You may or may not know but ILGISA has a strategic plan. In fact, every three years, our board works through the strategic plan and rewrites it. You can find a link to our strategic plan here. You can also click on the top navigation under About > Governance to see links to our Bylaws, Policies/Procedures and Student Chapter guidelines.
 
The current plan breaks down the directives of the board into five priorities for the three years planned from 2017-2019;
1. Strengthen ILGISA's financial standing
2. Grow membership
3. Provide relevant and up to date educational opportunities
4. Raise GIS awareness throughout state
5. Continually improve membership value
 
Within each of these priorities, there are goals and “rocks” or actions that the board has been actively perusing. Under the leadership of our executive director, each year the board has done a fantastic job addressing these tasks as well as moving forward with the priorities. It’s a compliment to CM Services that, though board membership changes each year, direction has not wavered in its purpose. 
 
Next Month, we will seat a new board that will be rewriting the strategic plan for 2020-2022. This survey will assist that board with understanding the needs of the ENTIRE GIS community in Illinois. Every other year we survey our membership (around 500 geogeeks) with an in-depth questionnaire that is analyzed and poured over by the membership committee. That survey is specific to active members. However, this time we are asking all GIS professionals, users, hobbyists, retirees, interns, students, professors or anyone remotely involved in the community to assist us in crafting the next three years and beyond. The survey is short but written to be a great resource to guide these important discussions.
 
Click, Answer & Share!
 
Micah Williamson
Membership Committee Chairman

Hello! I’m Thomas O’Malley, your Membership Committee Chair. Did you know that there is a whole group of volunteers dedicated to improving the ILGISA member experience? Well there is, and we’ve been hard at work this year making sure that everyone that participates in ILGISA gets the most out of their experience. It’s a big job, but thankfully we don’t live in a vacuum, and we can take cues from other successful organizations and conferences.

One such improvement is the addition of a conference Code of Conduct. We value our members and want them to feel welcome and respected. This simple code reflects the values we’ve always held, and institutes a system for reporting and handling infractions. We think we have a great community, and we aim to keep it that way!

Have you noticed the banner ads at the top of the page? Those are ILGISA Gold Sponsors! This year we were able to improve our sponsor packages, making them even more appealing. Better sponsor packages means more sponsors, and more sponsors means more services provided to our valued members! Going forward we want to connect sponsors directly with those services. Last year we had the Wi-Fi sponsor, this year we’re offering a Conference Schedule App Sponsorship. We are fortunate to have generous sponsors that help us add value to ILGISA membership, and we don’t want to see any of that goodwill going to landfills, so we’re doing away with the Padfolio and Registration Bag sponsorships and focusing on more green options.
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I’m excited to see what can be accomplished in the years to come.

-Thomas O'Malley
(Edited by mwilliamson)