President's Letter - January 2007

Dear Friends:

Happy New Year! On behalf of our Women in Development Board of Directors, I want to take this opportunity to wish our near 1000 members a good, healthy and productive 2007 – complete with professional and personal achievement.

Having first joined the WID Board in the early stages of its history, I returned with new perspective on WID's distinctive role in a community of active professional organizations. In these initial months of my service as president, I would like to provide a sense of Board discussion around several priority topics. We invite your thoughts about these ideas – and your participation.

Time for long range planning. More than 25 years old, WID has the maturity, success and experience to develop a long range planning capacity. This will ensure that we are addressing priorities and embracing opportunity. Questions to answer include: What are our sector's pressing issues – and which, among them, is WID especially well positioned to explore? How can WID add particular value in and among a community of strong professional organizations? As WID continues to grow, how can we continue to engage and best serve our members?

Multi-year planning can be a challenge for a volunteer-run group like ours. I am pleased to report that Vice President Terri Hootstein has agreed to take the lead in helping us define a long range planning process and function. We shall keep our members informed as this effort takes shape.

Strengthen "core competencies." WID has an established identity in connection with a number of services, benefits and programs that include: Job Listings, compensation surveys and related analysis, informal and formal networking, City Service, and the Young Philanthropist Award. We must be certain that even our best known resources are as strong and effective as they can be. To that end, we will scrutinize and examine our existing services, survey users, and evaluate feedback to ensure that we are meeting member and community needs.

Find new ways to collaborate and facilitate professional development. Consistent with WID's commitment to member service – and to our larger professional community – we will be offering a form of "one-stop-shopping": Our website will feature links to other of our sister, professional organizations and their key upcoming programs. We are fortunate to work in a region that offers such diverse and rich programming in our field. WID is well positioned to pull together, cross-reference, and promote dialogue and exchange among us. We will continue to identify ways to enhance service, education, networking and information sharing.

Raise the WID profile. Knowledge of WID is broad and deep – in our region and beyond. That said, we intend to do more to raise our profile – through several, targeted marketing initiatives. Board members Phyllis Lasky and Elaine Laughlin are leading us through an early stage marketing discussion and planning process. Stay tuned for details!

Thank you, in advance, for sending along your comments and feedback about current initiatives – or anything else that you would like to see on the Board agenda. Please email your comments to feedback@widgb.org.

And, thank you for all that you do on behalf of philanthropy – to make WID – and our profession – strong and vibrant.

Sincerely,
Ilisa Hurowitz, President