A SWATA Blog!

Greetings, fellow SWATA Members.

The Executive Board has started a "SWATA Blog" to enhance communication of SWATA initiatives and information. We hope to post messages at least every 7 to 10 days to keep you informed of "what SWATA is doing" for you in between our Annual Meetings (we just completed our 54th Anuual Meeting last week; look for more details about that in future posts).

I am Dan O'Connor, the current SWATA President. In this inaugural post, I will discuss something that is often asked: How does SWATA's Executive Board make decisions?

We use two sources of information: responses to our Member surveys and the SWATA goals.

The Member survey provides us with what is important to SWATA Members. Over 400 of you responded to our survey last year--thank you! Our current agenda is a reflection of those survey results, including things like the programming of the Annual Meeting, the location of our Midwinter Board Meeting (coming soon to a town near you!), the creation (or elimination) of committees, our voting process, and setting our Association goals. You, the Member, are determining the direction of SWATA by participating in these surveys. You're responses have been great, so please keep providing that information.

With respect to goals, SWATA most recently revised the Association goals in 2007:

1. Improve communication with Members.
2. Increase and improve public relations, including the promotion of our Association to fellow Athletic Trainers and the general public.
3. Develop online CEU opportunities at low cost for SWATA Members.
4. Increase Membership, and retain the Members we have.

The Board uses this goals structure when deciding how to use resources and develop programs. Proposed ideas and programs are reviewed in light of these goals. In other words, we ask ourselves how an idea or program might help us to achieve these goals relative to other ideas and existing programs.

Over the past year, some examples of decisions and achievements that were a direct result of Member surveys and the SWATA goals include:

• This blog
• A redesigned and updated Web site
• More frequent e-blasts with Association information
• Maintenance of our Membership enrollment (we actually had a net gain of 6 Members)--all other NATA Districts had a decline in Membership
• SWATA logo merchandise (check out the Merchandise link on the left side our Web site--it's some good-looking stuff!)
• A fair and consistent way to identify Members who want to serve on committees (also on the Web site)
• We filmed two educational sessions at our Annual Meeting; Members who were unable to attend our meeting can view these presentations and obtain CEUs at a nominal cost (more info available this fall)
• Development of the Young Professionals Committee to communicate how our Association serves newly credentialed Athletic Trainers
• Approval of a small grant program to support regional AT meetings (more details very soon)

Finally, we track our achievements and progress to make sure our decisions are leading SWATA in the direction we intended. Hopefully that gives you a better idea of how our Board works.

Please consider "subscribing" to this blog. Check back every week or two to keep yourself informed of your professional Association's activities.

Thank you for being a Member of our great Association! (not an NATA Member? JOIN NOW!)