Section Best Practices

• Establish good e-mail links to the members.
• Send meeting announcements on the first of every month and send special announcements throughout the year. Send only two mailings per year.
• Create a good Web site with calendar, newsletter, and Web page content that can be managed by the chapter and committee chairs with no programming or HTML knowledge required.
• Have regular section meetings and use them as anchors for the chapter meetings.
• Have regular Excom meetings. 
• Submit Meeting Activity Reports (L-31 Form) within two weeks of holding the meeting.
• Make sure the chapter chairs comply to this and either submit the L-31 Form either online or hardcopy. During each section meeting, prepare the Meeting Activity Report and request all Chapter Chairs to verify it.

Twice a year the section has a full day meeting, devoting half the day to focus on chapter activities. The afternoon is devoted to Section business. In the evening they have a guest lecturer. The attendance varies anywhere from 75 to 100+. (United Kingdom & Republic of Ireland)

Compliment the Distinguished Lecturer program with a Distinguished Entrepreneur program. Chapters can commonly attract many interested students during the lectures. (Photonics Society)

Members bring a proposal to the section to assist a community with a situation which can be improved with electrical or electronic solutions. The section reviews the proposal, verifies the need and then develops a budget for the activity to determine if it can be undertaken. These situations are often in remote locations, or neighborhoods where the government is not taking action. Sometimes it is in a school, or a church, or in a small town. These are social needs addressed with technology. Through this program, the section is raising awareness of the IEEE in Panama. (Panama Section)

The section sponsors plant tours and industrial visits, and this creates a relationship with the company. These companies now are sponsoring the Section's meetings and events. (United Arab Emirates Section)

The section has technical meetings every month at lunchtime. The meetings are always in the same location, and the same day of the month. They invite business leaders to these monthly meetings. (Peru Section)

• In communicating with members, always remember to emphasize the networking opportunities to be had at meetings.  (North Jersey Section) 

• When planning a meeting, look at current news events and try to recruit a speaker who can address the topic in a pertinent fashion. The current news events can be of local, national or international interest.  (Oregon Section PE Chapter) 

• Have the section's meeting announcements printed in the newsletters of other local technological organizations.  (Syracuse Section) 

• Invite members new to your section to eat free at the first dinner meeting they attend.  (Erie Section) 

• Do not forget to make promotion for your next activity(-ies) on your meeting. Do this by oral communication and by written communication. The written communication can be done under the form of a leaflet: an A4/Letter folded in three containing short descriptions of the activities and a subscription form. Do not forget to promote your member email list if you have one. 

• Partner with an adjacent section to hold a joint meeting, particularly if a meeting is going to be held in a location in one Section that is convenient to members in another section. These joint meetings can count for both sections when filing meeting reports to Member and Geographic Activities.  (Broward Section) 

• Include a blurb in the newsletter for people to come forward with topics. By November, the section had commitments for most of the general meetings for the following year.  (Tucson Section)   

• A survey was done of the membership to try to identify members' needs for meeting location, type, areas of interest, etc. Respondents were entered in a random drawing to win a US$25 gift certificate to a local "tech" store. Response rate was much better than with past surveys!  (Cincinnati Section )

• Work with the other engineering societies' local groups to have a party for all of the graduating engineering students, to welcome them as "professional members" to the societies.   (Boise Section) 

• Looking for a place to meet? Use the local senior center to Region 1 section volunteers. It turned out to be inexpensive, readily available and spacious.

• Make it a fun event that would draw spouses, friends, and non-IEEE members. This means one would pick a topic that would be of interest to a general audience. Currently there is a lot of interest in hybrid electric vehicles, biochips, wind energy, and the recent blackout in NE US and Eastern Canada.

• The talk should not be too long - about 30 minutes to 40 minutes at the most. Pick a location that is easily accessible and make the dinner tab affordable, e.g., don't use the event as a money maker for the Section.  Be sure to set up a table for recruitment of new members and recognize those who are involved in organizing the meeting. Perhaps a short awards ceremony would be appropriate. (Region 5)

• If a section is planning a big "annual" meeting, there are two factors that would be good to include.  First off, it is always critical for us to recognize our volunteers as well as engineers and educators that have served the section's community well, so an awards dinner / banquet / celebration is a "must-have" for any section each year.

• The "Golden Welcome" initiative, issued from a R8 GOLD Workshop is designed to allow to traveling members to contact local members of the area that they are traveling to. (R8 GOLD Committee)  

• Sponsor a children's sports team. The IEEE ___ Section name would appear on the team t-shirts. Not only do the members of the team and their family members begin asking "What is IEEE?" but so will the members and parents of all of the others teams!  (Southern New Jersey Section) 
• Invite one (or more) member from each medium to large company in your area to be designated as the 'Company Liaison' to the section. These people should receive an invite to each section meeting and the 'responsibility' of informing co-workers of section activities and polling company employees and section members of what services the section can best provide them. This gets many more people involved in a low commitment way with the Section and can serve as a pool for future larger position volunteers. (Boise)
• Put together a certificate to give to local businesses who are setting up open 802.11 (IEEE Standard) hotspots. (Central Tennessee)

