your chapters) will benefit from this advice.
Let’s start with a nightmarish crisis: financial mismanagement. Staff and volunteer leaders with good intentions but limited competence can lead a chapter to ruin. Financial mismanagement—whether it’s caused innocently by incompetence or not so innocently by fraud—harms more than your bottom line. It damages the chapter and association’s brand, and results in a loss of trust that may be even more difficult to recover from than a loss of revenue.
In small staff organizations, staff wear many hats. This tremendous learning opportunity for employees may come at a cost to the chapter if employees don’t have the skills and knowledge needed to handle financial responsibilities.
In volunteer-managed chapters, additional factors increase the risk of financial mismanagement:
You just got a call from a newly installed chapter treasurer. The first words out of his mouth are: “I don’t want to get anyone in trouble, and I don’t know how this happened, but I need to fix it.” You find out the books haven’t been reconciled in several quarters and bills are overdue.
It’s hard to see the bright side right now, but think of this as an opportunity to strengthen your relationship with this chapter. How you respond sets the tone for that relationship from here on out. Don’t point blame or shame anyone. Work together towards a solution.
Get your internal finance team on board—you’ll need their expertise. To fully understand the situation, a few calls may suffice. Or, you may need to get someone on the ground who can talk with the people involved. But right now, you’re in triage mode. What does the chapter need to right the ship? A loan from National?
Like a family with serious credit card debt, you need an emergency financial plan. What would Dave Ramsey do? Most likely, give them a plan to limit expenses and grow revenue as quickly as possible.
Three words: communication, communication, communication. Regular formal and informal communication helps you gain the trust of chapter leaders. They’ll pay more attention to the training and resources you provide, and they’ll turn to you when they need help.
Each relationship between a chapter and National is different. The relationship is based on the strength of the individual relationships (or lack thereof) between volunteer leaders/staff at your association and volunteer leaders/staff at the chapter. Your contractual relationship makes a difference too.
Your relationship (and intel) will improve if you make it a habit to touch base with chapter officers and board members occasionally. You might be surprised by what they share with you. You could catch them on a bad day and they just want to vent. Or, they may want to provide insight into struggles that are occurring without your knowledge.
Since finances aren’t everyone’s idea of a good time, keep in mind the 3 E’s: educate, entertain, and engage. Arrange financial training for all incoming officers via a webinar, series of videos, or online learning program. Use your learning management system to track participation so you know who’s completed the training and who hasn’t. For treasurers and board members, provide training that focuses on their specific responsibilities.
Post an interactive guide online for their reference—not a 150 page PDF handbook, please. Provide monthly, quarterly, and yearly checklists.
When needed, provide one-on-one coaching or peer mentoring. Peer-to-peer learning works wonders. At your annual chapter leadership events, ask your most financially proficient chapters to give a presentation about financial management best practices.
We’ve all seen headlines about embezzlement at local nonprofits. You can’t help thinking:
Oh yeah, one last one: That would never happen to us!
Wishful thinking is comforting but dangerous. Yes, it can happen to you, but no one wants to see it happen, which is why the second post in our series on chapters in crisis focuses on chapter financial fraud.
Innocent incompetence, like the financial mismanagement we described in the first post in this series, is easy to forgive. After all, you may be at fault for not providing sufficient training and policy requirements to prevent it. But fraud, that’s another story.
The new chapter president finally gained access to bank statements and is troubled by what she sees: unexplained cash withdrawals going back months. She can’t think of any reason for the withdrawals. The former treasurer is not returning her texts, calls, or emails so now she’s on the phone with you.
First, ask your accounting professionals to review the situation, and then seek legal advice. Once the dust clears, check with your CPA or tax attorney, you may have to report the fraud on the chapter’s Form 990 as a “diversion of assets.”
You’re dealing with financial and tax implications, possibly legal action, plus hours of frustration and lost productivity. But that’s not all. Depending on the severity of the theft or fraud, the chapter and National brand is at stake too. If word gets out, industry watchdog publications may aggressively investigate the situation.
You can never say “never” but you can minimize the chances that this could happen in one of your chapters.
Chapter staff and volunteer leaders must feel comfortable asking you for help. They must be willing to get vulnerable and admit their ignorance or point out something that doesn’t look or feel right. They must understand there will be no repercussions if they do.
No one wants to admit failure or call attention to a problem that could potentially escalate later, but chapter leaders must adhere to this familiar rule: If you see something, say something.
Establish term limits for chapter officers.
