What is LIM?

Annually PMI hosts multiple Leadership Institute Meetings (LIM) for the local Chapters throughout the globe. This April myself and members of the PMI Toronto Board of Directors had the pleasure of attending the North American LIM in San Diego. The goal of the event is to develop Chapter volunteers to be effective leaders of sustainable chapters, focus on the goals of the region and keep volunteers up to date on PMI strategy and initiatives. This includes an opportunity to idea share with Chapter Leaders from around North America.

Globally PMI has 11,000+ volunteers, which includes 3,500+ Chapter volunteers and 284,000+ Chapter members. There are over 305 Chapters globally and 157 are in North America (as of April 2023). Toronto is one of the largest membership bases in the world! We are excited to be approaching our 50th anniversary in 2025.

Sustainable Development Goals and Giving Back

One of PMI's pillars that they are encouraging chapters to undertake is actions for Sustainable Development Goals Developed by the United Nations. This includes 17 goals of: no poverty, quality education, gender equality, affordable and clean energy, to just name a few. There was a session with the opportunity to network with fellow Chapter Leaders to discuss questions related to the goals and open up creative thinking. The Toronto Chapter is brainstorming how to incorporate this into our strategy; our Social Good Committee has begun planning giving back events, a recent one took place at the Daily Bread Food Bank. We are open to any member who has ideas and wishes to contribute to social good. Please email the office to voice any ideas.

In line with this theme together attendees made an assembly line to make hygiene kits with inspirational notes to be used for local non-profits. It was wonderful to use our time and energy for something helpful.

Chapter Exist Because of Volunteers

The Toronto Chapter is lead by volunteers. All communications, monthly Chapter events, in-person networking events and more are all run by members who donate their time to run the Chapter. This includes the Board of Directors and all committees who support the mission and goals of the Chapter. Similarly PMI Global has a volunteer board of Directors which governs and leads them. Attending the LIM helped the board to become more aligned with PMI Global and gave tools to run the Chapter more effectively.

The LIM had a focus on volunteering and announced the new Volunteer Engagement Platform, which is an enhanced tool for volunteer recruitment. For PMI, making a positive volunteer experience is of the utmost importance, with a focus on how to improve communication and communicate effectively to serve the membership better.

In addition to this we learned updates to the PMI strategy. They shared they are going back to focusing on the basics of the PMP and CAPM as opposed to the recent micro-credentials released. A theme was "How do you define community at PMI?"This is a goal the Toronto board is constantly trying to improve on by sharing member stories, and creating opportunities to network and make it easy for members to gain their PDUs. We encourage all Toronto members to consider becoming involved with a committee to ensure Toronto thrives.

As the PMI Toronto board prepares for the 2024 year and beyond we are mindful of keeping members at the centre and welcome all ideas to make Toronto thrive.