All over, Apra chapters are organizing events that highlight industry innovation, information and connection. Check out what Apra chapters have been doing this quarter, and discover upcoming events you can pencil into your schedule. 

Apra Carolinas

Networking

We provide monthly networking events that are open to anyone in the prospect development community. January focused on resetting of goals, February showcased member benefits and meeting the board (and meeting our members) and in March we discussed navigating staff turnover. Join us for the next event!

Educational Content

Cybersecurity, a book review, pictures of mugs — oh my! Check out our blog to catch up on the latest and greatest in prospect development. We have great topics coming up, including more results from our member survey.

Mid-Atlantic Webinar

Changes in leadership can be difficult to navigate, so we gathered panelists with experience from a variety of organizations to ask them the tough questions on how they handled changes in leadership. Attendees submitted questions for the panel discussion and was free to members from the Mid-Atlantic chapters.

Plus, save the Date for MARC 2022! This week-long virtual conference will take place May 23-27 and feature daily sessions from each of the Mid-Atlantic chapters.

Member Survey

In February, we asked our members to share their thoughts with the chapter on value and programming. Around 35% of our membership responded and a snapshot of findings are below:

• 100% identified webinars as valuable, with 64.3% indicating it is the most valuable resource
• 1% are interested in professional topic-led networking discussions
• 4% identified recorded webinars as valuable with 10.7% naming it the most valuable resource
• 4% attached great value to our monthly newsletters
• 6% prefer a virtual conference to an in-person conference
• The most common reasons for not attending an in-person conference included health concerns with COVID and location concerns from out-of-state members
• Most requested topic: data analytics

Apra Illinois

Board Retreat

Apra Illinois (Apra-IL) kicked off Q1 with a productive board retreat. The chapter saw its former vice president, Peter Kotowski, step into the role of president while also welcoming two new Apra-IL members to the board.

In addition to onboarding new board members, the retreat helped spark the first major board initiative for the year. In an effort to provide the best possible content to our members, particularly those new to the field, the Apra-IL board has embarked on a complete overhaul of our member resources page, ensuring we are providing the most useful content, resources, benchmarking and best practices possible.

Networking

Q1 also saw the continuation of our ongoing networking series: Apra-IL Prospect Chat, which offers members an opportunity to meet in small groups over Zoom to discuss specific topics and network amongst their peers. While the February Prospect Chat was ostensibly an opportunity to meet the board, the event ended up settling on a lively discussion of new and interesting resources and vendors utilized by attendees.

Events

Apra-IL is also very excited to note that we closed Q1 with our first in-person event in over two years. Apra-IL members and non-members convened on Thursday, March 24 

Apra Indiana

Free Membership

For the second year in a row, Apra Indiana is offering free membership to support any professionals affected negatively by the pandemic. Our board is in the midst of planning programming for the year. We hope to host webinars and networking events, and we are hopeful we can return to in-person programming by the end of the year. 

New Members

We recently welcomed two new board members: Sherry Leal and Andrea Freund. We are fortunate to have a strong and diverse board. With that, we want to thank Emily Davis for her guidance as the past president and thank Stephanie Brouwer for her many year of board service. The board feels confident that Emily and Stephanie's past leadership has prepared us for success moving forward. 

Apra Maryland

Mentorship Program

Apra Maryland is proud to announce the launch of the Apra Maryland mentorship program! Participants will be partnered with experienced Apra Maryland professionals in our industry who can offer guidance and support for their journey. The Apra Maryland Mentorship Program will match mentees with mentors based on their expressed interests. Mentors and mentees must be current members of Apra Maryland. Find more information here: https://apramd.wildapricot.org/Apra-Maryland-Mentorship-Program

Events

During 2021 Apra Maryland hosted 17 separate events, including our fall conference, webinars and small fireside chats. We are currently filling the calendar with events for this year, which will include professional development, personal growth opportunities and networking opportunities. 

On March 30, we will host Grace Green from Double the Donation for “Corporate Philanthropy and Matching Gift Trends in 2022,” and on June 9 we will host Rachel Werner, CEO of RBW Strategy, for a session “Turning Research into Dollars — How to Qualify and Quantify Grant Funding Prospects.” Registration is currently open for two of these upcoming events

Apra Minnesota  

New Board Members

In Q1, Apra Minnesota (Apra-MN) welcomed six new board members whose experiences range from higher education, to consulting and community foundations. Many of these new members were previously involved as chapter volunteers who took up the call to join the board. This has diversified our board’s career experiences from what is typically heavy in higher education.

