2021 Fall YG Leadership Retreat

The third Young Generation Leadership Retreat was held in person on October 15 – 17, 2021 in Atlanta, GA. This was the first in-person YG leadership retreat after two virtual retreats over the past two years. The participation list consisted of KSEA YG Members that are currently serving in or recently held notable leadership positions such as within the KSEA Executive Committee / Directors Committee (EC/DC), YG Committee, YG National Board, Ygnite, and UKC FIRE. The goals of the retreat were 1) to bring awareness to each of the working groups within KSEA leadership where YG have been prominently placed and 2) to have structured conversations to brainstorm action items based on discussions from previous leadership retreats. As the retreat took place in Atlanta, the Ygnite chairs and organizers also took the opportunity to explore the conference venue and plan for Ygnite activities together.

The retreat began with individual introductions and icebreaker activities to establish connections among participants in a casual setting then quickly shifted to focused discussions. YG leaders broke into three discussions with the topics of social media strategy, new member acquisition, and existing member retention.

A summary of the discussions is below:

1. Undergraduate Engagement/Social Media Strategy: There was a consensus that there needs to be a refining of social media strategy in particular to engage undergraduate students. Despite its importance in engaging members and attracting new members, there has been minimal allocation of human resources and efforts to social media and branding strategy. Currently, social media is being managed by a one-person team which is burdensome and difficult to manage due to the sheer volume of social media requests. There is a demonstrated need for the social media efforts to be more than just a one-person team; once created under the social media director, a central social media team can handle much more content effectively, replacing most resources at event-level.
2. New member acquisition: There were conversations regarding targeting undergraduate students early on to be involved with KSEA, as they will likely continue being involved in and contributing to KSEA more throughout their lifetime. There was also a recognized need for undergraduate student representation and integration to the national-level YG leadership. Ygnite is an excellent avenue to attract new YG members to KSEA, but a weak publicity strategy is a concern. The new central social media team would help with publicity strategy. It was also noted that a mentor-mentee program would provide a significant value proposition of the KSEA YG network to new members, which is currently in the works by the YG Committee and YG Directors.
3. Existing member retention: In general, there seems to be a focus on new member recruitment, but not much conversation around how to retain existing members. In addition, many YG members are not aware of other KSEA offerings outside of Ygnite; Ygnite needs to serve as a platform and gateway to other programs. Existing members are not staying involved / connected with KSEA; therefore, there was a suggestion to provide low-touch avenues of participation outside of Ygnite. Recognition of KSEA YG leaders was also brought up; currently there is a lack of nationwide recognition of YG other than a single annual YG leadership award recipient. The outcomes of this discussion included creating more frequent Zoom calls for members to openly meet and network with each other, and to implement a rewards and recognition system for YG members to enhance their sense of belonging to KSEA.

Overall, this was a successful meeting as the members accomplished many fruitful discussions and action items related to the growth of YG membership and leadership. As leaders of all major YG workstreams all participated in the discussions, we were able to collect diverse perspectives and action items that can be implemented across all workstreams. We look forward to holding more YG leadership retreats to continue the conversations. 

Organizing Team:

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