At least three chapter representatives should be authorized signers on all accounts at all times and have access to online banking If one of the three is suspected of fraud, the other two can have the third removed from the account or their access frozen.
Bank accounts should be reconciled every month. Better yet, provide technology that can automate bank reconciliation. Whoever is keeping the books should send a bank reconciliation to all officers or the whole board, if appropriate.
The American Academy of Pediatrics provides a financial controls checklist to their chapters. A system of checks and balances ensures that no one person has control over all parts of a financial transaction. For example:
Run a credit check periodically to uncover unauthorized accounts.
Establish a whistleblower policy and procedure to ensure that anyone who wants to report something fishy is ensured protection from retaliation. Consider an anonymous hotline run by a third-party, like MPI Cares, that members can use to report unethical behavior.
Take some of the administrative burden and financial risk off chapters. Technology shared by National and chapters can automate repetitive tasks and eliminate the reporting burden, for example, a virtual or consolidated banking solution for chapters.
With a virtual banking solution, fraud controls are built in. National has one master bank account divided into separate virtual sub-accounts for each chapter. This specialized software allows each chapter’s virtual sub-account to function like a standard bank account. Chapters can view and manage their sub-accounts separately.
An alternative solution, if you have the bandwidth, is to manage your chapters’ finances. Chapters may push back on this option, seeing it as a loss of control. However, they still have budget control, plus they can enjoy the primary benefit of outsourcing back-office processes and tasks: more time to spend on programming and member engagement.
If you go this route, you must provide complete transparency as well as a quick (within reason) response to payment and information requests. Provide training each year that outlines the division of duties and manages chapters’ service expectations.
Now, let’s turn to federal and state compliance issues. The more time you spend as an enforcer, the less you can spend as an advisor who helps chapters grow, engage and retain members, and share success stories.
Always consult with legal counsel on critical federal and state compliance issues. Our job here is to make you aware of what you may not know, but we’re not lawyers or accountants.
Your approach to chapter crisis management and prevention, particularly compliance issues, depends on the relationship between National and the chapters—whether they’re separate legal entities or not.
Separately incorporated legal entities are responsible for filing their own reports with state and federal agencies, but it’s prudent for National to make sure they’re doing that. For one, it’s your brand, and, secondly, you may have to help clean up the mess.
Because a 501(c) nonprofit’s exemption from federal corporate taxes provides financial benefits, the penalties for non-compliance can be serious. The IRS can revoke a nonprofit’s tax exemption and Employer Identification Number (EIN), and impose fines that accrue daily.
Contact the IRS to find out how many years the chapter neglected to file its tax forms. Organizations that do not file a Form 990 for three consecutive years automatically lose their federal tax-exempt status. If the IRS revokes the chapter’s federal tax-exempt status, the chapter will no longer be able to participate in the Group Tax Exemption and must apply to have its status reinstated. Learn more on IRS.gov.
State compliance requirements vary. A chapter may be required to file an annual report, file a corporate registration, maintain state tax exemption, and maintain a registered agent. If a chapter doesn’t comply with state requirements, the state can administratively dissolve the chapter’s nonprofit corporation status and levy onerous financial penalties.
For state compliance issues, contact the Secretary of State office that granted the articles of incorporation for the chapter. You may have to file back reports and pay penalties to become compliant and reinstate their administrative status back to active. Learn more about state reporting requirements in the resources provided by Harbor Compliance and Hurwit & Associates.
Find useful information on IRS.gov, for example, tax-exempt basics and other educational resources, and translate it into regular language. Share these resources with your chapters, explaining why they must take it seriously. Use your learning management system (LMS) to provide basic compliance training for chapter leaders.
Get copies of each chapter’s articles of incorporation, bylaws, and IRS and state tax exemption determination letters. Make it easy on chapter leaders by letting them upload these documents to a file library in your chapter leader hub or portal. This file library can also serve as a permanent storage place for other key documents, such as annual plans, 990s, and policies.
Send out an annual reminder to file tax returns.
Either require chapters to complete a compliance checklist or do a self-assessment. For each compliance requirement, have them assess their chapter’s performance against best practices. For example, if their check signing policy doesn’t follow best practices, they’ll see the need to change the policy. You could encourage best practice compliance by rewarding high-performing chapters with financial, consultative, or award incentives.
Get help from technology. For example, an IRS approved e-filer for forms 990N and 990EZ displays the statuses of each chapter and sends reminders to all the chapters when they need to file.
