Chapter Business Plans

Why Create An Annual Business Plan?

Your Annual Business Plan will help provide you with a sense of focus and purpose for the upcoming year. It will serve as a valuable management tool in making your term a success and generating progress for your chapter.

A plan ensures continuity. Your chapter will continue to move forward through each change in leadership.

A written plan serves as a measurement tool that you can refer to periodically to determine how far you’ve progressed.

The plan provides common direction to your leadership team and ensures their commitment by involving them in the planning process.

Planning equips your chapter to deal with contingencies. It helps you to both the future and determine a course of action.

COMPONENTS OF YOUR BUSINESS PLAN

• Description of Your Chapter - including a mission statement, governance structure, products/services marketed by the chapter, geographical area, major customers, formal organizational structure, financial history, and the challenges facing the chapter.
  
• Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats (SWOT) - facing your chapter. By identifying your threats, you can minimize the negative impact and prepare alternate strategies should these threats become a reality. By identifying your opportunities, you can strengthen your chapter’s ability.
  
• Goals - Identify 3-5 primary annual goals for your chapter. These goals will provide focus and a common sense of purpose for your volunteers.
  
• Strategies - Identify the actions that you need to take in order to achieve the goals you have established. You’ll need to designate accountable individuals to take the lead in working towards these goals and set a realistic timetable/schedule to accomplish these strategies.
  
• Evaluation - You'll need to monitor your chapter's performance on a regular basis to ensure that you making progress to achieve the goals you have outlined. Wherever possible, the strategies and goals should be quantifiable, such as an increase in membership, increase in attendance at chapter functions, increase in revenues, etc.
  
• Financial Goals and Reports - You'll need to prepare an annual budget to detail the sources and uses of your funds and specifies the financial goals of your projects.
  
• Calendar of Chapter Activities - This calendar will identify the programs and activities planned and ensures that they are scheduled for the year. The calendar of chapter activities should be distributed to all chapter members and included on your chapter web page.

ANNUAL BUSINESS PLAN WORKSHEET

• Description of your chapter (Background information on your chapter, including history, mission statement, governance structure, geographic area, major products/services, key audiences, etc.)
• SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats)
• Goals (3-5 annual goals)
• Strategies (Actions to take to achieve each of your goals, who is responsible and the completion date)
• Evaluation (How you will monitor performance on a regular basis and evaluate performance)
• Financial goals and Reports (Budget, income statement and balance sheet)
• Calendar of Chapter Activities

SAMPLE ANNUAL BUSINESS PLAN WORKSHEET

Date: September 1

Chapter: ACC Wyoming

Planning Group: Roberta Smith, President; John Doe, Vice President; Vicky Lane, Treasurer, Kevin Kline, Secretary, John Wayne, Board of Directors, James Stewart, Board of Directors, Janet Jones, Program Chair, Sally Field, member, Julia Roberts, member, George Foreman, member.

The ACC Wyoming Chapter

The Wyoming Chapter has been a chapter of the Association Corporate of Counsel (ACC) since 1975. It’s membership has grown from an initial group of 25 members to currently 180 members. The chapter service area covers the entire state of Wyoming. The chapter maintains an active board of directors that is elected by its membership. Board members may serve up to 6 years on the board. The membership of the chapter is comprised of in-house counsel, primarily from small law departments (less than 8 attorneys)

The chapter's mission is "to be the primary provider of information, knowledge, networking and continuing legal education for in-house attorneys in Wyoming."

The chapter's major products and services are provision of continuing legal education, opportunities to network with other in-house attorneys, and advocacy on behalf of the profession. The chapter also provides opportunities for its members to participate in pro bono activities through its work with the Wyoming Legal Fund. The chapter has also sponsored a law school internship program with the University of Wyoming Law School, placing two law students in in-house law departments for the past two summers.

• SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats)
  
• Strengths - There is no other association that represents in-house attorneys in the state of Wyoming. The State Bar offers programs, but they are not as focused, and they include outside law firms.
  
• Weaknesses - The chapter has not promoted its activities as well as it should, which has resulted in little if any membership growth and limited volunteer participation. Membership has remained fairly level, after increasing by 10% for the past ten years. The chapter has not done enough to include and interest new members. Because the chapter services the entire state, membership is spread out and it is difficult for some members to attend programs. The chapter needs to identify future board members. The chapter also needs an administrator to assist in program development, logistics, membership and overall administration.
  
• Opportunities - The chapter regularly has 35-45 people attending its CLE Programs and includes repeat attendees. These people may represent potential board and committee members. The chapter has also seen new faces at meetings, which may also represent future board members. The chapter has been approached by three law firms interested in sponsoring a chapter event. The chapter board is led by an energetic and committed executive committee. The chapter currently has over $10,000 in its treasury and has generated $3,000/year in excess revenues.
  
• Threats - While the ABA has not been an effective group for in-house counsel, there have been signs that they may revitalize their corporate counsel section with new leadership and programs. Further, several companies have reorganized resulting in some in-house attorneys being terminated (and dropping their membership). Currently membership retention is 88%.
  
