board meeting highlights March Meeting Recap by Christine Irwin, CMP, The Management Office
The board met virtually on March 22 and had a very productive meeting. A lot has been happening behind the scenes, and we used this time to catch up on each department’s progress. On March 2, the Office of the President held a SWOT Analysis to determine what we need to focus on for the next 120 days. Our main goal right now is to engage our members and raise funds to sustain the chapter. Like everyone else, our chapter had to “pivot” this year and develop new and creative ways to make money. MPI Global is still limiting our membership rebates, so we’ve had to find new avenues to make up revenue. We want you as the member to understand that this is why we have to charge a fee to attend most of our events. MPI-CC is a business, and we need revenue in order to invest money back into the chapter and our members. We work hard to provide you with quality content that fits your needs as a planner, a supplier, a new member, or a veteran, so we thank you for your support and commitment to the chapter. We wouldn’t be doing this if we didn’t have members like you! Just a quick update on our membership demographics because so much has changed in the past 360 days. As many of you in the association world know, sometimes it takes a full year to really see the effects something has on membership numbers. For instance, MPI renewals are based on anniversary dates. So if a member was furloughed in March 2020, it didn’t necessarily impact our membership numbers right away because they might not have had to renew until the following January. On any given day in the past couple of years, we hover around 400+ members. Our membership is split almost 50/50 planner vs. supplier, and we have historically high retention rates, hovering around 77% (and we’re very proud of that!). Global considers MPI-CC a highperforming chapter in the membership retention metric. Currently, our membership sits around 330+ on any given day, with our ratio trending higher in the planner demographic. As I write this article, we have 175 planners, 127 suppliers, and various other students, faculty, etc. Our retention rate for February was 68%, which is phenomenal in the current climate! MPI Global overall has a retention rate of 61%. We feel very CarolinaBlitz Blitz| February | February - March - March 2021 2021 16 | |Carolina
encouraged that hotel jobs are coming back slowly but surely, and we will build our membership numbers up to be better than ever. Thank YOU for your continued support as a member and for sticking with us through these COVID times. Now on to April and May! In April, we will be hosting a hybrid event platform tradeshow virtually. I know, most people have to read that twice. We came up with this idea because we heard from so many planners that they are starting to enter the hybrid event world and have no clue how to begin. How do virtual event platforms play into hybrid events? Which platforms have the capabilities that your group needs? To find out, more likely than not, you have to schedule a demo with a platform provider, and there are hundreds of providers out there. It’s a full-time job just to find one that fits your needs! So we are taking this opportunity to line up demos for you as the member to knock out in two days. This isn’t only for planners either! Suppliers will need to know how their hotel integrates with these platform providers for any onsite needs. We’ll incorporate some education on hybrid events to educate both sides, and attendance at this event is FREE. Sign up today! Now on to our Annual Meeting in May. This will be our first-ever hybrid event, and frankly, we cannot wait to be back in person to see your smiling faces (masked up, of course!). It’s at the perfect venue – The Beaufort Hotel – and the education team is lining up some great speakers for us. In-person attendance will be capped at 60 people to ensure we can accommodate everyone safely in a socially distanced manner. Our number one priority is executing a meeting that will keep our members, attendees, and the hotel staff safe. For those who would like to attend virtually, we have created a schedule that allows you to integrate seamlessly into our in-person event. We will have the wonderful and longtime member, John Cruz, CMM, as our emcee throughout the event to ensure that both the in-person and at-home attendees will feel connected. I can’t wait for you to see what we have in store for you!