You can avoid troublesome situations by , keeping a watchful eye, and providing enough support so chapters can’t fail. Yes, it’s the chapter’s responsibility to file their taxes annually and stay in compliance. However, if National doesn’t provide reminders and explain why these compliance issues are so critical, chapters may blame you for a lack of communication. When it comes to taxes, you can never communicate too much.
Wouldn’t it be wonderful if every chapter leader took a mini-CAE course to prepare for their position? You’d see them running around with the latest edition of the Association Law Handbook chatting about antitrust, conflicts of interest, copyright, and all kinds of chapter legal liabilities. Ah, one can dream.
But in reality, it’s up to you to teach them how to minimize risks and keep them on the right side of the law.
Chapter leaders are busy volunteers with full-time jobs elsewhere. When they have time to work on their chapter responsibilities, they focus their attention on issues of priority, such as the budget or upcoming programs. They are not association experts, so they don’t even know they need to be concerned about other issues—until they get a letter from someone’s lawyer.
Chapters can violate a regulation, infringe on another party’s rights, or do themselves legal harm in a number of ways.
Make sure chapters know what to do if a lawyer comes knocking. If you have a subsidiary relationship, consulting with you is the first thing on their list. If they’re independent, getting legal counsel, pronto, is a must.
Knowledge is the key to prevention. Usually chapters fall into legal trouble because they didn’t even know they were getting into trouble.
Volunteer leaders must understand that their responsibilities as officers and directors includes exercising diligence and care in good faith. Besides understanding how to keep their chapter on the right side of the law, they have the duty to:
To help their chapters comply with their Chapter Affiliation Requirements, the Association for Talent Development provides a guide that chapter boards use to discuss and understand risk management best practices and to conduct a risk assessment.
The Case Management Society of America provides resources on legal issues related to chapter operations. The American Association of Law Libraries has three legal training presentations in their online chapter leadership toolkit.
In particular, chapter leaders must know how to spot antitrust risks and maintain compliance. Officers and board members must complete an annual written disclosure of potential conflicts. If new potential conflicts arise, they need to update their disclosure. At each meeting, the board chair should ask directors to review the agenda, declare potential conflicts, and refrain from discussing and voting on the matter.
Give chapters a list of websites where they can access free, Creative Commons licensed photos, for example, Unsplash and Pixabay.
Encourage them to purchase ASCAP and BMI licenses for music. Share these MeetingsNet and Dozmia articles on music licensing with them.
Identify a nonprofit attorney with association experience for each state and share this list with your chapters.
Insurance requirements for chapters depend on what National’s group policy covers and what National can demand of chapters, based on your relationship. You can ask for proof of coverage in the chapter’s annual report to National.
Chapters should at least have general liability, including event/liquor liability coverage, and Directors and Officers insurance. Other options include:
No word provokes chapter nightmares like the word “hacked”—except maybe the word “fraud.” When chapter volunteers (and staff) are busy, and they surely are busy, they’re more likely to make the kind of tiny mistakes that can lead to a cybersecurity disaster.
One of them is bound to fall for an email phishing scam one of these days—it’s inevitable. When they do, you want them to feel comfortable turning to you for guidance, no matter their chapter structure: independent or subsidiary. In this post, we assume chapters are subsidiaries, a situation that brings more risk to National, but also supposedly provides more control. Even if your components are independent, you’ll benefit from the advice we share.
We’ve heard countless stories about spoofed emails impersonating a chapter officer, for example:
Spoofed emails are only one way for a chapter leader to get phished—tricked into revealing sensitive information or exposing their computer (and their chapter’s network) to malware.
Another common incident is receiving a legit-looking email from a service provider notifying the recipient of suspicious activity and advising them to log in to their account. Phishing emails like these are seeking your Gmail or other email credentials. Once they have these credentials, they can do all kinds of damage. The creativity of cybercriminals knows no bounds as new phishing schemes are continually unleashed.
Some phishing attacks are targeted at large organizations, but most are not. They’re made possible by inexpensive, automated software called “exploit kits” that spread malware via emails and compromised websites.
The extent of your involvement depends upon your relationship with the chapter. If the chapter is a subsidiary, you might take responsibility for these tasks. But, if an affiliated component is the cybersecurity victim, you can suggest these steps.
Gather your team—IT, membership, communications, member services, and legal—and follow your data breach plan. Hopefully, your association and chapters have a data breach plan to follow. If not, schedule time with a cybersecurity consultant to develop one.
You may need to hire an IT professional to find out how the breach occurred, and help you fix any holes in your security perimeter. Once your network is secure, restore lost data from your backup. Again, this is another area where it pays to plan ahead: make sure your chapters have redundancy plans and backup procedures in place.
