Submitted by Andra Bennett House, APR
National Board
Even though the PRSA Southwest District does not have a district rep on the board (because no one ran), Blake Lewis, APR of Dallas was elected as National Treasurer. Blake will be an excellent “go-to” person for our district, if the need arises.
PRServing America PRServing America is a competition for the best pro-bono community service project by a chapter. PRSSA can participate as well. For 1st place, the prize is $2,500 and the prize amounts go down from there. Our Chapter could think about a pro bono project that would be a possible submission for this recognition and reward.
Advocacy
PRSA submitted an op-ed to Roll Call re: Senate inquiry into federal agencies and contractors payments to PR firms.
PRSA advocated on behalf of PR pros being able to edit Wikipedia for clients. The owner of Wikipedia apparently was against this. The name of the Facebook group in favor of it is called Corporate Representatives for Ethical Wiki Engagement (CREWE).
Get more PRSA advocacy news.
Business Case of PR
PRSA wrote Forbes op-ed for business schools including reputation management in MBA programs. (MBA Initiative)
Commission on Public Relations Education gave a lengthy presentation on the disparity of what colleges require for PR degrees.
Membership
Currently PRSA National has 21,378 members. This is down from 2008 highs, but steadily climbing back up.
Free webinars this year – 63 have been offered, with 6,500 participants, exponentially up from any previous time.
Chapter resources – document sharing platform is being developed for online. No more chapters keeping stuff in shoeboxes!
Next year, ALL Members will be able to pay dues quarterly for a $15 processing fee. This will be optional for chapters to allow members to do this or not. It may allow more members to join, but could affect chapter cash flow.
Issues & Trends emails have been upgraded to be more user friendly and quickly read.
Priorities for 2013 are Ethics, Diversity, Advocacy and the Brand: One PRSA.
Unconference
Value of Districts – upshot of discussion was that National should look at possibly re-drawing the Districts into smaller territories, separating it from board representation, or subsidizing districts to help pay for regional conferences. There are members who do not belong to Chapters, yet chapters fund the Districts, so some members are benefiting without contributing.
Member Benefits – Districts could help aggregate benefit information for the Districts and provide it in a canned fashion for the chapters for newsletters, luncheon announcements, etc. Districts could help pen op-eds and localize the advocacy efforts of National for chapters to submit to their local publications.
Many topics discussed and videotaped – National to condense and make available soon.
Town Hall
Many delegates expressed concern that the Assembly did not vote on anything except the board slate. We listened to reports and gave feedback, but some did not feel the expense of the travel was worth being there in person, and did not feel the Assembly “accomplished” much.
I predict if there is no “beefy” agenda next year, and only voting on board nominees, many chapters will send proxies vs. delegates unless they are staying for the conference.
Thank you to Andra Bennett House, APR and Holly Ellman for representing the Greater Ft. Worth Chapter of PRSA as delegates to the Assembly during the 2012 PRSA International Conference.
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