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Promoting your chapter is an important step in the long-term growth and health of your new chapter. Take advantage of the following tools and information provided by AORN to communicate with chapter members, recruit new members, and raise funds.

• Creating a Chapter Website
• Market Your Chapter Meeting
• Fundraising Ideas
• AORN Talking Points

Promotion Ideas from AORN Members
AORN members have also offered some of their best practices for promoting chapters.

New Member Welcome
Submitted by Pam Utz, RN, BSN, CNOR, Chapter 2301

Plan to have a short informal orientation for new members 15 minutes before the business meeting. Send out post cards to new members, rejoins, renew, reminders to renew, missing license #'s and lapsed. In the "new member" card, direct them to the website, tell them about our new member incentives and invite them to new member orientation taking place before the regularly scheduled meeting. In the "lapsed" post card, express regrets that the chapter did not meet their needs, tell them about the exciting year ahead, about the first meeting, and hope that they might consider rejoining. On the front of the post card, put a picture of surgery, along with the return address. On the back across the top is a colorful and wavy banner saying the name of the chapter along with the corresponding message. Hopefully with this personal touch and a phone campaign, it will be successful in recruiting and retaining members.

Promoting a New Chapter
Submitted by Kevin Metzing, RN, CNOR, Chapter 1015

Keep the newsletter simple to start, maybe just one page of announcements or a letter from the president.

Education should be done just every other month...or maybe at Saturday workshops. Do a four-hour one in the fall and a four-hour one in the spring. That is a year's worth done in two days; a lot of companies like Ansell Perry and Regent will come in and do them for free.

Schedule meetings a little earlier or a little later depending on what works best for the group. See if local sales representatives will sponsor refreshments in return for letting them set up a display table that evening. (sandwiches, chips and soft drinks are usually enough)

Subscribe to the Chapter template website and update monthly for that computer-cyber-technogadget group. Email members monthly with announcements. Get members involved with their Specialty Assembly members through the online Communities of Practice to discuss issues pertinent to their area of practice.

Keep meetings tight...stick to a timetable like 45-60 minutes for the whole meeting. Provide members with a written agenda when they sign in. 

Have projects to work on in the community not necessarily OR related. (i.e. a group of us are volunteering to work at an HIV/AIDS walk in our city this weekend. In the fall we sorted food at a huge food pantry in town.)
      
These are just some of the things we have done in our chapter and it is working for us. We remain the largest chapter in the state (290+ members) and get 10-15% of our members to the evening meeting and sometimes 20-30% at the weekend workshops. I am thrilled with this number. It is unrealistic to think I am going to get 150-200 nurses to come to a meeting at 6pm on a Thursday; 30-40 is realistically attainable.