Finishing touches have been made to my weebly site for SRM 670 and my time "officially" working with WISE for my Mentorship concludes tomorrow. The program that Tiffin and Dr. T have set up for us to get into the field and put our feelers out to see how we can make an impact in this industry has been memorable and very rewarding. I am ready to continue on with finishing my degree and enter the industry. I am glad I had the chance to work with everyone at WISE. Hopefully I can be a connection to Tiffin for WISE Cleveland in the upcoming months (or years) to come. Partnering with Tiffin for the Public Meet and Greet with Olympians in October would be a great meet up for our members (something Shanette and I will discuss tomorrow during our call). There are so many great things WISE Cleveland can help with at Tiffin and with Tiffin students! I can not wait to serve as that connection.
I will continue to update this site and provide an inside look for anyone interested in whats going on with the membership committee at WISE Cleveland (and beyond)!
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Shanette and I had a great conversation last night. We are ready to go with the birthday Instagram post. It should be posted by the marketing team tomorrow (8/15). This is one of the things we have been working on for some time now and it will be great to see it finally posted and set into action. Hopefully everything goes through with the marketing team and there are not any hold ups. This is a struggle that we have faced from the beginning. We put things together and face a road block right at the very end. Hopefully this time, we will be good to go.
At the board member retreat we talked about the possibility of adding another volunteer to our "membership team." After our talk last night, Shanette made it clear that we are good the way we are, and we will not be adding anyone new. Her and I work very well together. Lauren and Shanette feel comfortable with me staying on board after SRM 670 and helping out beyond my requirements. We will be putting together a membership survey within the next few weeks. We are looking to see how our members feel about our chapter. Are they engaged? Do they feel that we have enough social events? What social events would they like to see going forward? Is a heath and wellness social event that people would attend if we planned it? What do our members feel WISE Cleveland should do for them? We just are at a point where we need to find out a little more about our members and a survey is the best way to do that. For the September social event we are going to go with something other than the Harness event. We are probably going to do a meet up at Cleveland Urban Wine in Cleveland Heights. That is the same location that we had the board member retreat a couple weeks ago. This would be a free event where members can purchase drinks and socialize/network with other members. This is the same type of event that we have held in the past, that tend to not be too heavily attended so I will be interested to see if this time is any different. Things are rolling! I have a conference call with Shanette tonight to discuss a whole bunch of things. We are in the process of planning our membership meet up for the month of September. We have a lot of idea to bounce off each other tonight during our call. I reached out to a friend who works at Harness Cycle downtown to see if their space was an option. Harness is a stationary cycling full-body workout that goes well beyond cardio. It is a workout for your core and arms with the use of hand weights. Harness Cycle is a perfect formula of sweat, strength, reflection and recovery. There is an application process for setting up a private event with Harness. The event would cost between $275 and $1,000. It would be a 40 minute ride, with the instructor of our choice at whichever location we choose. It could be a really cool experience for any of our members who choose to participate. Everything will be planned and ready to go before the 2nd August newsletter, which will be here before we know it. The next big thing that we have been working on is using our chapter Instagram account to announce members birthdays. We noticed that other chapters were doing something similar so we got the ball rolling. After the long awaited development of the image from our graphics guy, we have the artwork ready to go! Now it is time to plug in the names and get everything rolling. We will be splitting the month up into two, 1st to 15th and 16th to 31st. Thus, two birthday announcements a month, increasing our Instagram activity incredibly. The plan is to get the information to the marketing team a few days early to give them time to post at their discretion. Be on the look out for the graphic below! I'll give an update tomorrow on our conference call tonight! The meeting we had last week has set some things in motion! Finally our Instagram page is becoming more current and things are being posted. At the board member retreat we took a few pictures that were perfect for posting on social media to share with members, and beyond. It took a few days but they finally made their way to the chapters page. It events like this that need to be shared, on behalf of the WISE CLE social media accounts, but have not in the past. Maybe this is the start of something new!
It is a great time to be from Northeast Ohio! MLB and the Cleveland Indians organization are coming to The Land for the 2019 Mid Summer Classic! This morning the Indians organization unveiled the logo for the event. The Greater Cleveland Sports Commission will play a key role in this event. After our meeting last week, I talked with Becky, who is one of the programming board members. She works at the Greater Cleveland Sports Commission. It was awesome to hear all the inside planning that has already taken place with bringing the event to Cleveland. WISE will also be involved in this event. The extent to which has not been determined just yet. Possibly volunteering at an off site event or attending a seminar/speaker who is here speaking on behalf of the event. I would love to join the forces at the Greater Cleveland Sports Commission. Maybe this event will allow me to open another door. Shanette and I talked this morning. We are going to touch base tomorrow afternoon because she has a big event tonight for the Cleveland United Way that she needs to focus on. As my official time comes to an end working as an intern with her, I plan to keep our conversations ongoing. Jayme stepped down from her position on the board, so this is a great opportunity for me step in. If I am not an official member, I can still fill the void for the next year until I could officially join the team.
Friday was the single best day of working with WISE to this point! The Board Member retreat was a huge success. We meet at Cleveland Urban Winery in Cleveland Heights. It was the perfect space for this type of meeting. We were there before they opened, so we had the whole place to ourselves. Cleveland Urban Winery is a female owned business that is nestled in the heart of Cleveland Heights. They bottle their own wine and provide light appetizers to their patrons. There were a total of 9 of us in attendance on Friday, all with the same goal in mind. This was a great opportunity for each division leader to share their ideas for the upcoming year. The fiscal year for WISE runs July 1 to June 31, thus the timing for this meeting.
