This summer, I signed up with a CSA (community-supported agriculture), joining other residents in buying "shares" in local farms for regular deliveries of their produce. With CSAs, farmers gain a solid income base at the start of the growing season … and a group of members who participate in whatever the growing season brings.

Being part of the CSA was something of an adventure, requiring me to be more intentional about my menu. Each week, I would walk to my local farmer's market for my CSA box, having learned the day before about the bounty of items I would find inside. I tried new foods I had never eaten before and spent more time with friends preparing meals. Those meals were healthier, more delightful, and more memorable.

Imagine offering your members CSL (community-supported learning). A group of members would pay an upfront fee to receive regular deliveries of content, but without knowing in advance the specific topic to be delivered or the form of the learning experience. You wouldn't have to "sell" members on each learning opportunity, but instead would draw from that dedicated revenue stream to deliver relevant content in ways that might better and more cost effectively meet their needs.

Members might be inclined to schedule staff- development opportunities in their own offices, using CSL modules for topical learning conversations. They would no longer expend time and energy creating their own training; your deliveries would be a staple of their professional-development diet. They likely would avail themselves of content that might not have seemed as appealing when packaged a la carte. The CSL experiences receiving the most positive feedback might then be repurposed for use at other events on a more significant scale.

Going the Local Route
Or you might adopt the approach of the 100-Mile Diet: A Year of Local Eating (http://100mile diet.org), which tells the story of a couple determined to eat well using resources from their own community. A meeting designed from this philosophy might commit to using speakers drawn only from your own membership or from within a 100-mile radius of your conference site.

Doing so would force you to dig more deeply to find those folks in your very own community who possess knowledge you'd like them to share (beyond the obvious ones), as well as to more intentionally explore the local resources available throughout your meeting destination. I'm always a bit surprised that the same planners who want to know about the best local bands and great neighborhood hotspots for a board dinner aren't also interested in the local intellectual and educational capital they could draw on for their conference.

There are many benefits to drawing from a local pool of talent: more practical experience from those in your trenches and a more diverse array of member talents on display, to name a few. Reduced speaker travel time and costs would just be the cherry on top.

CSAs are part of the whole rethinking of the way we get our food, "from farm to fork." In The Omnivore's Dilemma and In Defense of Food, author Michael Pollan offers a mantra that resonates with many individuals: Eat food. Not too much. Primarily plants. While many equivalent learning mantras come to mind, here's one I've incorporated into my own professional development for this year: Learn regularly. In small doses and deep dives. Primarily practical.

Jeffrey Cufaude is a former higher education administrator, meeting planner, and association executive. He writes, speaks, and facilitates on a variety of individual and organizational leadership issues. Learn more about his work at www.ideaarchitects.org.

To submit topic ideas and feedback on the Leading Learning column, e-mail jeffrey@ideaarchitects.org.

Leading Learning is sponsored by Freeman, www.freemanco.com