01
Consistency without sameness
Establish common governance, planning, onboarding, and measurement standards while preserving the regional and subject-matter relevance that makes each community valuable.
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Reeve McNamara | CLOC Community & Volunteer Engagement
One community.
Start with trust.
Days 1–30
Days 31–60
Days 61–90
Director, Community & Volunteer Engagement
Build the system.
Build the system.
Let people lead.
CLOC’s community is powered by professionals who volunteer their time, expertise, and credibility. My approach is to make that leadership easier to enter, easier to sustain, and more valuable to members across every Regional Group and Community of Practice.
Prepared by Reeve McNamara for the Corporate Legal Operations Consortium.
The opportunity
One community.
Many ways to belong.
The goal is not to make every community identical. It is to create a shared operating foundation that gives local and practice-area leaders the confidence, resources, and freedom to deliver experiences that matter to their members.
02
Leadership without friction
Give volunteers practical tools, clear expectations, accessible staff support, and repeatable playbooks so their time is spent leading members rather than navigating process.
03
Global connection with local relevance
Create stronger pathways for ideas, speakers, resources, and proven practices to move across Regional Groups and Communities of Practice without flattening their distinct needs.
My approach
A community operating system built around people.
Governance and process should never become the point. They should create enough clarity and support that volunteers can focus on connection, learning, and meaningful contribution.
Listen before standardizing
Map the needs, rhythms, strengths, and friction points of Regional Groups and Communities of Practice. Use leader interviews, member feedback, participation trends, and community data to distinguish shared barriers from local realities.
Equip leaders for success
Create a practical leadership toolkit with role clarity, annual planning templates, onboarding, event and content guidance, governance checkpoints, communication resources, recognition practices, and an easy path to staff support.
Connect the network
Build intentional collaboration across regions and practice communities through leader roundtables, shared resource libraries, speaker exchanges, cross-community programming, and visible examples of what is working.
Measure what strengthens belonging
Track more than attendance. Monitor activation, repeat participation, volunteer retention, leadership pipeline, community responsiveness, member satisfaction, and the movement from passive membership to meaningful contribution.
Plan for succession from day one
Identify emerging leaders early, create co-lead and project-lead opportunities, document institutional knowledge, recognize contribution, and make leadership transitions a healthy sign of community depth rather than a disruption.
90%+
membership growth in a national professional association
30
approximately 30 volunteer governors supported and coordinated
43
jurisdictions and organizations navigated through accreditation work
1,400
attendees at the largest conference experience managed
Why I am prepared
Experience aligned to the work.
My background combines association leadership, volunteer governance, professional education, community growth, data-informed engagement, and the operational discipline required to turn strategy into a reliable member experience.
Volunteer leadership and governance
Twelve years as Executive Director of ABPLA, serving as the primary staff partner to a national volunteer Board of Governors, committees, subject-matter experts, and professional leaders.
Community and member growth
Increased membership by more than 90% by clarifying value, improving communications, strengthening professional programming, and creating more relevant reasons to participate.
Scalable operating models
Built governance processes, accreditation workflows, event systems, communications calendars, and documentation standards that supported national programs and distributed stakeholders.
Educational and peer experiences
Produced 42 CLE programs and 12 annual conferences, coordinating faculty, calls for presentations, content themes, registration, accreditation, and participant communications.
Engagement data and feedback
Used CRM segmentation, testing, surveys, participation data, and stakeholder feedback to improve relevance, increase email open rates by 200%, and guide organizational decisions.
Cross-functional partnership
Worked across boards, committees, attorneys, accrediting bodies, speakers, sponsors, vendors, technology partners, and internal teams to keep strategy and execution aligned.
First 90 days
Start with trust.
Build toward scale.
The first priority would be understanding the people already doing the work. From there, I would build shared tools and measures with volunteer leaders, not simply for them.
Listen and map
- Meet Regional Group and Community of Practice leaders
- Map governance, communications, planning, and support workflows
- Review participation, volunteer, event, and community-platform data
- Identify immediate friction points and high-performing practices
- Establish a dependable leader-to-staff communication rhythm
Align and equip
- Co-design a practical community leadership playbook
- Clarify roles, decision rights, annual planning, and escalation paths
- Standardize leader onboarding and core operating templates
- Launch a recurring volunteer-leader roundtable
- Define a focused community health scorecard
Activate and learn
- Pilot the playbook with a representative group of communities
- Launch cross-community resource and speaker exchanges
- Establish leadership pathways and succession signals
- Share early wins and barriers with senior leadership
- Build the next two-quarter roadmap from pilot feedback
The strongest volunteer communities do not ask a few people to carry everything. They create clear, visible ways for many people to contribute, grow, and eventually lead.
Reeve McNamara · Community leadership philosophyThe fit
Community is not a department. It is how the mission moves.
I would bring CLOC a combination of association leadership, volunteer partnership, operational structure, member-growth experience, legal-industry credibility, and a deep belief that people support what they help build.
