Skip to main content

Chapter Chairs

You who choose to lead must follow

A fundamental goal of GeoGardenClub is for each Chapter to become a strong, local "community of practice" around home gardening: sharing insights, building a repository of useful local data, and making the Chapter known to gardeners in the community. The founders of GeoGardenClub believe that this requires local leadership, and so we provide a Chapter Chair program to facilitate and support gardeners who wish to take a leadership role.

The GeoGardenClub Chapter Chair program enables one or more members of a Chapter to be designated as their chapter's chair.

Becoming a Chapter Chair​

We have created a simple process to designate Chapter Chair(s) for each chapter.

  1. One or more members of a Chapter are identified as candidates for Chapter Chair. In some cases, GeoGardenClub staff might reach out to a gardener to ask if they would agree to be nominated for Chair for their Chapter. Alternatively, a member can contact GeoGardenClub staff (at info@geogardenclub.com) to nominate themselves.

  2. Each new Chapter Chair will be invited to a short Zoom orientation meeting with GeoGardenClub staff where we will provide you with training and information to help you get off to a good start. After this meeting, your Chapter Chair benefits will be provided.

  3. The GeoGardenClub staff also runs an optional, quarterly Zoom meeting for all Chapter Chairs where Chairs can meet, discuss issues with other Chairs, and ask questions to staff.

Chapter Chair status normally lasts as long as the gardener is willing to do it and is carrying out the duties. That said, we hope Chapter Chairs will accept the role for at least a year (although Chairs are free to resign at any time).

Chapter Chair duties​

The basic duty of Chapter Chairs is to nurture a vibrant local community of practice around home gardening. The best way to do that will often be different from one chapter to another, but here are some general guidelines.

Publicize the existence of your Chapter in your community. In general, the more actively participating members of a Chapter, the more gardening insights will be available and the more impactful GeoGardenClub can be for that community. While social media can be useful, we believe that social media outreach should be supplemented by physical presence, for example: showing up at seed swaps or farmer's markets, putting up posters in gardening stores or community centers, making short presentations for local community gardens. Don't worry: GeoGardenClub admins will provide you with posters, tabling materials, and anything else you might need to make these "IRL" events successful.

Be a good model of a GeoGardenClub gardener. This means actively using the app to plan and manage your garden and using its features: gardens, beds, plantings, observations, outcomes, and retail value. Posting to forums and responding to other postings when appropriate.

Be available to answer questions from gardeners in your chapter. We hope that Chapter Chairs will serve as the "first point of contact" when members have questions or concerns. Of course, the GeoGardenClub admins are always available as backup.

Chapter Chair benefits​

The most important benefit of being a Chapter Chair is that you've helped create a vibrant local community of practice around gardening! But in addition to that, we provide Chapter Chairs with the following each year that they serve in this role: