Program
How to start a chapter on your campus.
What you would actually be signing up for: the approvals, the advisor commitment, the nomination process, and the semester that ends in your first induction.
The National Society of Leadership and Success (NSLS) is a leadership honor society with over 2 million members, and starting a chapter moves through four stages, from campus approval to your first cohort's induction:
- Secure institutional approval. A campus sponsor secures whatever approval your institution requires for a new student organization or co-curricular program, and names the chapter advisor.
- Launch with the NSLS. The institution and the NSLS agree to launch. The NSLS assigns a dedicated success team, opens the Chapter Portal, and trains the advisor and the student executive board.
- Nominate the first cohort. Your campus nominates its first cohort against criteria it sets. Students who are not nominated can self-nominate with a faculty endorsement.
- Students complete the member journey. Students complete five steps: Orientation, a two-hour Leadership Training Day, three Speaker Broadcasts, three Success Networking Team meetings, and induction, which usually takes place in a ceremony. That is around 10 hours of their time, typically across one semester.
The advisor commitment is 10–20 hours per semester, and hosting a chapter costs the institution nothing.
Talk through your campus goals
Explore the program, responsibilities, and next steps with our partnerships team.
The NSLS is an accredited leadership honor society (Cognia), with credit recommendations from ACE and NCCRS. Credit recommendations are not credit, and the process of transferring them varies by institution. Advisor hours and chapter count are the NSLS's published figures; see sources below.
Stage one
Who starts it, and who has to say yes
Chapters begin with a staff member who owns an outcome the program addresses: engagement, retention, leadership development, or a population the institution is struggling to reach. Most often that is a Director of Student Activities or Student Leadership, a Dean of Students, or a VP of Student Affairs.
Career services, student success, advising, and residence life colleagues frequently see the need first without holding the authority to approve it. If that describes you, your job in stage one is identifying who does.
The NSLS does not publish a single approval path, because campuses differ. The approval a chapter needs is whatever your institution already requires to recognize a new student organization or add a co-curricular program. On some campuses that is a student-life recognition process; on others the program is housed academically instead. Establishing that sequence early matters more than anything on the NSLS side, because it is usually what sets the pace.
Three things are worth confirming before you go further: which office will own the chapter, who signs, and who will advise it. The advisor question is the one most likely to stall a launch, and it is easier to answer once you know the commitment is 10–20 hours per semester rather than a new line in someone's job description.
Stage two
What you provide, what the NSLS provides
The dividing line is the reason a chapter is a light lift: your institution supplies people and recognition, and the NSLS supplies the program.
| Your institution provides | The NSLS provides |
|---|---|
| An advisor, at 10–20 hours per semester | An annually updated curriculum, and annual program assessments |
| A nomination process and the criteria behind it | Managed engagement and recruitment, plus help recruiting chapter leaders |
| Campus recognition for the chapter | An all-inclusive Chapter Portal and ready-to-go content |
| Space, or virtual infrastructure, for chapter events | Six broadcast speakers per year, and executive board training |
| A student executive board, drawn from the first cohort | Marketing kits, free regional conferences, and a dedicated success team |
| Whatever institutional approval your campus requires | No charge to your institution, ever, plus $400,000+ in annual scholarship opportunities for members |
Compiled from the NSLS's two published program overviews (sources 1 and 2 below). The two pages list overlapping but not identical inclusions; both sets appear here.
Stage three
How students get nominated
Nomination stays with your campus, which is the part administrators most often misread. The NSLS does not select your students; you do, and the honor's selectivity is a function of that. The NSLS states that nominees are typically less than 5% of the student population.
Because you set the criteria, you can point the invitation at the outcome you are accountable for. A campus worried about second-year persistence nominates differently than one building a career pipeline. Students who are not nominated can self-nominate with a faculty endorsement, which gives you a second channel without loosening the standard.
Recruitment is not left to you alone. Managed engagement and recruitment, marketing kits, and help recruiting chapter leaders all come with the program, so the first cohort does not depend on your staff writing outreach from scratch.
Stage four
The member journey, in five steps
This is what your students actually do. Around 10 hours of their time, typically across one semester.
Induction itself is the fifth and final step. Inducted members unlock personalized recommendation letters and access to exclusive scholarships, and the NSLS makes $400,000+ in annual scholarship opportunities available.
After induction
Where members go next
Completing the Foundations of Leadership level is induction. Beyond it, the NSLS runs three curriculum levels, each with two pathways: a certificate course and a credit-recommended course. Learners get up to three semesters to complete coursework.
| Level | Certificate track | Credit-recommended track |
|---|---|---|
| Foundations of Leadership | FOL 101 | FOL 102: up to 3 college credit recommendations |
| Advanced Leadership | ADV 201: the NSLS 9 Principles | ADV 202: community team project and DISC assessment; up to 3 college credit recommendations |
| Executive Leadership | EXEC 301, "Better Me: Better World" project | EXEC 302, "Better Community: Better World" project; up to 3 college credit recommendations |
Certificate courses average around 10 hours; credit-recommended courses average around 30. The credit-recommended courses are FOL 102, ADV 202, and EXEC 302.
Credit recommendations are not credit. ACE and NCCRS issue recommendations; the process of transferring a credit recommendation varies by institution, and students are directed to their registrar. The NSLS publishes no list of accepting institutions, so treat acceptance on your own campus as a question for your registrar rather than a program feature.
Standing
How the chapter is recognized on campus
Recognition is an institutional decision, and the NSLS publishes no single model for it. What it does publish is the credentialing your review will ask about: the NSLS is an accredited leadership honor society through Cognia, holds credit recommendations from ACE and NCCRS, has partnered with NASPA since 2017 and with CHEA's CIQG since 2020, is a Certified B Corporation, and is listed among Newsweek's "America's Best Online Platforms" for 2025.
