Dear ACE members,

Next month, your Board of Directors will make its most important decision of the year. The board will choose the next management firm for the organization. Two firms will make presentations before the board at its fall board meeting, and the Board plans to make a decision by the end of the meeting, Oct. 12.

The job will be both easy and difficult. Easy because both finalists are outstanding organizations. Each is accredited, each has a (positive) history in the association management business, and their references sang their praises. Both impressed Mary Wirth, Beth Forbes, and me on recent site visits.

It will be difficult, because both are so good. Both have ideas on how to grow membership and raise revenue, two key issues for ACE. Each brings different approaches and management philosophies to the table, so it will boil down to how we want to move forward as an organization.

Regardless of which firm the board chooses, we will be in trustworthy, vetted, experienced hands.

A special thanks to the search committee who spent hours writing and distributing the original RFP, sifting through 20 proposals, going through processes to narrow the choices, conducting Zoom interviews, following up with references, and conducting a site visit: Doug Edlund, Beth Forbes, Becky Koch, Elizabeth Gregory North, LaRachelle Smith, and Mary Wirth have done yeoman’s work. Thank you!

Suzanne Steel, ACE President
Learning Communities are the Heart of ACE

Learning communities are the heartbeat of ACE

They serve as your personal network of peers and mentors at other institutions that you can learn from, teach, and partner with in your professional journey. They are a go to source of information and professionals that understand your daily challenges. They can serve as a benchmark for your unit or a source of new ideas.

They also serve as professional development providers. One of the most important roles of Learning Communities is to provide professional development opportunities for its members. This comes in the form of member webinars, blogs, guest speakers, etc. Last year the Learning Communities joined forces to help fund an outside speaker at the conference.

You can join one Learning Community, or all nine. You will find the list and can join at the ACE website at http://aceweb.org/learning-communities. To join a Learning Community you need to login at the top, right of the ACE website, click on your name, and then edit your profile. You will find a list of all of the Learning Communities and can select the ones of interest to you. For more information on Learning Communities contact Mary Wirth at mfw10@psu.edu

We need you! Leadership Needed for the Publishing and Graphic Design Learning Community

One of the best ways to take full advantage of ACE is to volunteer to serve as a leader in the organization. Currently the Publishing and Graphic Design Learning Community is need of volunteers willing to take on a leadership role. This is a great professional development opportunity and a way to meet your peers across the country. You can find out more about the roles of the Learning Communities and the responsibilities of the leadership at https://www.aceweb.org/learning-communities. Contact Mary Wirth at mfw10@psu.edu if you are interested or have any questions.

Hold Your Calendar! ACE Professional Development Sessions Scheduled Dates

At the Learning Community central meeting at the June conference, members decided to set aside two dates per month for ACE to schedule professional development offerings. This way ACE members can hold their calendars ahead of time in anticipation! The dates are the first Tuesday of the month and the third Thursday of the month at 3 p.m. (Eastern). Block your calendar now as the Learning Communities begin scheduling their sessions.

ACE Purchases Zoom Account for Professional Development

ACE has purchased a Zoom account that members can use when hosting ACE professional development offerings. Contact Holly Young (Holly.Young@unh.edu) to schedule your Zoom meeting.

Mary Worth, Learning Community Director

Serve others as an ACE/eXtension Fellow

Two opportunities are available for ACE members to serve as “key informants” by using their communications strategy and marketing expertise to enhance eXtension efforts.

Two ACE/eXtension Impact Collaborative Fellows will be selected in December: one to focus on strategic communications planning and the other on marketing tactics. The Fellows will work with eXtension as national consultants, providing expertise in face-to-face meetings, virtual sessions and webinars for the 2018 calendar year.

Expenses will be paid along with a $1000 stipend. The deadline to apply has been extended to October 15. More information on the fellowships and how to apply is available at  https://www.aceweb.org/resources/Documents/ACE%20eXtension%20Fellows%20Proposal.07.17.2017.pdf

For more information contact Elizabeth Gregory North at  elizabeth.north@msstate.edu

Elizabeth Gregory North
ACE President-Elect

Using ACE Email Lists

ACE hosts several email lists to make it easy for members to communicate with each other. Each Learning Community has an email list, plus life and retiree members, state representatives, Learning Community leaders and the board.

When you renew your ACE dues each year and select your Learning Communities, you’re automatically added to the email lists for those LCs. Instead of responding “please take me off this list” or asking our Executive Director Holly Young to add you to an email list, please login and edit your profile.

ACE doesn’t want to contribute to your spam, so that’s why only people who are on an email list can send to it. However, if you want to share something with members of another LC, you’re welcome to send the information to Holly, and she can forward it to that group, copying you.

The email lists are provided in the Members-only Information of the ACE website rather than publicly. To get there:

• Go to www.aceweb.org and login at the upper right. If you can’t remember your password, just click on “forgot password” for a new one. You don’t need to contact Holly for a new password. 
  
• Click on the Member Resources tab, slide down to Members-only Information and click on ACE Email Lists.

Feel free to use the ACE email lists to ask for ideas from your colleagues, share an idea, request feedback, recommend a resource, etc.

Becky Koch, ACE Treasurer

ACE joins the 20th Annual Ag Media Summit in 2018

August 4-8, 2018
The Westin Kierland Resort and Spa, Phoenix/Scottsdale, Arizona

A first-ever opportunity. ACE is joining forces with the 2018 Ag Media Summit (AMS), the largest annual gathering of crop and livestock media professionals in the United States.

ACE will partner in this joint meeting of the American Agricultural Editors’ Association, the Livestock Publications Council and the Connectiv Agri-Media Committee. With the addition of ACE, more than 850 media and communications professionals are expected to attend.

More about Ag Media Summit. The AMS provides excellent professional development opportunities with sessions on a wide range of communication issues. It also offers an ideal chance to promote your organization to working agricultural journalists from across the country.

This annual meeting attracts the top writers, editors, photographers, publishers and communication specialists from a variety of agriculture publications and organizations. It begins with pre-meeting events, followed by three days of programming.

Be a part of the next AMS. A call for session proposals is scheduled for late October. Because ACE sessions will run along with other AMS sessions, this is also a great opportunity to present on topics that would interest a variety of communicators. Please consider submitting a presentation proposal.

Lori Greiner & Martha Filipic
Co-chairs of the 2018 Conference Planning Committee