MPI PHL Office of the President Quarterly Town Hall – December 2021 Town Hall Wrap-Up

To those who could join us on December 2, thank you for attending and participating in our first Office of the President Town Hall. I truly believe that this chapter belongs to you, and each of us who are honored to serve on the Board of Directors truly works on behalf of each MPI PHL Member. We value your contributions and your participation, in part because we cannot make changes that serve each of you without knowing what you need and expect from us. So, thank you once again for your continued support and for your feedback.

Our next Town Hall is scheduled for March 3, 2021. Click here to register!

There are several objectives for our quarterly Town Hall: first, we want to share with you the metrics that MPI measures our chapter against to determine our success (our Chapter Dashboard), and give you updates on where we stand in relation to those metrics; we want you to know where we stand, and to help us achieve these goals by offering us your insights and suggestions for improvement. Second, we want to give you a chance to ask us questions, tell us what you need, or offer constructive criticism; essentially, we want these town halls to be a place for you to have your voice heard by Chapter Leadership so we can hold ourselves accountable to your needs. And finally, especially during a time when we cannot meet in person, we want to offer you an informal place, albeit virtually, where you can talk to each other, see one another, and potentially crowdsource solutions to your challenges.

A summary of what we discussed in our inaugural Town Hall held on December 2, 2020:

The Office of the President shared our Chapter Dashboard, and those metrics are below:

• Net New Member Growth: 316 Members; we are down -7.06%
  goal is 349 Members and 2.51% net growth
• Accredited Education Events: 5 events, all accredited
  goal is 4+ events with min. 2 accredited
• Volunteer Engagement: 111 volunteers; 35.03% of Members are engaged volunteers
  goal is 13.1% of Membership
• Financial Management: Net Profit: -$13,730; we are down -142.21%
  goal is 1.1% net profit
• Member Satisfaction: n/a – the survey has not yet gone out
  goal is 12% of members complete MPI’s survey, with 70.1% minimum satisfaction

We are meeting our Education and Volunteer Engagement goals. We could use help recruiting new members to meet our growth goals. We’ll keep you informed of when the annual MPI survey is distributed, and we will be calling on you all to help us meet the Member Satisfaction goal. The Board is paying attention to our Financial Management, and are doing our utmost to reduce expenses so we do not need to increase registration fees to meet our financial goals.

Going forward, you suggested that we record the Town Halls and share them with those who cannot attend. You also suggested that we use word of mouth to increase registrations.

You shared with us that you miss the Office of the President having an annual theme, and suggested that we look at our education for the year with an eye toward connecting our annual educational events to that theme.

In this time, maybe more than ever, we need to recognize one another and really promote our successes. Those of you who received your milestone pins in the mail were very touched, and appreciated hearing from the Board during these disconnected and challenging times. To this end, you suggested that we continue to recognize our new Certified Meeting Professionals and to call out the anniversaries of our Members on a more frequent basis – to really shout these recognitions from the rooftops! We are going to add recognition slides to every event going forward, and we will discuss with the Marketing team ways to get these Member Milestones into a regular rotation on our social media pages.

We discussed the possibility of keeping a hybrid component to our meetings and events going forward for those of us who have challenges attending events in person. Our Education and Special Events teams will definitely keep this suggestion on their agenda when we are ready to consider moving forward with in-person events.

We recognized that this is a challenging time financially for everyone; the Board was asked about MPI financial support for membership dues. Our Membership team shared that Global had been offering a 6-month extension for dues, and although this was not currently advertised or offered, calling MPI directly and asking for the extension may be possible. Membership also reminds you that we have scholarship funds available for those who need assistance paying their annual renewal fee or those who may need help affording our monthly programs. Please remember – these funds are YOURS, and there is no higher purpose for these funds than reinvesting them in our members. 

Finally, you suggested we partner with other industry groups’ Philadelphia area chapters, including PCMA, ILEA, NACE, GPHA, and regional CVBs like Valley Forge and Wilmington for an overall “State of the Local Industry” update. We will take this suggestion back to our Education team, and may consider this for Global Meetings Industry Day.

We hope you can join us at the next town hall on March 3, 2021. Please let us know if you have any questions or concerns you’d like us to address, either before or in that next meeting.

Thank you all for your continued engagement and support of MPI PHL. We do not exist without you.

Be well, and be safe, until we meet again!