|| EXECUTIVE
DIRECTOR LETTER
REAPING A HARVEST After years of planting seeds and nurturing our relationship, the Northstar MLS agreed to add two fields to its database based on the direct request of BATC – one field allows the placement of a HERS score, while the second indicates if the home has green certification. This is a key step in the future of Minnesota’s Green Path.
David Siegel BATC Executive Director
Spring is the time we plant. Fall is the time we harvest. If we have planted well, nurtured our crop over the summer, watered regularly and weeded diligently, we are blessed with an abundant harvest in the fall. We can think of this timeless cycle as a metaphor for activity at BATC. This spring, we began several important activities. We planted the seeds for a powerful Independent Expenditure Fund – Housing First. Our goal is $700,000, which we’ll use in a bi-partisan approach to elect candidates in 2014 that are favorable to our industry. We’ve achieved nearly $400,000 thus far, and this already puts us in the ranks of elite Minnesota Political Action Super PACs. As of this writing, our Large Volume Builders and our Associates have been particularly generous, and we thank them heartily.
This spring also brought forward an extension of BATC’s Parade of Homes brand to a new, high-end Artisan Home Tour. We officially launched the new tour, and at the time of this writing, we have twelve confirmed homes (with a few more expected) and several major sponsors. We’re still watering this event, planning for a full bloom in June of 2014. Last year, we completed BATC’s umbrella brand strategy. It’s a roadmap to keeping our brand powerful. It brought us our mission statement: “Helping our member businesses grow through marketing, advocacy and industry connections,” and our vision, “To be the leading voice for builders and remodelers.” It also helped us to identify our brand personality of being rock-solid, influential, trusted and action-oriented. With our brand strategy in hand, we knew it was time to create an overall Strategic Plan.
4 BUILDERS’ DIGEST OCTOBER/DECEMBER 2013
Spring again found us “planting” our ideas and building out the strategic plan. We have five Strategic Goals for the next two to three years (with so much changing so fast these days, five-year plans are out of favor). The first of these goals is to become the premier brand for builders and remodelers. A key objective of that goal was to evaluate all of BATC’s events, with an eye toward pruning and focusing.
UNDERSTANDING THE VALUE OF NARROWING OUR FOCUS, BATC will concentrate on major events for 2014. We have heard consistently from you, our members, that you are exceptionally busy, don’t have additional staff, and that BATC simply has too many activities. With this feedback in hand, and understanding the value of narrowing our focus, BATC will concentrate on major events for 2014. It’s a shift, and for some it will take getting used to, but we’re convinced that it’s the right
step for our Association and our members. The anchors of this new approach are B3 – Builder Day on the Hill March 12, the Builders and Remodelers Show on April 3 and The BIG Night (Building Industry Gala) celebrating all-things residential construction and BATC. You’ll hear more about our Strategic Plan in the coming months, and we intend for this powerful document to guide us. It will not sit on a shelf, rather, it will drive BATC to greater heights and impact for our members and our industry. And finally, in 2013, we saw the hard work of the Dues Task Force and the new dues formula, come to fruition. This new landmark formula increases BATC’s capacity in the public policy arena, while protecting the investment we make in the all-important Parade of HomesSM and Remodelers Showcase® Like any garden, even as we harvest, new seeds are planted for the next crop. But fall is the time to celebrate that harvest and to be proud of the good work we’ve achieved over this past year. What a thrill – to have successes in 2013 that drive us to even greater efforts and heights in 2014. Like you, we’re now planning for the year ahead, and we’re striving for a bumper crop.
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