---
title: "Tips to Start the Chapter Restructuring Process"
id: "31925"
type: "post"
slug: "tips-to-start-the-chapter-restructuring-process"
published_at: "2016-02-01T12:10:39+00:00"
modified_at: "2026-03-16T15:26:07+00:00"
url: "https://associationsnow.com/2016/02/01/tips-to-start-the-chapter-restructuring-process/"
markdown_url: "https://associationsnow.com/2016/02/01/tips-to-start-the-chapter-restructuring-process.md"
excerpt: "Mariner Management and Marketing's Peggy Hoffman offers suggestions on how to handle chapter restructuring efforts."
taxonomy_category:
  - "Membership"
taxonomy_post_tag:
  - "AssociationsNow"
  - "chapters"
  - "Leadership"
  - "Membership"
  - "volunteers"
taxonomy_content_format:
  - "Article"
taxonomy_role:
  - "Association CEO / Executive Director"
  - "Director"
  - "Executive Team"
  - "VP"
taxonomy_persona:
  - "Association Professionals"
---

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 » Tips to Start the Chapter Restructuring Process

How do you know when your association’s chapter network is in need of repair? Peggy Hoffman, president of Mariner Management and Marketing LLC, advises associations to look at a combination of key metrics and recurring themes in chapter feedback. “The first theme that will show up is a difficulty in getting local volunteer leaders,” she says. “If you don’t have the leader, you don’t have the chapter.”

Any one of the symptoms below may be cause for concern, but a combination could signal an absence of chapters in the association’s value proposition:

**vacant chapter volunteer positions** or positions filled by the same people multiple times

**aging chapter memberships** or difficulty in attracting younger members

**no correlation** between retention and chapter participation

**declining chapter membership levels** and event registrations

**low satisfaction ratings** among chapter members or for chapter events

**inability of chapters** to complete annual reports or to fill programming slates

**higher growth among at-large national memberships** than among members in chapters

These can be pernicious challenges to tackle, but Hoffman says there is always hope to fix any broken system. “There are structures where chapters are part of the problem,” she says. “But that doesn’t mean the people are part of the problem.”

(Dave G Kelly/Getty Images)

[Joe Rominiecki](https://associationsnow.com/author/joe-rominiecki/)

Joe Rominiecki is a contributing editor to Associations Now.

[More articles by this author](https://associationsnow.com/author/joe-rominiecki/)

Tags: [#chapters](https://associationsnow.com/tag/chapters/)
 [#Leadership](https://associationsnow.com/tag/leadership/)
 [#Membership](https://associationsnow.com/tag/membership/)
 [#volunteers](https://associationsnow.com/tag/volunteers/)

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