At this year’s Annual AOTA Conference, the Affiliated State President’s Association (ASAP) hosted a California style “Walk of Fame” Oscar Awards and Recognition event.  Each state president was invited to nominate their state for an ASAP OSCAR for accomplishments over the past year worthy of recognition.  Each state had the opportunity to be nominated for up to three (3) categories for an ASAP OSCAR.

The following categories were identified for the ASAP Academy Awards:

 Membership % of licensed practitioners            Health Care Reform

Website                                                                Face book/Twitter

Leadership Development                                     Capitol Event  

CE and Annual conference                                   Thinking outside the box

ASAP List serve/resource utilization                   New Initiative

It was challenging to select just three categories for Illinois, as we have had many accomplishments the past year.  We decided on submitting a nomination for Leadership Development—to highlight our new orientation process and organizational manual, a New Initiative—to highlight the hard work on reviewing and updating our practice act this year, and the final nomination of Thinking Outside the Box to highlight all the other accomplishments of the year.  

There were over 100 nominations from 40 different states, and I am happy to say that we won an ASAP OSCAR for our Thinking Outside the Box!  Below are the details of our winning nomination:

                             Thinking Outside the Box

                       

We have been fortunate to have some great leaders within the ILOTA that continue to “think outside the box” for ideas to increase membership and member benefits to grow our organization from 355 members last year to 490 this year.  The added benefit of this increase in membership has been additional revenue to reinvest into our members.  Some of these ideas outside the box include:

  • Member Clicks database to efficiently/electronically manage membership applications, renewal notices, website updates and announcements
  • Revised electronic CE approval process (increased revenue from approximately $2,000/year to over $3,500/year)
  • Advertisement opportunities (i.e. “save the date” postcards)
  • High quality ILOTA newsletter—the Communiqué--sent out quarterly electronically and via direct mail
  • Face book linked to ILOTA website to reach non-members
  • CE events throughout the state free or reduced rates for members (recruitment of 30 new members this year; over $6,000 in revenue)
  • Enhanced annual conference process with electronic submission, development of proposal review committee to select more evidenced based presentations;  success evident by doubling number of proposals (66) and revenue (over $30,000)
  • Specific communication plan directed at increasing social media involvement and presence, including a monthly “News You Can Use”

 

Highlighted below are the details of our other nominations:

 

New Initiative Nomination

The IL State Practice Act sunsets in 2014, which inspired us to develop a Practice Act Committee to review the current practice act and provide recommendations for updates.  The committee has been led by two previous IL state presidents Nancy Richman and Patrick Bloom, with assistance from the ILOTA Executive and Full Board Members, our IL lobbyist Maureen Mulhall.  This committee recruited OT and OTA practitioners from across the state to participate with more than 60 people providing input.  They worked diligently to ensure there was representation across all practice areas and collaborated with AOTA, other OT state associations, other disciplines, as well as the IL licensing board to ensure a comprehensive approach.  The first draft of revised roles and definitions was presented to the IL Department of Professional Regulation in January of 2013 for their review and feedback.  The committee has done a fabulous job!  

 

Leadership Development

The Illinois Executive Board has invested a lot of time and energy this year to develop our leadership team for a strong foundation for our organization.  We started with ourselves by creating a strategic plan for each of our roles on the board to help us improve our accountability for our accomplishments to the members.  Our next step was to create an orientation program that was first presented at our annual conference in November 2012, followed by a more detailed orientation in February 2013 where attendees were invited from all over the state to participate in an “ILOTA Jeopardy” game.  The focus was to share the history and purpose of the organization, as well as opportunities to be involved with ILOTA on all levels, from volunteering to assist with a committee to serving in a full or executive board position.  All attendees received a resource binder of organizational documents (i.e. organization chart, standard operating procedures, by-laws, forms, etc).  Success of this program increased our full board involvement from 18 to 25 members.  Our goal is to continue to host an ILOTA orientation at least twice a year to continue to recruit great leaders for our state.

Thank you to all of you who participated in ALL of these accomplishments throughout the year!  We received many compliments from other state presidents on our great successes and they are all “award worthy”! 

 

Peggy Nelson, President

ILOTA