Every state, as well as the District of Columbia, has a data breach notification law with specific requirements for notifying anyone whose personal data has been compromised. Don’t delay action. Some state laws require you to notify data owners within 30 days.
Even with the best security perimeter your budget can afford, you need a strong human firewall as your last line of defense. Ensure chapter volunteers and staff have the training they need to protect member and customer data.
Follow a two-prong strategy: teach and test. Mandate attendance or viewing of security training webinars. Provide cybersecurity training resources, such as tip sheets and sample policies. Teach chapter leaders how to safely use personal computers and mobile devices if they’re connecting to a chapter or National network.
Test their cybersecurity knowledge. An automated phishing test service, such as KnowBe4, sends simulated phishing emails to see if staff and volunteer leaders take the bait. If they do, a training video explains what to look for in future emails so they don’t make the same mistake again.
Raise the cybersecurity issue regularly in chapter leader communications so it’s kept top of mind. Use security breaches in the news as teachable moments.
Have policies and procedures in place that make it less likely for chapter leaders to fall for social engineering, for example, a clear procedure for payment and money transfer requests.
Although most security breaches are caused by human error, you must ensure your network’s security perimeter is as tight as possible. If it’s in your budget, arrange for annual cybersecurity audits to identify and fix any vulnerabilities or unsafe practices. These audits are often required now as part of regular financial audits.
Instruct chapters to do regular backups, and, for those with the IT resources, to test data restoration. If they can’t quickly and completely restore data after an incident, they’ll have trouble getting back to business.
Because cybercriminals can scrape email addresses and other data from your public website, don’t publish contact information for staff and volunteer leaders. Use email forms instead.
Find out if your insurance policies cover social engineering claims. Even cyberinsurance may have limitations on claims caused by phishing and ransomware attacks.
The volunteer leader’s “job” is more complicated than ever. The last generation of leaders didn’t have to worry about cybersecurity or data privacy. But now, many chapters must comply with a host of new privacy regulations, like the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), and new state laws, like the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) that passed in June 2018. It’s only a matter of time before we start hearing about a new federal data privacy regulation.
With everything else on their plate, you can’t assume chapter leaders are aware of and understand these new regulations. Yes, your plate is plenty full too but chapters depend on you to keep them in the know and on the right side of the law.
It’s always been common practice for some associations and chapters to give an attendee email list to an event sponsor for one-time use. However, in our lawsuit-happy society, you could imagine an event attendee one day filing a complaint about a chapter sharing his personal data without permission.
If only the chapter included a disclaimer or opt-in on the registration form about sharing information with event sponsors and/or exhibitors, you wouldn’t have this mess. Is there anything the chapter can do at this point to resolve the problem? What would make this person happy?
If all else fails, get your legal counsel involved so you can understand what’s required by law, where the chapter might have gone wrong, and what you can do to avoid further nastiness.
Data privacy is a complicated and ever-changing issue. For the best chance of success, talk with an attorney or consultant with experience in privacy regulation laws. In anticipation of new privacy regulations, many associations have taken the initiative to review and revamp their association and chapter data governance policies and practices.
One exercise that will help you get your hands around the data in your care or your chapter’s care is to map out the data lifecycle: how personal data enters the association or chapter and for what purpose, where it’s stored, with whom it’s shared, and when it’s deleted.
Many associations have developed new website privacy notices that state what visitor data they collect, why, and what they do with it.
Depending on the permission you receive from data owners (members, customers, and attendees), you may need to reconsider the sharing of data with third parties, such as sponsors, exhibitors, and other event partners.
Organizations with data subject to GDPR must figure out how to accommodate data subject rights. For example, members in the EU have the right to see their data, correct what’s wrong, and ask you to delete or return that data. Help chapters figure out what they need to do—and how to do it—if someone makes a request based on the rights granted to them by a data privacy regulation, such as the right to see their data.
Data privacy regulations have different requirements for notification in the case of a data breach. Make sure the chapter’s data breach plan and its people are capable of meeting those requirements.
Create a data privacy compliance checklist and other easy-to-read resources, such as tip sheets, for your chapter leader website. Make sure chapter leaders understand applicable privacy regulations, whether it’s GDPR and/or state laws. They must also understand what information is considered confidential and how to handle personal data, like credit card information.