That is usually the material an approval body wants. Whether the chapter sits inside student life, inside an academic unit, or alongside your existing honor societies is yours to decide.
Delivery format is not a constraint on that choice. The program runs in person, virtually, and fully asynchronously, and the NSLS also operates a National Online Chapter for students whose schools do not host one.
The first semester
What year one actually looks like
Your advisor is trained and your executive board is trained. The Chapter Portal holds the curriculum and the operational content, so your chapter is not building a program. It is running one.
The first cohort moves through Orientation, Leadership Training Day, three Speaker Broadcasts, three Success Networking Team meetings, and induction, which usually takes place in a ceremony, and finishes the semester inducted. That first induction is the milestone worth planning toward, because it is what makes the chapter visible on campus and what gives you a cohort to recruit the next executive board from.
Cost is not the variable it usually is, because there isn't one. Your institution is never charged to host a chapter, in year one or any year after. Students who accept a nomination pay a one-time $95 enrollment fee for lifetime access to the Members Area, with nothing to renew. Graduation regalia is separate.
For sequence and dependencies across the whole launch, see the implementation timeline.
Evidence
What campuses report afterward
Four institutional outcomes the NSLS publishes, quoted as the NSLS states them.
- Delgado Community College, an "81 percent semester-to-semester retention rate for students that earned their NSLS induction, which was nearly 20 percent higher than their institutional retention rate."
- Merrimack College, "able to retain students who joined the NSLS at a rate of 95 percent."
- St. Petersburg College, a "37% increase over the college-wide retention rate" among 24 students invited to a one-campus pilot chapter (NSLS white paper, 2020).
- William Paterson University, "went from a nearly inactive chapter to inducting more than 100 new members in only one semester."
Among members, the NSLS reports that 97% would recommend it to their peers, and that 88% of members transitioning into careers landed the job of their choice. The NSLS also states that "95% of our chapters continue with us every year."
Institutional outcomes are quoted verbatim from source 1 below.
Questions administrators ask before starting a chapter
How do you start an honor society chapter on a college campus?
Starting a National Society of Leadership and Success (NSLS) chapter follows four broad stages. A staff member or department sponsors the idea and secures whatever institutional approval their campus requires for a new student organization or co-curricular program. The institution and the NSLS then agree to launch, and the NSLS assigns a success team, opens the Chapter Portal, and trains the advisor and student executive board. The campus nominates its first cohort of students. Those students then complete the five-step member journey (Orientation, a two-hour Leadership Training Day, three Speaker Broadcasts, three Success Networking Team meetings, and induction, which usually takes place in a ceremony) and are inducted, which typically takes one semester. Hosting a chapter costs the institution nothing.
Who at the institution has to approve a new chapter?
That depends on the institution, and the NSLS does not publish a single approval path because campuses differ. In practice the conversation is usually led by a Director of Student Activities or Student Leadership, a Dean of Students, or a VP of Student Affairs, and the approval it requires is whatever your campus already requires to recognize a new student organization or add a co-curricular program. Some campuses house the program academically instead of through student life. Identify the owning office and the approving body early, because that sequence, not anything on the NSLS side, usually determines how quickly a chapter can launch.
How much staff time does an NSLS chapter require?
The NSLS states that advisors commit 10 to 20 hours per semester. Chapters are student-led by design: a student executive board runs day-to-day operations alongside the advisor, and the NSLS trains both. The NSLS also provides the programming and the support around it: an annually updated curriculum, six broadcast speakers per year, managed engagement and recruitment, marketing kits, help recruiting chapter leaders, a dedicated success team, and the Chapter Portal, so the advisor role is oversight rather than content creation.
How are students selected for membership?
Students are nominated by their campus. The NSLS states that nominees are typically less than 5% of the student population. A student who is not nominated can also self-nominate with a faculty endorsement. Because the campus controls nomination, the institution decides which criteria it applies: GPA, class standing, demonstrated leadership, or a specific population it is trying to reach.
What does the institution provide, and what does the NSLS provide?
The institution provides an advisor, a nomination process, a way to recognize the chapter on campus, and space or virtual infrastructure for chapter events. The NSLS provides the curriculum and updates it annually, the Chapter Portal, executive board training, six broadcast speakers per year, managed engagement and recruitment, marketing kits, help recruiting chapter leaders, free regional conferences, annual program assessments, and a dedicated success team. Members can also apply for NSLS Foundation scholarships and awards ($400,000+ in annual scholarship opportunities), and chapters can earn national awards.
Do students pay to join?
Students who accept a nomination pay a one-time $95 enrollment fee, which gives them lifetime access to the Members Area with nothing to renew. Graduation regalia is not included. That fee belongs to the student; the institution pays nothing to host a chapter.
Can a chapter run fully online?
Yes. The program is available in person, virtually, and fully asynchronously, so a chapter can serve online, commuter, and evening students on the same terms as residential ones. The NSLS operates 800+ chapters across the US plus a National Online Chapter for students at schools without one.
Sources
- NSLS: Our Program (institutional overview) (opens in new tab)
- NSLS: Our Program (opens in new tab)
- NSLS: Frequently Asked Questions (opens in new tab)
- NSLS: Leadership Education Programs (curriculum levels) (opens in new tab)
- NSLS: Accreditation and Recommendation Service Providers (opens in new tab)
- NSLS: Credit Reciprocity (opens in new tab)
Every program fact on this page comes from the pages above, except two the NSLS confirms directly: it trains the chapter advisor, and a student executive board leads each chapter alongside that advisor.