2023 Annual Business Meeting

In this episode of URMIA Matters, URMIA shared updates on what’s new and next from our Annual Business Meeting. All URMIA members were invited to tune in and hear the latest update from the URMIA Executive Committee. This meeting includes a briefing on the association by the president (now past-president), Julie Groves, a financial report by the treasurer, Jim Mulholland, secretary’s report from Flo Hoskinson, updates from the Leadership Development Committee from Courtney Davis Curtis, and Executive Committee news from president elect (now president), Craig McAllister. Also, Rachel Pluviose regales everyone with the exciting events of our 54th Annual conference in Baltimore, while Colorado Robertson speaks about what we all have to look forward to at next year’s 55th Annual Conference in New Orleans. Hear about the what the URMIA Office has been working on and what’s in the future for the URMIA community!

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Transcript

Show Notes
URMIA Executive Committee and Board of Directors

URMIA 2023 Annual Conference in Baltimore

URMIA 2024 Annual Conference in New Orleans

URMIA Specialized Communities (Includes Solo Risk, Professionals of Color, Compliance Community, and Higher Ed ERM Roundtable)

URMIA Strategic Goals

URMIA Resource Guide

URMIA ERM Resource for Higher Education

URMIA Library (Find past Webinars, Podcasts, Community Conversations, and more here!)

URMIA Scholarships

URMIA Call for Volunteers

URMIA Staff

Guests:

Courtney Davis Curtis, Assistant Vice President for Risk Management and Resilience Planning- University of Chicago
Flo Hoskinson, Risk Manager- Oregon Health & Science University
Craig McAllister, Assistant Vice President, Risk Management- University of Miami
Jim Mulholland, Director of Compensation and Risk Management- Grinnell College
Rachel Pluviose, Senior Director of Risk Management & Insurance- Johns Hopkins University
Colorado Robertson, Director of Risk Management- Mississippi State University
Jenny Whittington, Executive Director- URMIA
Julie Groves, Director of Risk Services- Wake Forest University

Transcript
Hey there URMIA, this is Jenny Whittington, URMIA’s executive director. This episode of URMIA Matters features our executive committee delivering the 2023 State of the Association at our annual business meeting. You'll hear our President Julie Groves describe the strategic work we accomplished this year and the other officers will share their milestones we achieved as well. I'm very proud of the good work we did and happy that you were listening for those of you who were in Baltimore, Julie referenced the business meeting at Monday morning's general session when she famously went off script. I'm humbly grateful for the recognition that day, and I hope you enjoyed the recording.

Julie Groves: Well, hello and welcome everyone. I'm going to go ahead and call this meeting to order. This is our 2023 business meeting and for those of you who don't know me, I'm Julie Groves, the current URMIA president, and in my day job I serve as the Director of Risk Services at Wake Forest University. This annual meeting is a requirement of our bylaws, which tell us quote, at the annual meeting of members the President and the Treasurer or their designees shall report on the activities and financial condition respectively, of the corporation. End Quote. So, in short, that's why we're here, and we promise to make this meeting fast and fun. So, on behalf of the entire executive committee and the Board of Directors, thank you for joining us today. It's good to see you all.

Before we get started, I want to provide a brief explanation to everyone who's here for the live event. We converted this meeting to zoom during the pandemic. And now we've concluded to keep this essential function online in order to share this meeting with our entire membership. We're recording this to make it available to all members and we will convert it to a podcast as well. Because of that, we're making some adjustments that you'll be hearing throughout our time today. First and foremost, I'm happy to tell you that URMIA, the corporation, is in good order and here are just a few highlights. We've hit a new milestone as of August 21st, just a couple days ago, URMIA has 2942 individual members. And we could hit 3000 by the end of the year. So, I think that growth chart that was just up on the screen looks really great. So, that's a very exciting thing for our organization.

Here are a few other fun facts. We've done more than 40 virtual programs and educated more than 750 individuals. This included the Best Of series, our Compliance and Higher Education ERM roundtables, and our Community Conversations. Almost all of these were recorded and can be found in our library. We're up to 96 episodes of our URMIA Matters Podcast now, and if you haven't checked those out yet, you really should. And finally, I had the pleasure of attending two of our three regional conferences this year, and we had almost 300 total attendees. So, it's been a good year for programming.

Here are just a couple of other interesting facts. We represent nearly 800 campuses around the world, and URMIA has 595 institutional members and 121 affiliate or company members. For the first item of official business, we'd like to announce that the 2024 Spring Board meeting will be held the first quarter in the French Quarter of New Orleans. We'll share the exact date and time of the meeting once it's finalized. URMIA has historically announced the Spring Board meeting at the annual business meeting, as an invitation to the membership to get more involved. Did you know that our board meetings are open to members? This is my invitation to you to join us and see how URMIA board works, and it's also a great time to get involved.

We had quite a memorable 2023 Spring Board meeting earlier this year at the Happiest place on Earth, Disney World. We had a special visit, as you can see from Pluto, who’s Jenny's favorite character and the board had a fabulous dinner at the Hoopty Doo Review, which you if you have not been there next time you go to Disney, you should. And in fact, while we were there, board members Juan Azcarate and Colorado Robertson were a hilarious part of the show and Courtney Davis Curtis’ daughter, Emerson, literally stole the show.