Share sample policies and best practices for collecting and maintaining data, and sharing data with sponsors and exhibitors. For example, many people, maybe even some of your chapter leaders, believe it’s okay to add someone to a blast email list if the person gives you their business card. No, it’s not. You can’t add people to a distribution list without their permission unless you have an existing relationship, i.e., they’re a member, customer, or attendee.
As a component relations professional, you have to become a quasi-expert in many areas: financial management, nonprofit taxes and incorporation, cybersecurity, data governance, and the list goes on. Your chapter leaders need a basic understanding of these topics too. But you know what they say: teach what you need to learn. Encourage chapter leaders to share their knowledge and help each other develop the skills they need to stay out of trouble.
How do prospective members first connect with their local chapter? Some of them use the chapter website links on your site, and others find their way via Google. The chapter website plays an important role in recruiting new members, attracting attendees, and keeping existing members up-to-date on chapter news and events. But maintaining a website means more work for volunteer leaders—and so much can go wrong.
Nowadays, an organization’s website is the first and lasting impression for prospective members as well as existing members, customers, revenue partners, local press, policy-makers, speakers, and the public.
Usually, the people in charge of the website are busy volunteer leaders and/or staff, not digital marketing or IT experts. Their primary focus is elsewhere, so it’s easy to get lax about updating the site with new information, removing old information, and fixing broken links or lackluster copy.
If the website was a DIY project or designed by someone’s relative, it may not be secure or set up correctly for Google’s web crawlers. A site that’s poorly designed for security, speed, search engine optimization (SEO), or mobile responsiveness will rank low in Google search results.
Other challenges with chapter websites include:
But, hey, at least they have a website, that’s a plus, right? Not always.
You might get a call one day from a prospective member. He went to the local chapter’s website but ended up on his internet provider’s “You have entered an unknown web address” page instead. What’s going on?
Most likely, the chapter didn’t renew their web domain and it expired. Their website is gone. Oh brother.
If you encounter an expired website domain, consult this information on the ICANN website. Hopefully, a URL seller hasn’t grabbed the domain out from underneath the chapter. We heard a story at the Association Component Exchange (CEX) about a chapter who tried to renew their domain one day after expiration but it was already too late. A URL seller wanted $5,000 for it, so the chapter had to start all over with a new domain.
If you’re dealing with lousy website copy, triage the situation. What absolutely needs to be fixed, updated, or deleted? Work with chapter leadership to delegate these tasks to a competent volunteer or outsource them to a virtual assistant or marketing professional. Don’t rely on leadership to handle it; they obviously don’t have the time.
You might need a plan to get the website “up to code.” The website must meet National’s branding expectations. More importantly, it must be secure, speedy, SEO- and mobile-friendly, and provide the functionality everyone expects.
Volunteer leaders don’t have the skills to do these tasks themselves—unless they do this type of thing for a living. Later in this series, we describe how to help chapters hire contractors and firms for projects like this, for example, provide a website vendor checklist so chapters know what to look for.
So what’s the root cause here? Is the lousy website a result of a lack of money, time, skills, or interest? Answer that and you can figure out a sustainable long-term strategy.
Depending on your association’s relationship with its chapters, you could prevent these website scenarios by choosing a different way to handle website hosting and management.
Let chapters design and manage their own sites as long as they adhere to your affiliation requirements.
Set expectations but provide resources to assist chapters with their digital presence, such as shared or subsidized technology, budget assistance, staffing support, or consulting services.
Take over management of chapter websites. However, this administrative responsibility may require additional staffing at National.
Provide a website template and requirements checklist that chapters must use to build the website themselves or with vendor assistance. However, since chapters still manage their own sites, you still have risks.
Host a platform that provides a website for each chapter, but allows the chapter to manage its own site. Many association management systems have a content management system (CMS) module that provides this functionality.
The Institute of Management Accountants (IMA) provides microsites to their chapters—you can see an example here. These templated web pages integrate with IMA’s website so information can be cross-posted, for example, IMA can push out global events to each chapter’s website. The microsites are easy for chapters to create and manage, and they adhere to IMA’s branding guidelines.
Provide the training and resources chapters need to create and maintain a website. Don’t assume chapters know what to do—and don’t assume young members, since they’re “digital natives,” know what to do.
Share website resources in your chapter leader hub or portal.
In addition to a guide, provide a sample list of membership benefits for chapters to use on their website—a list that focuses on the impact, not the features, of membership.
As part of their annual report, ask chapters to complete a checklist that includes requirements, such as:
This checklist could also include website requirements related to functionality, security, speed, responsiveness, SEO, and branding.
