We cultivate deeply connected and engaged communities through lifelong learning and professional development experiences. Offer your people development and discussion opportunities that are fun, enriching, and fit into their lifestyles seamlessly. Professional book club managers facilitate and customize each group to your goals.
The best part? We guarantee results. Pay by group size and if your participation goals aren’t met, pay nothing. That’s how much we believe in the power of bringing people together around topics that matter.
We manage book club programs for people at organizations of all shapes and sizes.
We're on a mission to connect and empower communities through lifelong learning experiences. Deepen your peoples’ sense of meaning and wonder while they have fun with peers and grow personally and professionally.
Chances are high that you don't have time to manage professional book clubs for hundreds or thousands of members of your community. Our one-of-a-kind platform and team of professional book club managers take care of ALL of the heavy lifting. Engage your community with only a few hours of staff time per year.
When you have dozens or more people who'd be interested in a book club program, it's not practical to get them all in a room or into giant online meetings together. Our asynchronous online community platform lets thousands participate and network in a shared book club community from anywhere in the world, at whatever time is convenient for them.
Book clubs bring people together. And online book clubs bring together different people than in-person programs and events. Across all of the organizations we support, we consistently see different segments of employees, alumni, library patrons, or other communities engaging in an online book club.
Afraid no one will join and participate? We won’t run a program that’s not valuable for your organization. If we don't reach a minimum number of participants, we don't start the program and there is no cost. But it’s unlikely you’ll need the guarantee. More than 99% of our communities exceed their participation goal.
Listen to what our happy customers and program participants say about the results we deliver.
"We’ve appreciated working with PBC Guru on our social justice movie club as it has allowed us to create a unique experience for our university and alumni. PBC Guru provides the program framework and staffing which has given us capacity to create additional opportunities for engagement and connection."
"We have seen a notable increase in engagement amongst members of our association who are a part of the book club. We highly recommend PBC Guru as they provide professionally moderated book club discussion groups in a turnkey fashion, allowing us to provide a great benefit to our members with minimal day to day oversight."
"The team at PBC Guru are thoughtful, accessible problem solvers who are interested in our goals. It’s like having another dedicated colleague on our staff thinking about virtual engagement strategies full-time!"
"PBC Guru has provided a professional, flawless and dependable service to the members of the NC Medical Society with its book club program. This program has allowed us to offer a member engagement resource to our members in North Carolina without being “experts” in executing a formal book club."
"We have been able to engage over 500 alumni in one year in a new and interesting way. With a small staff, being able to rely on PBC to manage the program has been an easy and efficient way to add value to what we offer our alumni."
"The PBC Guru program consistently aligns with DPR’s core values (Integrity, Enjoyment, Uniqueness and Ever Forward) and provides creative collaboration. The addition of PBC Guru to our existing reading program has exceeded our expectations; the level of customizability and their customer service is impeccable!"
"We’ve been able to engage a larger population of alumni with the ALC platform . . . The white label content really helps us bulk out our engagement offerings without taking up staff time or resources. We love that everything is built for us, including marketing images and copy to assist with promotion."
"The webinars and resources offered to our alumni, friends, and students have been a terrific complement to our program. We can showcase interesting speakers and topics through our partnership with ALC, further increasing the benefits to our McMaster alumni community."
PBC Guru's online learning programs help you connect with your community in whole new ways while engaging hundreds that have never engaged before. Each virtual book club or other program runs within your own private online forum, integrated with email, and is actively managed by professionals to maximize engagement.
We support book club programs for a huge range of organizations with the goal of engaging people around lifelong learning. From professional books clubs for companies to clubs to connect fellow alumni with each other and their alma mater, we’ll get your people excited about conversations with you and your community.
More About Managed Book Clubs
ALC is a partnership of alumni associations managed by PBC Guru, which works together to create more and better online programs for their communities. Participating members enjoy benefits like live talks with famous authors and thought leaders, hosted on your own branded livestream portal, plus access to a network of fellow alumni associations sharing ideas to help each other succeed.
Core values book clubs help develop your staff and strengthen your culture. Get your team members more deeply involved with your mission. Having them regularly read books that reinforce what matters most to your organization and connect with fellow employees to discuss will help them realize the real-world (and real work) application of your values.
We believe reading and discussing books is one of the highest leverage activities anyone can undertake to develop themselves personally and professionally. We strive to make it as easy as possible for people to engage in book club programs at scale. Offer virtual book clubs that engage members of your organization in meaningful learning no matter where they are located.
Our programs allow book club members to join in discussions from anywhere in the world with an internet connection. And the online community is on 24/7 so people can engage regardless of time zone, lunch hour, or school pickup time. No matter what’s happening in life and work, there’s always a moment to join discussions about meaningful content with other people.
Our experienced virtual book club managers help you define your community guidelines and moderate your book club accordingly. Along with our minimum participation level guarantee, you’ll have the ability to track engagement and evaluate the success of your program with ease. We help focus and guide discussions to not only maintain engagement but foster growth in the areas that matter to you.
Your book club’s online website portal will be branded with your name, logo, colors, and more. Offer your participants a private online forum that they will see as tailor-made for your community. They’ll have a great experience that builds pride in your organization and a desire to engage more deeply with your mission.
There's no set list of books to choose from. We can work with you to facilitate the hottest best-sellers, specific business titles for professional development, or books written by members of your community. We curate books and other content around topics your community will find valuable and be excited to read and discuss every time.
How much more exciting might a book club be when your group actually gets to hear from and ask questions of the author? Included in our service are live Question & Answer talks with best-selling authors. Author talks cover the hottest novels, business reads, memoirs, and other book genres.
PBC Guru is the brainchild of two avid readers of business and personal development literature. Tasked to help develop employees of their former engineering firm, a company book club was the natural solution. The idea was a huge success: popular among employees and loved by managers who saw skills improve, engagement increase, and productivity rise. Friends at other companies asked the pair how to replicate the fantastic results. And a light bulb came on.
There were many long nights, false starts, iterations, and ditched ideas to build the service and platform we run today. Our original idea for a virtual book club that provided participants the same book one month at a time soon morphed into PBC Guru: a solution that produces lasting organizational and personal impact, so reliably that we guarantee it.
We put this power in the hands of organizations like yours.
We love our customers and participants. And they love us! Here’s what some of them have to say about what we do.
Request a demo and explore how our book clubs or other managed programs can help engage your community in lifelong learning.
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