CRPRA meets the 2nd Thursday of each month, September through May.

Please take a look at the 2009-2010 CRPRA Meeting Schedule and mark your calendars!

A note about Membership Rosters...

Going forward, CRPRA Membership Rosters will only be distributed electronically. Furthermore, only those persons who have attended a CPPRA meeting during the two most recent seasons will appear on our mailing list and membership roster. This fall, all persons listed on the roster will receive a PDF version of the roster via email. After that initial mailing, persons who are added to the roster will receive the PDF following the roster update and those currently listed on the roster may request a current copy anytime.

 
        by Sher Jasperse

October 2009 Meeting recap:
"The 21st Century Candidate: Fusing Grassroots Strategies with New Social Media and Marketing"

After getting a "dinner table view" of the challenges of running for public office from his parents' campaigns, Ben Rogers vowed he would never run for office. But eventually this young leader, whose motto is "Decisions are made by those who show up," couldn't resist the call to invest in his community through public service. At our October meeting, Rogers - the youngest person ever elected to the office of Linn County Supervisor - shared marketing lessons learned on the campaign trail and during his first year in office.

As a NextGen candidate who needed to convince voters that he had enough experience and substance to be an effective supervisor, Rogers used both traditional and new media to create a dialog and build connections with people of all ages. He incorporated social networking tools such as Twitter and Facebook into his campaign, but says that local elections cannot be won without the grassroots campaign approaches he learned as a volunteer on earlier campaigns. Rogers set a goal to knock on every door in his district and came close to accomplishing that before he was elected in November 2008. By comparison, he noted that he has 634 "friends" on Facebook, including 154 in Cedar Rapids - showing the limitations of this tool for reaching the neighborhoods he represents.

Rogers stressed the value of "micro" marketing - using demographic information (such as voter age and party affiliation) to target his message to segments of his audience. He also noted that social media are effective at mobilizing young voters to support a cause, if not at getting them to the polls. Now that he's in office, he uses Twitter and Facebook and has a web site, but doesn't blog - striving for a balance between building his new media presence and spending face-to-face time with his constituents.

Recent Move to Clarion Hotel Prompts Questions

As members of the steering committee, we've received several questions about CRPRA's recent change of meeting place from the Coe College campus to the Clarion Hotel and Convention Center.

The Coe College campus is beautiful - no doubt about it - and a stroll there on a fair weather day is a pleasure. But the lack of midday parking availability, particularly in foul weather, was an issue regularly mentioned to steering committee members by attendees. And although the Clark Alumni House is a charming facility, we also struggled with sunlight from the glass ceiling as it interfered with the computer projections our guest speakers often utilize. And, due to the college schedule, we needed to find an alternate site at least twice a year, which we believe caused confusion for some folks.

When seeking out a new location, the steering committee attempted to stay downtown, but could not identify another location appropriate to our size that provided ample parking and was priced so that we could maintain our luncheon meeting price of $15. The steering committee also desired a location where we could book all of our 2nd Thursday of the month meetings (September through May) for consistency, and not have the extra work of securing other meeting sites for the months in which the Coe location was unavailable.

The first CRPRA meeting at the Clarion Hotel and Convention Center was held in May of 2009, after which we booked the fall 2009 meetings and we have recently secured dates at the Clarion through the end of our 2009-2010 season. Although it is not downtown, the Clarion is easily accessible via I-380 and is only a couple of minutes south of downtown Cedar Rapids.

We'd like to use this opportunity to publicly thank Coe College and the staff and administration for allowing us to host CRPRA at the Clark Alumni House for so many years. It was truly a pleasure working with those folks and we appreciate the fine accommodations we received during our time there.

We will review our location decision again at the end of the 2009-2010 season, so please let us know your thoughts about our new venue. Any time you have questions, comments, concerns or ideas about CRPRA meetings or functions, please do not hesitate to contact one of the Steering Committee members listed below. Our goal is to invite guest speakers who will provide us all with insights and actionable ideas we can apply to our work, at an affordable price, in a pleasant, accessible atmosphere.

- The CRPRA Steering Committee