The NFPW board is meeting in Greenville, SC, hosted by Media Women of South Carolina. Friday was a beautiful, sunny day in town, but the board members were inside a hotel meeting room with no windows. The AC made it slightly chilly.
Why would we give up a day to explore the city and enjoy a beautiful spring day, especially those members coming from winter states (Idaho, Illinois, Pennsylvania)? Because we’re passionate about NFPW.
The meeting took a few minutes to begin because we had to catch up on what each person had been doing since we last met face to face. Those friendships are one of the hallmarks of this organization. It’s the value add that you don’t find in many professional groups.
So where did day one find us? We used a quote to keep us focused —
“Strategy is not primarily about planning. It is about intentional, informed and integrated choices.” — Hambrick & Frederickson
Marsha Hoffman, Lori Potter consult on NFPW business. (Photo by Lori Potter)
We heard a presentation from Better BNC about taking the communications contest online. Now don’t anyone panic! We’re only in the exploratory stages. However, we’ve learned from other organizations that run online contests that everyone finds it easier once they make the adjustment. This includes the administrator, the contestants and the judges. It also is less expensive because there are less administrative expensives (think shipping all of the entries all around the country) and more members enter because of the ease.
We plan to hear presentations from other firms at the September board meeting before taking further steps. Have any of you entered a communications contest online? If so, let us know what you thought of it.
We also heard from Marsha Hoffman and Lori Potter, two of our members who are hard at work on the 2011 conference in Nebraska and Iowa. These two affiliates decided to partner to put together a fantastic conference with great speakers and pre- and post-tours. We expect to have everything on the website by May 15, including the option to pay for everything (registration and tours) by credit card.
Where do we go from Nebraska and Iowa? Arizona is hosting us in 2012. The hotel contract has been signed. We’ll be in Scottsdale. Two affiliates plan to submit proposals for 2015 and 2016. That means we’re still looking for hosts for 2013 and 2014. Is your affiliate ready to step up?
We also are exploring membership and how we can better reach out to our members. We started brainstorming late in the date, and everyone asked for extra time to finish sharing their ideas. We’ll pick up with the brainstorming and other business by 8 a.m. today.
Yes, it’s Saturday. And yes, it’s another beautiful day. Our incentive is that each of cares passionately about NFPW and wants to continue to make it stronger.
We have a few other incentives, though. We’ll work through lunch eating pizza (why does pizza make everything more enjoyable?) and if we finish early, we’ll have that much more time to explore Greenville.
Cynthia's Communique 
My newsroom had entries in two other contests this year that were done online for the first time. In the one case, we forwarded our proposed entries to our graphic artist. He spent more than a week looking up newspaper pages and creating PDFs that were submitted as entries. Easy for us, but far too much work for the graphic artist.
In another contest, I used one of the graphic artist’s PDF and created my own PDF to make my own online submissions. That involved a learning curve, but it wasn’t too hard.
All in all, there’s something to be said for online submissions. But I’m not sure all the NFPW members are ready.
Thanks for sharing your experiences Kay. The issue about creating PDFs was discussed, and we know that not all members will have access to a graphic artist or archives, in particular, our freelancers. We’re looking into everything, and if we pursue it, we’ll be sure to include a training component.