Gather & Grow - SoCal

🍂Save the Date!

Join your SoCal association peers at the swanky Hollywood Roosevelt for Gather & Grow. As we embrace the fall season, we'll gather for some education and community in a warm, harvest-inspired setting. Come to connect with your peers, exchange ideas, and leave with inspiration and new insights!

Additional details, including will be announced soon. We hope you'll save the date and plan to join us!

Membership Growth Isn't Magic: Lessons from a Million-Dollar Turnaround

Growing membership, improving renewals, and increasing engagement don't happen by accident—they happen by creating an organization people genuinely want to be part of. Drawing from the real-world experience of leading a nonprofit from significant financial distress to long-term sustainability, explore the leadership, culture, and member-focused strategies that transformed an organization into one that people were eager to support, join, and champion.

In this session, you will learn from Sheila Kearns from her experience as Board President for the Boys & Girls Club where she took a deeply in-the-red regional chapter and engineered a total financial turnaround—leaving the organization with a secure $1,000,000+ financial reserve, orchestrating a complex regional merger, and personally raising over $2,000,000.

Discover practical approaches to strengthening member value, building trust, deepening engagement, inspiring volunteer leadership, and creating loyal advocates who renew year after year. Whether you're focused on membership, marketing, programs, or executive leadership, you'll leave with actionable ideas to help your association grow stronger, retain more members, and foster a thriving community.

Sheila Kearns, Director of Business Development, The Cliffs Hotel & Spa

Sheila Kearns is an internationally known master chocolatier, award-winning creative directed & executive producer, veteran nonprofit board president, and high-stakes marketer who translates premium brand mechanics into massive organizational growth. Having successfully navigated complex corporate client portfolios, engineered multi-billion-dollar market pivots, and personally led a major regional nonprofit turnaround from deficit to a million-dollar reserve, Sheila brings uncompromised, battle-tested expertise directly to executive leadership teams. She provides organizations with the exact blueprints required to command market attention, secure high-value corporate partnerships, and design elite experiences that drive lifetime customer and member retention.

As Executive Producer & Luxury Cultural Architect, Sheila operates an elite international confectionery and luxury design house. She has successfully scaled traditional family heritage into a globally prominent luxury product line with major retail distribution, high-end consumer demand, and official Hollywood studio partnerships. As Founder & Principal Creative Director of The Kearns Group, she owned, managed, and executed the high-value acquisition sale of a powerhouse boutique advertising agency. Sheila built and transitioned an elite blue-chip client portfolio including Costco, Trader Joe's, Williams-Sonoma, Wells Fargo, Spice Hunter, the American Red Cross, the State of California, Hollywood screen legend Jane Russell and many more.