Initial 2008 PRSA Assembly Report

This past Saturday (from 8 to 5 - more on that in another post) PRSA had its annual assembly. It was my honor to serve as the delegate from PRSA Boston. Compared to past assemblies, this one was relatively low-key – although we laid the groundwork for the “Mother of All Assemblies” in 2009 (Where the plan is to potentially rewrite all of PRSA’s Bylaws…)
I will be making a series of posts recapping the assembly over the next week, but I wanted to get a quick one in now.


PRSA National provided us with an update on the state of the society. Overall, membership has increased by 4,000 over the past few years, and the PRSSA will have more than 10,000 members. This bodes well for the future of our profession. In my opinion, We still need more members, and to do that we need to provide even more value.


There are a number of new initiatives planned, including:


PR Journal
APR Study Guide
Capitol Hill Program
Internship Guide
Multicultural
Diversity Toolbox
Established research policy
Assembly survey


You may notice advocacy and thought leadership are missing from the list – that is because they are core to the growth and mission of the society and are being tackled separately (and I plan to lend whatever assistance National wants on those efforts). I am not sure I agree with the order of the above activities, but there are initiatives here to expand our value to almost every member.


PRSA National highlighted its Clean Elections campaign. They plan to continue the dialogue post election. Again, I applaud it, but is elections central to most of the members? We are not an organization focused primarily on politics – let’s focus on business, academics, etc. But my concern is a matter of degree and this will benefit the members.


For 2008, PRSA National is also presenting a new section model and focused on improving chapter support.

They also recognized we need to strengthen core benefits. One example of potential interest to independents, small agencies and those in transition is PRSA will be offering new insurance programs for companies and individuals. More details to come.


Some random notes:


For those of you that hate having to remember your PRSA Number to log into Membernet, you can now change it via the preferences section.

If you are interested in getting more involved nationally, fill out the My Preferences section on Membernet to highlight your volunteer interests. National is watching.

PRSA Job Center now has some salary information. I haven’t had a chance to check it out yet, but combined with PR Week’s study, this should be useful to members for various reasons.

Significant changes to the PRSA Website are coming and they look good. They are also working on tying the local Web sites to national. They will provide templates to use in site redesign chapters want to keep the same look and feel. PRSA National would like your feedback on the proposed site. You can check it out and provide feedback on Membernet through November 15.

As always, post if you have any questions.