• Pay students to prepare newsletter for mailing - Section saves money & student branch earns money  (Evansville-Owensboro Section)

• Hold one-day events during which members are guided on how to complete the Senior Member elevation application form, especially the significant performance section. Senior Members at the events can serve as references. Have computers onsite so forms can be submitted online that day. (Central Texas Section) 

• The Perú Section, together with other Peruvian institutions, has constituted a civil association named ICACIT to work for the accreditation of 5 Peruvian universities in the Departments of Electrical, Electronics and Computer Engineering. In this effort we are being aided by IEEE (Tom Cain) and ABET USA.’  (Peru Section) 
• For local Student Branch Chapters, the LEO Society started the EYS (Explore Your Science) and EYB (Explore Your Business) programs. The Chapter hires a bus and organizes a visit to a local enterprise (EYB) or to a local conference/university (EYS). We note that companies love to entertain these students, they are their potential employees. The LEOS Benelux Chapter started this and has great success. 
• In the face of declining student membership numbers across the Asia-Pacific region (and globally), the New Zealand North Section student numbers continued to climb. This is attributable primarily to strong and enthusiastic student leadership and good cooperation with the Section executive. A number of highly attractive events boosted new membership (e.g. practice job interviews with real employers, practice seminars for project presentations, indoor soccer tournaments, barbeques).  

• Each April the Siouxland Section (NW Iowa, NE Nebraska, SW South Dakota) holds a joint meeting called an "Awards Banquet" with Eta Kappa Nu (HKN) and our student branches.  The section gives awards to "Outstanding Student Members" (usually we select one from each student branch) based primarily on service to the IEEE Student Branches.  The award is a soft-sided brief case and a plaque--total value about $100.  There are other awards and statements of appreciation and recognition given by HKN and Professors as well as reports from each student branch on the year's activities.  After the awards ceremony we have a speaker.  We look for a technical topic that can be appreciated by spouses and other non-IEEE members who typically attend.
• The South Dakota State Chapter of HKN does most of the planning for this meeting.  The section's role is limited to the awards we give and our members who attend.  (Virtually all the HKN members are also IEEE student members or regular members, thus it's a little hard to say that there is a sharp distinction between sources of ideas for the meeting and which organization is contributing what.  However the meeting rooms are reserved in HKN's name, the speaker is contracted in HKN's name, etc., so from a paper-work point if view, this meeting is HKN's work.)
• Boise Idaho started a new activity last year. We got together with all the other engineering professional societies in the valley (ASME, ASCE, ASHRAE, SWE) and jointly threw a Graduation Celebration for all the College of Engineering graduates. The section invited graduates and spouses to attend free, had a nice buffet dinner, and each society made small announcements to say how valuable maintaining their membership would be for them after graduation.  We also had local companies donate some small items for raffle gifts. Coordination of this on the IEEE side was largely done by GOLD leaders since the graduates will probably be more active with GOLD events right after graduation. The current section secretary volunteered for that position in the fall based on attending that dinner.

• The "personal touch." When volunteers are needed, rather than a generic newsletter article, likely members are contacted personally. (Buffalo Section) 
• If your Section has active Chapters and/or Affinity Groups, you can strongly encourage the Chairs of these Units to rotate up into Section positions as a matter of Section policy.  (Baltimore  Section) 
• If a member has a complaint about how a Section, Chapter or Affinity Group is being run, invite them (in an enthusiastic, friendly manner) to help improve things by taking on a volunteer position. 
• First, approach people that you know, and then, if you need more volunteers, start calling people. It seems to be a rule of thumb that you need to call 100 people to get 10 volunteers. You should work from a member list filtered by location and member grade. Get your fellow officers to assist you in making the calls.  (Eastern Idaho Section) 
• Sometimes people don't want to volunteer for an entire year so ask them to organize just one meeting. This helps avoid burnout for the longtime volunteer.  (Broward  Section)
• If you get an inquiry from a member, invite that person to a Section meeting, and over free pizza try to convince him or her to volunteer in some way. (Orlando Section)
• For many programs, especially those involving students, it is good to have the help of retired persons. The Benelux LEOS Chapter and also the IEEE Eindhoven Student Branch have asked retired Professors to join their student programs as mentors. Speakers can be recruited from recently retired CEO's/CTO's. Especially those who have been awarded an IEEE or Society Award are motivated to help local Chapters when they retired. So Chapters can be reminded to look for retired local members, Senior Members, Fellows or Award Winners. (Benelux Section)
• Sustaining the interests of the volunteers is more important than increasing the volunteer base. let me share my thoughts, experience. Running a GOLD program may be quite similar to running an organization. in the early stages, finding programs which interests all may not be very difficult. one of the common goals of these programs is to attract more volunteers. once one succeed in that, the activity planning becomes more difficult. one has to look among many interests in choosing programs. there will be questions like "are we in the right track?". but, the right track / goal itself is not defined. So one learns that it is important to have a vision, strategic plan, which guide one in choosing activities and periodic review in place that helps to assess the position. Vision / strategy planning for each year / periodic review put together could give a picture if we are able to keep the interest alive for each volunteer.  (Bangalore)