SFSP Promotes Its Diversity And Starts Working More Closely With Locals

The CAT teams included board members, Society staff and other members who volunteered to work with the local chapters. The objective of these teams is to "pay close attention to the chapters so we can give them the help that they need," said Ziegler.

The CAT teams look at local chapters membership figures, compare it to previous years and look at what theyre doing to recruit new members. If a chapter is losing members, the teams try to figure out why and then address it.

CAT teams also are helping with "chapter planning." In the past, many chapters had no plan in place for the coming year. Now, they are starting to look at where they want to be in the next year, from both a programming and a membership perspective.

Opening communication channels with the national organization already has started to benefit some chapters, said Frack. "Weve seen tremendous shifts in momentum and a lot of enthusiasm."

Frack expects much of the effort for the coming year to be directed at keeping that momentum shift growing, as well as working more with the smaller chapters on many of these same issues.

But, as the Society was working on its own issues and problems, the American College announced last June that after this year it would be holding its own commencement exercises and would be forming a new alumni association separate from the Society.

"This was enormously disruptive and very upsetting," said Ziegler. "However, Im convinced that both organizations will come out stronger."

In the past, Ziegler admits there was a lot of confusion in the industry as to who the Society was and exactly what its relationship with the American College is. Even many members thought of the two as the same entity, he added.

Historically, the Society was formed to be the alumni association of the College, but in 1944 the Society changed its mission to that of a professional association. It wasnt until 1998 that the Society opened up membership to professionals who were not alumni of programs offered by the College.

The split between the American College and the Society gives both organizations an opportunity to better define themselves, said Ziegler. "This really has allowed us to rethink who we are and go back to our chapters with greater confidence to tell them who we are and who were not," he said.

In fact, with all the publicity generated with the actions taken by the American College, national leadership at the Society had a reason to go out and speak with each chapter to reinforce its message of being purely a professional society, said Ziegler.

Membership obviously remains a challenge for the coming year, but leadership at the Society feels the momentum is moving in their favor.

Ziegler estimated this years drop in members to be 2% to 3%–for a total of just under 24,000 members. The Society has seen decreases in membership over the last decade, but Ziegler feels this years small drop indicates the trend is reversing. "We feel confident we can move forward."

Reproduced from National Underwriter Life & Health/Financial Services Edition, October 31, 2003. Copyright 2003 by The National Underwriter Company in the serial publication. All rights reserved.Copyright in this article as an independent work may be held by the author.