Will Gilchrist

I inherited a renewal program built on four emails. I led a cross-functional team from marketing, technology, data and finance to rebuild it as a 20-touchpoint system across five channels, from email and direct mail to retargeting and outbound outreach.

The rebuild finished $250,000 above budget and delivered the highest single-month renewal rate in the organization's history and the highest annual renewal rate since 2022.

I built the forecasting model, engagement scoring and dashboards behind renewal strategy, and wrote the business requirements for an AI monitoring layer the development and IT teams built. When one renewal segment declined, the working explanation was fading interest in agile. I traced part of the decline to a campaign-targeting error and corrected it mid-campaign, and the segment recovered.

The renewal rebuild produced member data the organization had not had before. Before building a benefits program, I spent months in that data, in member surveys and in member feedback to find where Scrum Alliance was not delivering for agile professionals, and the clearest gap was professional development.

I built the business case, brought on more than 15 benefit partners and secured a $50,000 inaugural Mission Sponsorship with Miro. In its first year, the program generated $100,000 in non-dues revenue, 60,000 member interactions and more than 3,000 webinar registrations.

A RIMS bylaws requirement penalized career advancement, pushing some of the Society's most engaged and loyal members out of volunteer leadership. I built the case for change through an intensive period of research and conversations with member leaders and executive stakeholders, including formal recommendations from a young professionals committee.

I brought my recommendation to the Board, which approved the bylaws change unanimously. The change brought new voices onto chapter boards and opened a path into volunteer leadership for young professionals.

I built the global chapter strategy at RIMS across 80 chapters and more than 500 volunteer leaders, and built the financial and data case for modernizing how chapters operate. I secured nearly $500,000 in Board-approved chapter technology and governance investment, the largest in the Society's history.

Scrum Alliance's 108 volunteer-led User Groups served 112,000 members in 46 countries, but operated informally, with no agreements and little organizational support. I put formal governance and annual agreements in place and hosted the first meeting of User Group leaders.

I launched the network's first sponsorship program, which supported more than 50 events and more than 3,000 attendees, and created the organization's first volunteer recognition and community awards program.

Scrum Alliance had no formal measure of member satisfaction. I built the business case for one and partnered with Hanover Research on an annual member satisfaction survey. Members gave a Net Promoter Score of 42, double the association benchmark set by industry research.