Background:
In 2013, I stepped in as Executive Director of PGN, a professional development organization of which I was a member while an undergraduate at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
The organization had stagnated, having not evolved in decades. The leadership acted insularly and faced serious challenges without adequate structure or foresight to address them.
Headwinds:
School administrators were pushing back against Greek life and associated PGN with Greek organizations.
Similar competitive organizations were popping up, offering field-specific specializations.
Relationships between leadership and members were strained, and alumni engagement was minimal.
Skill-level, training, and experience varied greatly across schools.
Growth across existing chapters showed signs of slowing, expansion to new campuses had mostly ceased, and the survival rate of new chapters was low.
Tasks
Restructure
Completely restructure the organization and its processes to improve accountability, transparency, and longevity.
Re-Engage
Re-engage current members, alumni, advocates, and universities,
Rebrand
Bring the branding into the modern age and create a clear, accessible value proposition.
Approach
Year 1 - 3
In the first years, our primary focus was on establishing a strong foundation. We started by building an organizational structure and creating job descriptions and processes that balanced leadership power, improved accountability, reduced organizational risk, and maximized fiscal responsibility.
Immediately, we needed to rebuild membership trust. We did this by creating greater transparency into our operations, re-establishing regular communications, re-starting value-added services and upskilling programs, and providing members with a voice and voting power.
Year 4 - 5
After running like an early stage startup, these years were focused on laying the foundation for growth by implementing tools and updating our processes to ensure that operationally we could scale. With a solid foundation and strong membership trust, we began building a case for a re-brand and cross-chapter standardization, which would allow us to scale more quickly.
During this time we expanded our engagement and outreach by leveling-up our leadership events and attendance, and expanding our alumni engagement program.
Year 6 - 7
The final years were focused on ensuring the organization had the support it needed for long-term stability. I fine-tuned our fiscal and operational accountability practices, established an oversight committee, and improved our risk management practices through cross-chapter standardization.
As the 95th anniversary of PGN approached, I worked on driving the shift towards becoming a marketing-focused organization. Our brand re-launch, new mission and vision, and value proposition provided everyone with the tools needed to create stronger, clearer marketing. We expanded our student leadership training to focus more heavily on marketing strategy, channel strategy, and marketing tactics.
Results
Between 2013 and 2020:
Cash balance CAGR of 21.7%
Membership CAGR 16.4%
100% Growth in New Chapters
Restructure
Developed a new organizational chart that delegated responsibilities across the leadership team, ensuring more checks and balances, and more defined role descriptions.
Reworked bylaws to create a more equitable balance of power between leadership and members.
Established an oversight committee to keep the leadership team accountable for actions.
Created and trained members on crisis management and risk management policies.
Drove chapter standardization, particularly around new members, in order to simplify operations, allow chapters to collaborate more easily, and ensure that each student was receiving the same base level of training at each institution.
Re-engage
Established monthly calls with student leaders to promote the sharing of best practices across schools and create regular communication touch points.
Re-instated and developed the programming for annual nationwide student conference and leadership training workshops.
Implemented detailed membership profile and tracking SaaS to enable membership communication and allow members to find each other by industry and interest.
Re-engaged alumni, inviting them to speak at local and virtual events.
Re-established communications with alumni, providing regular digital updates via LinkedIn and an annual report recapping the year’s events.
Created a national PGN awards program to reward students for their engagement and upholding the values of the organization.
Rebrand
Worked with the leadership team to establish a mission and vision.
Created a brand voice, branding guidelines, and messaging guidelines.
Adjusted go-to-market / recruitment language, making it simpler, easier to understand, and more accessible.
Launched a standardized recruitment template, including: fliers, videos, presentations, talking points, and social media content.
Spearheaded the creation of a new logo and oversaw the re-brand launch across national-owned and chapter-owned digital channels.
Updated and consolidated PGN’s school websites under one platform to ensure consistent branding.
Moved the organization to a secure, branded enterprise email account and expanded ownership of key domain names and extensions.
Before
Previously, the organization’s crest was used as a logo. Each aspect of the crest, from the lamp to the diamonds and laurel, were imbued with meaning. It was a symbol of the long history of the organization, but given the shape, the crest was difficult to re-size across platforms and promotional products. This meant the name of the organization was often invisible or difficult to read. More importantly, to anyone outside the organization, the use of the crest made the organization difficult to identify and understand.
After
The refreshed logo borrows the laurel that used to frame our crest, a similar color theme and, in bold, includes our tagline “Creating Leaders of Tomorrow”. Together these elements provide newcomers immediate clarity around our value proposition. The new look and tagline highlight the professional development aspects and entrepreneurial spirit of the organization.
Also available in horizontal and single color profiles, the flexible logo formats ensures the brand stands out and is legible across backgrounds, digital channels and over different textures, materials and products.
Before
Previously, each school owned their own website and the national organization maintained a separate site. This promoted inconsistent branding across school pages and kept schools disconnected.
The nationals page had outdated branding, was verbose, and many visitors were unclear about the value proposition and who could join.
After
Today, chapter sites are house under or linked to the National site, ensuring consistent branding and messaging.
The nationals page clearly and succinctly states what the organization is, who it is for, and how it accomplishes its goals. It has been structurally and visually modernized to match today’s users and technology.
Messaging & Tactics
Against Headwinds
School administrators were pushing back against Greek life and associating PGN with Greek organizations.
Established in 1924, when Greek organizations had a different function and reputation, much of PGN’s terminology and structure mirrored that of a Greek organization. While PGN is very different, given the backlash against Greek life, administrators were quick to lump us together, casting a negative light on the organization.
Revamped our recruitment messaging, chapter practices, documents, and events to differentiate the organization and clarify organizational practices.
Worked with chapters to implement risk- and crisis-management policies and protocols to reduce risk of student incidents.
Shortened name, Phi Gamma Nu, to PGN.
Moved away from using “Business Fraternity” to “Professional Development Organization”.
Transitioned from phigammanu.com to pgnleaders.org
Similar competitive organizations were popping up, offering field-specific specializations.
For a long time our organization promoted our value proposition using key pillars: professionalism, social, and philanthropy.
However these pillars easily copied and shared amongst similar organizations, and when we pitched the organization, members often used language that was only understood by a few.
Established a “pitch PGN” competition to teach students how to create unique, compelling pitches.
Created a brand statement and message framework that highlighted our emotional value proposition.
Launched standard promotional explainer videos that captured the “feeling” of PGN. Launched a paid and earned social campaign during recruitment season featuring new recruitment videos and content.
Growth across existing chapters showed signs of slowing, expansion to new campuses had mostly ceased, and the new chapter survival rate was low.
Previously, the National organization did not support on-campus recruitment or facilitate the sharing of ideas across chapters. We realized that many schools were starting from scratch, sometimes every semester, with vastly different levels of knowledge in marketing and event planning.
Launched a content and event audit of all recruitment practices, which was compiled and shared with chapters. This helped to demonstrate why some schools were able to consistently lead effective recruitment campaigns.
Created up-skill workshops to teach students how to: use message frameworks, build persona-based messaging, plan and market effective events, and implement effective channel strategies.
Taught students to embrace year-round marketing, considering each event and social post an opportunity to engage with, and reach out to, new recruits.
Expanded our recruitment strategy and tactic sharing sessions at the annual National Convention and via conference calls, which encouraged creativity and cross-collaboration.
Created a recruitment template for new and existing schools with pre-branded materials, talking points, presentations, and templates.
Began hosting new school-specific recruitment workshops to walk students and new leadership through the basics of outreach.