P.E.O. Record
Expanding Our Vision:
Using goal setting to enhance chapter life
" ‘Cheshire Puss,’ she began, rather timidly, as she did not at all know whether it would like the name: however, it only grinned a little wider. `Come, it’s pleased so far,’ thought Alice, and she went on. `Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?’
‘That depends a good deal on where you want to get to,’ said the Cat.
‘I don’t much care where—’ said Alice.
‘Then it doesn’t matter which way you go,’ said the Cat.
‘—so long as I get SOMEWHERE,’ Alice added as an explanation.
‘Oh, you’re sure to do that,’ said the Cat, ‘if you only walk long enough.’ "
—Lewis Carroll in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland
Our pretty storybook heroine isn’t the only one who benefits from direction. Local P.E.O. chapters looking to enrich chapter life find that the process of setting goals helps strengthen the bonds of sisterhood as well as the P.E.O. organization as a whole.
“If you set goals together and talk in an honest and open manner about what you want your chapter to do, it helps you become a group,” said Ellen Knox, a member of the Special Committee on Membership Advancement (SCMA) and Regional Membership Representative for the South Central Region. “It gets everybody on the same page and going in the same direction.”
Ellen, who is also a past state president of Texas, co-authored the pilot program on goal setting for the SCMA. The program, soon available on the P.E.O. website, walks chapters through a process that produces unique goals specific to each chapter’s personality.
Holding a family meeting
Washington State has found that using a trained, neutral facilitator is a great way to conduct a family life meeting. Their family meeting program, called the Chapter Assessment and Resource Evaluation Meeting Program (or CARE) has been a successful membership-building tool for more than eight years.
Chapter members complete an anonymous survey prior to the meeting, which is summarized by a trained, neutral facilitator. At the CARE meeting, the facilitator uses the survey’s results to help members work through a process of individual, small group and large group activities to identify challenges and suggest solutions for improving the way the chapter functions.
Tovi Harris, CARE Chairman and past president of Washington State Chapter, works with 17 trained facilitators throughout the state. Tovi’s 25-year experience in program development and as an educator for nonprofit organizations and public school systems has helped prepare her for the work she continues to do in P.E.O. Once the local chapter has requested the CARE program, Tovi assigns a facilitator to implement it.
Facilitators stay in contact with the chapters for six months and return upon request.
Many local chapters, such as Chapter K in Manitou Springs, Colorado, use surveys to accomplish the task on their own. Chapter K formed their Chapter Life committee in 2005 soon after Colorado State Chapter encouraged local chapters to incorporate this standing committee into their bylaws. Gretchen Richardson, a sister with experience as a volunteer director, served as chairman.
“Our efforts actually were designed to serve multiple purposes,” said Gretchen, “to address an underlying feeling of exclusiveness among some of our membership, to allow members to give suggestions for strengthening friendships and to raise the importance of designing venues for introducing women to our chapter and to P.E.O.”
At the time, Chapter K had an aging membership, several busy career women in the workplace and problems finding sisters willing to take leadership positions. Gretchen hand-picked some sisters to serve on the Chapter Life committee, (such as LJ, a retired lieutenant colonel in the United States Air Force with a penchant for organization) and drafted others who had quietly expressed concerns. They met together to discuss the best way to enhance the social life of Chapter K and created a Membership Begins with ME Chapter Life Survey as a result.
The survey, written by LJ, was based on a Likert scale with a humorous twist. A series of questions focused on volunteering, attending meetings, feeling nurtured and small group events; however, instead of the traditional strongly agree/disagree options, chapter members chose options such as “fabulous idea” and “fun as measles” to score their answers. “
We sent out 78 surveys and got 60 responses for a 77 percent return rate, which is awesome!” Gretchen said.
Does goal setting really work?
Both Tovi and Gretchen are pleased with the results their goal-setting programs have created.
“Now that we are encouraging CARE for all chapters, we receive calls from healthy chapters that want their work to be more intentional,” Tovi said. “It’s become a program that helps chapters become their best.”
Although Tovi couldn’t reveal chapter specifics because of CARE’s promise of anonymity, she did relate the success of a local chapter that had been struggling with low attendance.
“A year and a half after going through the CARE program, the chapter had permanent name tags, lots of enthusiasm and more members with a voice in the discussion,” she said. “They reported that they were ‘in the know’ about P.E.O. and their sisters, but the big shift was in their fundraising philosophy. They had nickel-and-dimed themselves and were tired of it, so one of the goals they developed was a wonderful idea to host a dinner and variety show using P.E.O.s from their Reciprocity Group as talent. It was very successful. They donated $3,380 to P.E.O. projects that year.”
Survey results prompted Colorado’s Chapter K to organize a variety of small groups which have helped members in the large chapter become better acquainted with each other outside of meetings. The small groups also provided them with different venues for introducing potential members to their chapter sisters. As a result, they have initiated younger members who have stepped up into leadership positions and formed a new chapter from the women who were introduced to P.E.O. through Chapter K’s book club.
“We also realized we weren’t doing a very good job of pre- and post-initiation counseling because of the large number of inactives we had,” Gretchen said. “Now we spend more time with potential sisters before we bring them into our chapter and do a better job of telling them what P.E.O. truly is.
“Our chapter has addressed issues for those who were quietly feeling excluded. Small groups give us an opportunity to talk about our chapter health in a friendly way. If we only meet when there’s a meeting, you don’t get a lot of time to visit.”
How to get the process started in your own chapter
If you’ve been thinking about doing some goal setting in your own chapter, good for you. You’ve taken the first step. Keep talking! Whether you have a casual discussion during a chapter program or use a more structured program like the CARE program or Chapter K’s survey, be sure to involve as many members as possible, both active and inactive, during the process.
There are plenty of resources available to you on the P.E.O. website on the Membership page— and don’t forget to check your own state’s website for goal-setting resources as well.
“Whatever you do, make a plan together as a chapter,” Ellen advises. “Just as the hands, the head and the feet work together, no one person can do the all the jobs of the chapter by herself. In order to accomplish your goals, you need every sister doing her job with eyes fixed in the same direction.”