• Goals (3-5 annual goals)
  • Increase and enhance programs (holding at least six programs/year; his past year there were only three programs)
  • Increase membership
  • Identify and cultivate board members.
  • Hire a chapter administrator
• Strategies (see attached action list for assigned members and completion dates)

Increase and Enhance our Programs

• Topics - The chapter has surveyed it its current, lapsed and prospective members to find out what types of programs they would like provided including topics, convenient times and locations, and ideas for other chapter activities.
  
• Locale - The chapter will hold the same program in two locations to attract more members to programs. The chapter will promote ACC global resources as a chapter benefit as a means of providing continuing legal education and hold an online discussion group of the program among chapter members.
  
• Schedule - The chapter will schedule four CLE programs. Sally Field and Julia Roberts have volunteered to work with Programs Chair Janet Jones to produce the following programs:
  • E-commerce - January
  • Ethics - March
  • Compliance - May
  • How to Manage Your Law Department - September
  • Protecting and Preserving Your Company's Intellectual Property - October
  • Contracts - November
• Sponsorship - The chapter will pursue sponsorships for all programs. Sponsors will be asked to contribute $2,000 to cover the cost of the program and should contact Janet Jones with their interest in sponsoring a program.
• Registration fees - $30 for members and $50 for nonmembers.
  
• CLE - Janet Jones will coordinate the CLE.
  
• Promotion - The chapter will promote this as an annual series, highlighting the low cost of CLE, the value of networking with other in-house counsel and the value in learning how to solve problems in these areas of the law. All members will receive an email announcement of the programs, beginning in November and continuing monthly. The programs will also be included in the quarterly newsletter and on the chapter web page. George Foreman has agreed to lead this effort and indicated that Marie Marks is interested in volunteering her time. George will ask for her assistance. George will contact the ACC Headquarters for additional assistance in listing the information on the web page.
  
• Social/Networking - Based on member feedback, the chapter will hold the programs during lunch from 12:00 - 2:30 pm and start with a 1/2 hour networking lunch. New members will be recognized at each program and the president will provide a short (5 minute) presentation on the value of ACC and encourage members to use the Virtual Library and Member To Member.
  
• Increasing Membership Overall Coordination - James Stewart has agreed to lead the membership effort. The Board approved his assistant to work overtime to handle the logistics.

Member Retention 

• Assign each new member to a board and/or committee chair to send a welcome phone call, letter or email and invite him/her to the next educational program. Call three months later to see if the new member is enjoying his/her membership.
   
• Welcome new members at educational program - president
   
• Send end of the year letter to new members
   
• Recognize new members in chapter newsletter and on web page

Member Recruitment

• Send a letter to all prospects that are in ACC’s prospect data base in our service region
   
• Send a letter (and assign a board member to follow up by phone or email) to any nonmembers attending chapter programs
   
• All board members to refer three new members for the year - Jim to maintain a tracking sheet and report on progress at each board meeting.

Identify and Cultivate Future Board Leaders

• Assign interested members to assist on committees or special task forces for a short assignment.
   
• Evaluate their role on the committees and if still interested in volunteering.
   
• Assign a board member to “mentor” the individual and invite him/her to attend a board meeting to learn more about how the chapter functions.
   
• Develop Chapter Board Book to store all relevant chapter materials that can be passed along to the next president. 

Hire and Administrator 

The chapter agreed that the administrative tasks as well as assistance in program development, member recruitment, retention and other duties would be best carried out by an administrator. The chapter will identify means to cover these expenses through the following:

• Rebates
   
• Sponsorships of events (to cover the event as well as additional monies to cover administrator; as a rule each program will be funded by sponsorships of $2,000)
   
• Charging a competitive price for programs (the chapter acknowledged that most other CLE programs are priced much higher, so they will charge $35 for members and $50 for nonmembers).
   
• Holding programs at members' offices (to cut down on the costs of renting a venue)

The chapter currently has funds to hire a part time administrator and will look for a person to work 25 hours/month.

Evaluation 

Progress on our goals will be measured as follows:

• Overall - Monthly email reports by the various groups; quarterly reports at the board meetings.
   
• Membership - Review of total membership at each board meeting and discussion on current membership strategies and if they are working and if additional efforts needed.
   
• Programs - Review of attendance at meetings; discussion of evaluations and recommendations to enhance programs if needed
   
• Leadership - Discussion of current and future board members; participation in chapter and success at mentoring program.

Financial goals and Reports (Budget, income statement and balance sheet)

Goals:

• Fund an administrator
• Maintain a positive cash flow

Reports:

• Submit annual financial report to ACC Headquarters (Assigned to Vicky Lane, Treasurer)
• Provide quarterly report to the Board on financial status of chapter (Assigned to Vicky Lane, Treasurer)

Calendar of Chapter Activities 

ANNUAL PLANNING CALENDAR