5 Questions for the New Year

I discovered recently a fascinating website, The New Conversations Initiative. It’s part open source library, part network to help encourage dialogue and civility, help people communicate more creatively, successfully, and compassionately, and help people use conversation to affect change.

One key to rich conversation, the website highlights, is asking questions creatively. And this is what prompts this post: how can we change our questions to deepen our conversations in associations.

We are being pushed to change our models and our processes, and yet we are stymied. I suggest we made need to ask different questions.

Here are five questions focused on volunteer, member engagement and chapters, I propose … what questions would you add?

(1) What current volunteer projects should be dropped to allow you to refocus volunteer and staff resources on mission- driven projects?

(2) Have you audited your volunteer opportunities to assure a variety of options that target low, medium, and high commitment, as well as differing levels of task complexity and expertise required?

These two – and some others – are found in the Mission Driven Volunteer white paper Elizabeth Engel and I co-wrote.

(3) Where are your chapters producing measurable value?


(4) Looking at your mission and goals, is there a relevant role that chapters uniquely serve?

These two – and some others – are found in the Chapter of Future white paper Peter Houstle and I co-wrote.

(5) How do we see ourselves as complimentary to chapters and visa versa?