| IPRA Today - Make a Difference This Year | Editorial link | www.ilipra.org |
Greetings!
Now as the calendar changes over, it’s time to get moving on 2013 projects. First, the IPRA board will be having their annual retreat on January 10 in Joliet. This will include a challenge course facilitated by the University of St. Francis staff. Additionally, IPRA has selected a consultant to work with us in 2013 on our strategic plan. Her name is Ann Atkinson, CAE, and she is a nationally known association strategic planning expert from Georgia. She will be joining us for our retreat and we will begin to do some planning for our new strategic plan which will go into effect in January 2014. Also in 2013, we would normally be participating in the BMW event. Unfortunately this year, they have hired their own staff to do the work that IPRA traditionally did for them. As a result, IPRA will not be involved with this event and will not be seeking volunteers for it. We hope that IPRA members will find other ways to volunteer with IPRA in lieu of participating in this event. I would also like to share with you that IPRA’s board has approved our new affiliate agreement and it was distributed to our seven affiliate groups and one additional group who is considering becoming an affiliate. This document started out a year ago as a way to solve an insurance question at the conference. The document did not meet the needs of all parties. This fall, I met with people from the affiliate groups to learn more about them and learn about ways we can better work together to serve all our members and respective missions while maintaining our independence. The new document takes into account the ideas expressed in those meetings and attempts to create stronger partnerships and collaborations between our groups. The insurance question was solved with a short supplemental memorandum of understanding applying only to those groups that host events at the IAPD/IPRA conference. Following the conference in January, I am greatly looking forward to a trip planned for the last week of February. I will be headed to IPRA’s southern Illinois region to meet with many of the members there throughout the week, concluding with the SIPRA meeting that Friday. The members in the region have been extremely welcoming and flexible in setting up a jam-packed schedule for the week. It’s a beautiful part of our state and I can’t wait to see more of our members there. Speaking of making connections for our members across the state, I was pleased to see the Diversity Section has started allowing people to Skype into their section meetings to allow for greater accessibility across the state. I would encourage all sections and committees to make efforts to improve access to these meetings. It could be with Skype or a conference call. IPRA uses www.gotomeetings.com to set up free conference calls -- this website service is available to anyone to use to create calls and keep the costs down. It is one of my goals to ensure that more of our services in IPRA are available to members all over the state. If you have ideas to help us improve in this area, please let me know. Another way we are creating access is through our 2013 Education Institute event next April. Our keynote speaker is nationally known park and recreation advocate and humanitarian, Ian Hill. Ian will be working with us to create live streaming opportunities to several locations across our state. You’ll receive more information about this in the coming months. If you have questions about any of these items, please feel free to email me at debbie@ilipra.org. In the meantime, make sure you’re registered to attend the Soaring to New Heights conference -- you won’t want to miss it! - Debbie Trueblood, Executive Director |
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