Great Lakes Winter Roundtable 2024

Thirty-eight executive directors and senior staff from Great Lakes chapter member organizations filled the chapter conference room at 55 Wacker Dr on February 8, 2024. Registration closed two weeks early once the room hit its cap of 40.

The morning opened without ceremony: chapter regulars traded notes on 2024 dues renewals before the first session began. Wendell Szymanski, executive director of the Great Lakes Maritime Shippers Association and a fixture at the Winter Roundtable, led two of the day's discussions — one on retention conversations that actually change a member's mind, the other on recruiting volunteers who stick past their first committee meeting.

Between sessions, attendees worked through a shared budget-benchmarking exercise, comparing their own dues-to-expense ratios against six anonymized peer organizations. Several small associations in the room reported operating budgets under $500,000, and the exercise surfaced a wide range in overhead allocation that surprised more than one attendee.

A working lunch turned into an unscheduled conversation about shared services, prompted by a question about how one two-person shop had started splitting a bookkeeper with a neighboring association. No formal arrangement came out of the roundtable, but three attendees exchanged contact information to follow up.

The chapter conference room sits on the 12th floor with river-facing windows; attendees arriving by car used the building's validated garage entrance on Wacker Drive. Coffee and a light breakfast were provided; lunch was included in registration.

The roundtable closed at 2:00 p.m. with a short debrief on 2024 chapter priorities, carried forward into the chapter's March board call.

The Winter Roundtable is built for executive directors and senior staff at Great Lakes chapter member organizations — not a general-audience conference. Most attendees run associations with fewer than twenty staff, and the day's format assumes everyone in the room can speak candidly about their own budget and renewal numbers. First-time attendees are welcome, but the roundtable is not open to non-members or vendors looking to exhibit.