In our earlier post on federal and state compliance issues, we suggested transforming the checklist of chapter requirements into a self-assessment. Chapters rate themselves on how well they meet best practice standards for things like their check signing policy and website mobile responsiveness. You can incentivize their performance by rewarding high-scoring chapters with financial or consultative incentives.
Some associations provide website platforms to their chapters as a way of ensuring compliance with branding and functionality standards. Chapters can’t get into too much trouble (for example, expired domains and lost passwords) if National is keeping an eye on things.
Provide an annual website audit as a chapter consulting service. After reviewing website functionality and website copy, you can make recommendations for improvements and work with the chapter on an action plan.
When hurricanes and floods are in the headlines, you can be sure many chapter relations professionals (CRPs) are watching nervously, worried about colleagues and members in the threatened area. Chapters that have been through a natural disaster need all the help they can get to deal with:
Unlike these other crises, you can’t minimize the likelihood of a natural disaster, but you can prepare for one.
We are assuming, in these posts, that chapters are subsidiaries, a situation that brings more risk to National, but also supposedly provides more control. Even if your components are independent, you’ll benefit from the advice we share on a crisis we all fear: natural disasters.
Pull up the chapter’s (or your association’s) business continuity/disaster recovery (BC/DR) plan. Uh oh, you don’t have one? Then, triage the situation while keeping in mind the different issues you’ll have to address. Ready.gov is your best bet for information related to all kinds of disasters.
Association Forum provides advice on what associations should include in a business continuity plan, so you can follow that to some extent. If you’re an ASAE member, search the library in the Collaborate community for BC/DR plan samples too.
Keep regular communication going with your primary contact (or someone they appoint) at the chapter. You may find an online collaboration platform, like Slack, is better for communicating than email because you can send messages to a group or to an individual—and can easily search for items in those conversation threads. Or use a private group in your online community—whichever method is easier for the chapter team to use.
Disasters often bring out the best in people, but at a cost: stress, fatigue, and emotional pain. Keep this in mind as you try to help chapter staff, volunteer leaders, and others involved in the recovery effort. Many of them are not only trying to get the chapter back up and running, they’re dealing with property damage (or worse) at home and work too. When the time’s right, you may want to arrange for an employee assistance program (EAP) counselor to meet with chapter staff and/or leaders.
Keep National staff, volunteer leaders, and members aware of what’s going on at the chapter and the different ways they can help. The afflicted chapter’s members and staff will appreciate knowing they’re part of a community that cares.
Give the chapter and its members a break on meeting administrative requirements and dues payments. Take them off reminder distribution lists for administrative obligations—they have enough on their plate.
Extend memberships so members don’t have to worry about dues for several months. Establish a dues waiver program for members whose finances are suffering because of the disaster. Remove members temporarily from email (and postal) distribution lists for event and product promotions.
Consider a matchmaking assistance program. Set up an online form that chapter members can use to request assistance with office space, housing, and other needs. Make those requests visible so other members in the area can provide the needed assistance.
Or, use your online community to arrange matches, like the Educational Theatre Association does for their Disaster Relief Matchmaking Program. They launched the program in 2017 for Texas chapters affected by Hurricane Harvey. Since then, the program has continued to help match schools that need help after a disaster with schools willing to provide help.
Assist the chapter with their administrative and financial responsibilities (compliance reports, tax filing, bills, etc.) while they recover so their situation isn’t made more complicated by noncompliance.
When they’re out of crisis mode, find out if there’s anything you can do to alleviate their stress—think “self-care.” You may want to give them special treatment for some time. Perhaps a few sponsors can subsidize their attendance at association events they wouldn’t otherwise be able to attend.
Provide templates for a business continuity/disaster recovery (BC/DR) plan—even a basic plan is better than nothing! The business continuity plan is the chapter’s action plan. It prioritizes critical business functions and outlines how the chapter will perform those functions during and after a disaster. It defines the responsibilities of key staff and leaders during and after a disaster.
The disaster recovery plan is part of the business continuity plan. It lays out the plan for restoring vital systems, such as communications, hardware, and other IT assets. Its goal is to minimize downtime and get operations back to normal as quickly as possible.
If chapters are required to fill out a checklist along with an annual report, consider adding a BC/DR plan to the list.
Offer to keep a backup file of critical information for chapters. Think of it as a digital safe deposit box that includes:
We hope none of your chapters ever has to experience one of the crises we’ve covered in this series of posts. If you’re proactive and take the steps to prevent what’s preventable, then you may never have to deal with a chapter in crisis.
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