The meeting began with Lauren, our president presenting the retreat agenda. Lauren is a great leader and has already made great changes in the organization during her time as president. We did a goal setting activity to start off the meeting. Each of us was asked to write down one personal goal and one goal for WISE CLE. My personal goal was easy. My goal is to remain an active member of WISE beyond my mentorship requirements that conclude on August 16th. And my goal for WISE CLE is to grow the chapter via social media outlets. It was interesting to hear everyones goals, because they were all very similar. Everyone hopes to use social media in a much better way than what we are currently doing. From there we went on to reviewing the proposed budget for the 2018-2019 fiscal year and compared it to where things were for 2017-2018. The largest expense for 2017-2018 was the Women of Inspiration event. We came to a final consensus that we need to scale things back slightly to keep costs down and be able to spend funds in other locations. This year a large cooperate sponsor did not renew their membership, which is a huge hit to the organization. We are now on the hunt for another big player to join to fill that void. It was interesting to see what all went into the planning and expenses of the Women of Inspiration event. The event was a huge success but I was not on the planning side of that event so to see the number after was intriguing. We then broke up into committees to discuss our ideas a little more specifically. We will be targeting local colleges and universities in hopes to gain membership interest. We have already reached out to the new female athletic director at John Carroll and we have a great longtime relationship with the administrators at Baldwin Wallace. We work hand in hand with the programming team for some of this time we discussed a schedule of events for the next 12 months. As of right now there are some things tentatively scheduled, at least one event each month. With the MLB AllStar game (ASG) coming to Cleveland next summer, we have a great direction we are headed. There will be membership outings in October, April and June/July. Not all are themed around the ASG however. We are going to all reach out to contacts we have locally that may be able to host fitness and wellness type outings. The ideas we have on paper are outstanding and I can not wait to see how it all plays out. We had a nice tour of the winery and found out a lot about their business and how they started! Woman run businesses in the Cleveland area are awesome to find and even better when they support our organization. I am going to be writing a membership committee summary for the newsletter that will be published by the marketing committee within the next few weeks. The goal is to grab current members attention and keep them locked into their professional networking organization. As my time with WISE as a 'intern' is coming to a close, I made it clear on Friday that I am not going to be walking away. I want to continue to be a member and hopefully become an active member of the board. The future looks great with WISE and I am excited to be part of it! Our final preperations have been made. The rough draft of the budget has been shared with the board members. Tomorrow is going to be an amazing experience. Our budget is lower than what I had expected but I think we can get more things donated than what they have typically had in the past. Low numbers are not limits for this membership group. We have $250 for printing needs, which I do not think we will even come close to. My goal is to contact local printing companies to help with expenses we may come across throughout the upcoming calendar year. The plan is to have the same approach for food options for membership events we hold throughout the year. There is no hard in contacting local businesses. The worst they can say is, “no sorry we do not give out donations.” At which point I will keep searching, until I find a business that is willing to jump on board with us. We shall see what we come across, but for now, tomorrow is the first step.
As we head into the final few days before the board member retreat, we are putting together the final pieces that we want to share with the rest of the board members. Our google document is filled with everything we plan to share, including a rough brochure idea for membership. Getting something like this together and on paper is going to be the start of the future of WISE Cleveland. I am eager to see what the other committees have come up with for the year as well. This is the opportunity for everyone to share their ideas for the upcoming year. Anything that has a financial need should and will be shared at this meeting, from my understanding. Right now, there are some events for the year for social events, but I also believe during this time that those ideas will be out of the calendar. I am excited to be part of those events as well. Social events are the best place for everyone to network and connect for the betterment of the membership base. The possibilities of this organization are tryly endless. There are possibility’s for work and employement opportunities, social friendship development, connections to better current employement positions and so much more. I feel like there is so much for that the organization can do for all of us, if we just put a little extra time in. It all begins Friday.
With upcoming social events, the goal is to gain membership from those events. In the next few days we will be developing a brochure or flier to have on hand at these events. These can be used to give a broad idea of where potiential members c
an go for more information regarding joining WISE Cleveland. These fliers can also be used as a basis for a table set up at female based events, whether it be sport based or event based around the city. We are missing prime opportunities to gain members at social and sporting events. This could just be the brink of bringing in new members with new connections to our organization. We need something on paper. The marketing team needs to help with this next step. I got the best news yet this morning from Shanette and the rest of the WISE board! They have invited me to join them for the board member retreat next week! The retreat only lasts for a few hours but it will be an amazing opportunity. I am beyond excited to join and share my ideas with the group and help grow the organization!!! Shanette and I talk daily about the ideas we both have. We have a google doc where we are able to keep all of our ideas in one central location. It is amazing how google has opened doors for professionals to work together, even from remote locations. WISE is a volunteer based organization, so all of the members have other professional lives. This allows meeting face to face on a daily basis nearly impossible. The use of technology has really eliminated this problem for our organization. The remainder of this week will be spent with Shanette and I racking our brains to come up with as many ideas as we can before next Friday. Our google doc will be exploding with new ideas for programming and gaining new membership. The countdown is on!
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Kori BrownHere I will blog about my experience working with WISE Cleveland. Archives
August 2018
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