Long Term Chapter Planning

One of the most difficult parts of being a chapter leader is pulling yourself out of the month-to-month activity of the organization and doing long-term planning and goal setting. Most, if not all, of us deal with this sort of activity in our professional lives. It is important that we apply it to our chapters as well. The EAA Chapters office provides us with several tools to help guide our chapter towards a path of long-term success and prosperity.

If you have not already, you should review past survey responses from your chapter members. The Chapters office does have a historical archive that you can request if you are a newer leader, or past survey results are lost in the abyss. In the past, I have taken this data and summarized it to review with the board (while also providing the full results for their own perusing). This has allowed us to narrow our focus on what the chapter members are thinking and what they do or do not want to see the chapter doing in the future. There are also several free resources such as SurveyMonkey that you can use to create your own surveys if you want to be more specific with your questions. Like most aspects of life, I have found that people are more willing to be direct and honest in these forums versus asking for input in person. Further, it gives you a better opportunity to digest and gather input than hosting an open forum at a meeting, plus we want to make sure we are keeping the business aspects out of our meetings to keep them more appealing for all.

Taking this information, we are able to help develop plans and goals for the chapter. Again, the Chapters office provides a great template in the “5-Year Chapter Flight Plan” to help you formulate and structure these plans with aviation-friendly lingo. Your chapter may have goals as simple as holding your first Young Eagles rally or growing membership by 15 members. Other chapters may have bigger goals of doing a chapter build/restoration project or getting a chapter “home.” The Flight Plan will help you break these goals into smaller pieces, assign a “PIC” and determine an appropriate timeline for each step towards that goal.

Regardless of where your chapter may be in its life or what your aspirations are, we should all be looking toward the future and developing a healthy and vibrant aviation community. As pilots, we all know how important it is to have a detailed and thorough flight plan for our cross-country flights. Our chapters deserve the same effort, detail, and considerations to ensure that they will be there to continue being the grassroots home for aviation in our communities for future generations of aviation enthusiasts.