APRA-VA Meeting

April 6, 2010

APRA-VA Meeting
April 6, 2010

Minutes

The Spring 2010 meeting of the Virginia Chapter of APRA was held on Tuesday, April 6, at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, VA. 

The meeting’s agenda and educational sessions were coordinated by Kathi Johnson and John Thelin, Program Chairs.  The educational sessions included the following presenters:

Tricia Ambler, WealthEngine – “Strategies for Growing Your Prospect Pool” – This session gave an overview of current trends, strategies for working with individual, corporation and foundation prospects, and how to best use board members and volunteers to help grow a prospect pool.

Panel Discussion with Q & A – “Raising Dollars During Difficult Days: New and Old Strategies”  - Panelists Laura Phillips (UVA), Lynda Myers (VFH), Mary Shisler (JMU), Mary Maxwell (U of R) and Michael Bailey (JMU) shares strategies that worked well for them and fielded related questions. Some topics that they touched on included segmenting portfolios, prospect scoring, the class agent system, re-working mission statements and ask letters, and proactive ways to find new prospects.

At 11:35 Caroline Oblack, Chapter President, called the business meeting to order.

Officer/Committee reports:
President Report, Caroline Oblack:

• Caroline reminded everyone that MARC will be held at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia on June 23-25, and that several APRA-VA members will be speaking at the conference.
• APRA International is now offering on-demand education where APRA International members can access past conference presentations for free online.

Vice-President Report, Caroline Oblack on behalf of Lisa Cheney:

• The annual APRA-VA scholarship winner is Nick Sollog. He plans to use the scholarship to attend the APRA International conference this summer in CA.
• Board nominations will be coming up soon. Anyone interested in joining the board should be prepared to make a short presentation at the next chapter meeting about why they would be good for the position.

Secretary Report, Nina Naruszewicz:

• Minutes from the last chapter meeting will be emailed to members soon for approval.

 Treasurer Report, Lorie Hoover:

• Lori recently finished up the annual financial reports required by APRA International. 
• She is interested in hearing new ideas about how to encourage people to attend chapter meetings. 

Membership Chair Report, Vickie Black:

• Vickie announced that chapter membership is down, and that we only have about 60 members now. One reason for this may be that many members in Northern VA were holding dual memberships with the DC Chapter, and may have recently dropped one membership due to smaller budgets.
• John Thelin suggested that board members make phone calls to try to get people to renew dropped memberships.
• It may be helpful to have a point person at each of the larger organizations that hold chapter memberships, and have that person report back to the chapter if people leave the organization, so we can see why people may have not renewed their membership.

Publicity Chair & Webmaster Report, Pamela Harris:

• Pamela will be redoing the website soon, and is looking for ways to bring more traffic to the site.
• The idea of a Facebook group for our chapter was briefly discussed.

Program Chair Report, Kathi Johnson and John Thelin:

• Kathi thanked UVA for hosting our meeting, and asked for suggestions for speakers and venues for future meetings.
• John asked for suggestions for ways to draw more people to our meetings.
• A date and place is not yet set for our next meeting.

Caroline Oblack asked if there was any new business, and there was none.

The business meeting officially adjourned at 11:47 A.M.

The full program ended at 2:20 P.M.