Social Media Revamp

The new marketing and communications chairs are revamping our chapter’s social media and website to be more user friendly, encourage more traffic to the site and our events, and to align with our strategic plans.

We hosted a Lunch and Learn in January on the new advancement role of digital gift officer and how they work with prospect researchers. In February, we hosted a Buzz Session on partnering with gift officers that brought in a large number of non-members to the event. In March, we hosted our first big, in-person networking event in more than two years!

Events

We are looking forward to upcoming events such as collaborating with Apra Missouri-Kansas (Apra MoKan) and Apra Great Plains in April for the Apra Midwest Spring Conference. Our programming co-chairs are working on a member survey to assess for future chapter needs and everyone’s level of comfort for meeting in-person as we learn how to work and exist in this next phase of a global pandemic.

NEDRA

Events

As the weather is getting warmer and the days are getting longer, we at NEDRA are also getting excited about our upcoming conference. The 2022 NEDRAcon will be held online from May 5-6 and registration is now open! While we are very much looking forward to convening in person again in the future, we are grateful for the opportunities a virtual conference allows, such as geographic diversity and speakers which would have otherwise not been able to present. Our keynote this year will be Michael Norton, a professor at Harvard Business School known for his expertise on the relationship between money and happiness. 

Since our last update, we also held several programs including a prospect management workshop, a planned giving program, and several conversations around recruiting, onboarding and the recent salary compensation survey report. Over the past few years we have all seen (and many also experienced) a significant shift in position/job changes and we wanted to ensure that we are supporting our community by offering programs and other information related to working in the prospect development field. This spring we will continue to host programs in this area, such as the upcoming think tank focused on onboarding later in March.

Apra Ohio

Virtual Events

Apra Ohio (OPRN) continues to host virtual networking and learning roundtables for members and colleagues from other chapters. Topics scheduled for discussion in the next few months include talent and professional development and ratings. Details are available at OPRN events. Our spring conference, held May 5-6, will be virtual again.

New Board Member

OPRN welcomed Lauren Ellis, manager of prospect research at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital, as a new board member in January.

Apra Pennsylvania

New Board Members

Apra Pennsylvania has had a busy start to 2022. We have two new board members who have jumped right in. Additionally, some of the returning board members have shifted positions so we are all learning new things.

Events

So far, we have had one virtual roundtable with two more virtual roundtables coming up. One will be on . We also have two webinars planned: one on creating a prospect management system for small and solo research shops and the other on understanding venture capital, private equity and hedge funds. All of our roundtables are free and our webinars have free and paid options depending on your organization’s budget. Our members get early access to events and our mentorship program. 

We have started to plan for our fall conference and are talking about doing our first in-person meet up since 2019, so stay tuned for more! We hope that you can join us for an event.

Apra Utah

Celebrating 25 Years

Greetings from the Beehive State! Apra Utah has an exciting year ahead. Later in 2022, our chapter will celebrate its 25th anniversary, for which our planning committee is hard at work for a hybrid event. We hope to welcome the chapter's original founders to this celebration, to show them that their pioneering work has positively paid off, having an impact on members for the last quarter-century.

Apra Utah's current board has one year left in our current term. We are considering adding an ex-officio past president role to the chapter starting in 2023, adopting a board practice in several other Apra chapters. Many of us are excited to join friends and colleagues at in Atlanta this July!  

Apra Wisconsin

Returning Board Members

During Apra Wisconsin’s business meeting in December 2021, the chapter’s revised bylaws were approved. As part of this, all of our board members agreed to remain in their roles for an additional six months to account for a realignment of each role’s term, to coincide with the calendar year. We’re thrilled to have everyone returning for 2022!

Chapter Awards

We were excited to provide several awards to chapter members in 2021, including the Professional Development Scholarship to Alyssa Scott, the President’s Award to Emily Glinert, and the Amy Disch Memorial Scholarship to Erin Olson. We look forward to hearing how everyone uses their professional development funds in 2022.

Events

We have several events planned for Q2, including a speaker event on April 5. Visit our website here for more event informatio