Minutes – APRA – VA Meeting 4/25/2007

The Spring 2007 meeting of the Virginia Chapter of APRA was held on April 24^th.  The meeting was hosted by University of Richmond in Richmond, Virginia.  There were 23 people in attendance – 22 members, 1 non-member.

Followed by a continental breakfast and networking session, the group was welcomed by Dave Johnson, Vice President of Advancement at University of Richmond. 

Tricia Ambler, President of Virginia APRA, then provided opening remarks and introduced Robert Thalhimer, Senior Vice President for Advancement at The Community Foundation serving Richmond & Central Virginia.  The title of his presentation was The Ultimate Gift.

After a break Tricia Ambler called to order the business meeting which began promptly at 11:52 a.m. 

A motion was made to approve the minutes from the last meeting.  This motion was approved.

President’s Report

• Discussion of MARC 2008 contest: the state APRA chapter that has the most members registered gets to have the President and one chapter member go to the MARC conference for free.  There was encouragement for chapter members to register.

• Reminder of APRA International Conference.  This is the 20^th Anniversary.

Vice President’s Report

• The scholarship winner is Blake McIver who wants to learn more about data mining and modeling.  He will present what he learns at the next APRA meeting.

• The scholarship guidelines were re-written so that the selection committee will include the scholarship recipient from the previous year.  This recommendation requires approval from the membership.  A motion was made to approve this recommendation and it was approved at a later time in the meeting.

• Marketing chair, Nick Taylor, has the opportunity to become a professor at San Jose State, so we now need to have new marketing chair.  The primary duties of this position are to oversee the website and the listserv.  Contact Caroline Oblack if you are interested in this position.

Program Chair’s Report

• Provided an explanation of how we come up with program costs.  The registration fee for meetings is based on the charges for food, rental space and the number of attendees based on the last meeting.  The Program Chair, the President and the treasurer decide the amount charged for a meeting.

• The attendee does absorb some of the cost. This is why we seek conference space at little or no cost to keep the chapter meetings at such a low price.  We try to refrain from using the chapter’s savings account so we can allocate those monies for renowned speakers, scholarships, administrative costs and other resources.

Treasurer’s Report

• If you haven’t paid your membership dues, please do so.

• Financial reports ’06 were filed, the treasurer noticed that some people were behind in paying.  She will call and gently remind.

• For the past few years we have just broken even or even lost money on meetings.

• If anyone is interested in speaking at the CASE conference, contact Lori Hoover.

Marketing Chair’s Report

• An overview of the changes that have been made to the website—we were hosting on Angel Fire which is a free site, now we are on Dream Host which costs approximately $10 per month.  Most of the content is the same as the old website.  Now we have online forms for member registration and conference registration.  We have email lists and a listserv.

• Suggestion was made that we get a members only section for presentation material.

Membership Chair’s Report

• 77 members, 1 new member since winter—United Way of Rockbridge County

• Directory changes will be made and she’ll send out new director

• If you don’t know when your renewal is up contact Vickie Black and she will let you know.  Memberships run January-December.

• Send membership renewals to Lorie Hoover.  Make checks to APRA Virginia.

Extra Tidbits

• Lisa Howley is looking for ideas and articles for Connections.  The e-mail address is on the APRA International website.  Also can contact Chris Pipkins.

• There is an APRA International contest between chapters at the Chicago conference—who can make the most interesting/best designed table.  If anyone has any ideas about what we can do for this contact Tricia Ambler.

The meeting ended at 12:22 p.m.

We then ate lunch.

After lunch Christopher Cannon, Senior Associate from Bentz, Whaley, Flessner, presented a presentation entitled Turning Information into Action: Developing an Integrated Fundraising Operation.

At 3:30 p.m. we adjourned.

Respectfully submitted,

 Mary Nan Ollis