We're very much looking forward to seeing many of you at our 54th annual conference, September 9th through the 13th in Baltimore, MD. And don't worry if you haven't, you can still register our hotel block is getting full, but there are plenty of other hotels in the waterfront area. Check out our website for options we have two board meetings that are open to the members, while we're there, the 1st is on Saturday the 9th, which will be my last board meeting to preside over. And on Wednesday the 13th, following the last session, newly sworn in President Craig McAllister will hold his kickoff board meeting to get his term started. If you're interested in attending either meeting, please let Jenny Whittington, URMIA’s executive director, know so that we can have the logistics covered. 

I also want to share that our 55th Annual Conference will take place September 28th through October 2nd, 2024 in New Orleans. At the end of the call, you'll hear Rachel Pluviose, from Johns Hopkins University talk about the Baltimore Conference, and then Colorado Robertson from Mississippi State University will share about the New Orleans conference.

Well, it's hard to believe that my year of the URMIA of presidency is coming to an end. I feel so fortunate that I had the opportunity to represent. URMIA, at various events and that I was able to host many interesting people on the URMIA Matters podcasts. We continue to advance the discipline of higher education risk management by finding ways to expand the engagement and education opportunities for our members in person and virtually when I became URMIA president last September in Indianapolis, I shared my theme, you are not alone. Since then, we've worked to create opportunities for all kinds of connections within our association through Special Interest communities and through our strategic plan. We kicked off 2 new communities, the solo risk professionals community. And the professionals of color community, Courtney will tell you a little bit more about the professionals of color community in just a minute. I promise that you are not alone as a Higher Ed risk manager. URMIA has established the solo risk professionals community, where institutional risk professionals can exchange ideas and benefit from the experience, knowledge, and wisdom of peers who are also the only risk managers at their institute, or are responsible for risk management as just one of their primary duties on campus belonging to the solo risk Professionals community, is free and open to all institutional members who are alone and overseeing their institutions risk management responsibilities.

We also have the compliance and Higher Ed ERM roundtable communities for those professionals who have those responsibilities or have interests in those areas. More information about joining either of those communities is online.

The URMIA board has continued to do the important work of our strategic plan. We have 5 strategic goals that are focused on connecting members to each other and to resources. Each goal has a team assigned to accomplish various objectives. You can find an entire summary of these events online. I'm happy to share that good progress is being made on all of them. Each year we update the strategic plan for the following year. And this year, we did a few things that I'm especially proud of. In addition to the two new communities I already mentioned, we introduced water cooler discussions to connect members in a more casual, social way. We also kicked off an orientation series called Colleague Connections for new members. Jenny tells me that this has long been in the pipeline, and we know how nice it is to check things off your list and this Colleague Connections series has been very well received.

URMIA was fortunate in 2023 to inherit 15 institutions from Australia and New Zealand and 20 individuals from those schools. Unfortunately, the pandemic caused their version of Urmia, named AURIMS to dissolve. URMIA had a rich relationship with AURIMS and wanted to help in any way we could. So, we granted 2 years of membership to those AURIMS members who are interested. We held an orientation just for them at 8:00 PM Eastern one evening because that's the beginning of their day, and they're all asleep right now as we're on this meeting, so it will be great to have their input into the membership and we look forward to more developments here.

We also have a myriad of technology. Improvements coming your way, and these are mostly centered around your profile. We want to know more about you so that we can find additional ways to connect with one another. You'll see new questions about your interests. And we'd also like to know if you teach risk management. You'll be hearing more about this throughout the conference and the membership renewal process, but you can take a sneak peek today. In fact, we are having a profile contest. If you go in and update your profile by October 13th, you'll be entered to win a $100 Amazon. Gift card. Please know that none of the fields are required. So, share what you are comfortable with.

Another initiative that has been in the pipeline is the Speakers Bureau. URMIA has hundreds of speakers each year and by the way a shout out to all of you. We appreciate your time and energy to support our mission. We're in the process of rolling out URMIA’s risk management and insurance talent network. The goal of this network is to seek out those among us who want to present so that we have a resource of subject matter or talent experts at our disposal. And we are able to connect those members to each other, there's also a deeper component to this initiative, which brings me to the good work of strategic goal #4.

As I've already shared, we launched the professionals of color community and they report great synergy and new connections. We also continued the Be the Change funded student internship, and provided 2 scholarship opportunities for minority-serving institutions. We recently created a focus group for members who are LGBTQ+ and those who are interested in supporting this member segment to better understand how URMIA can support their needs and educate the membership. Lastly, the Board committee chairs and staff did an afternoon of online training on inclusivity. So, we really have been working to create as many opportunities for connection as possible because in this organization. And no one should feel alone.

At the beginning of my comments. I share that I've had the opportunity to represent URMIA at various events and host many interesting people on the URMIA Matters Podcast. The slide shows a few of these. URMIA is always proud to be on the RIMS’ agenda. And thanks to Craig McAllister, Colorado Robertson, and Lou Drapeau we held a well-attended session in Atlanta. I was part of the team that presented at the NACUBO annual meeting. And we have 4 sessions at the CBMI program in Lexington. This was new for URMIA, and we plan to continue to support this great program and raise awareness about risk management and higher education. I've only scratched the surface of the great work being done by the strategic groups. The other members of the executive committee will also be sharing a few updates.

But if you want to know more, please reach out to any of the leaders, if you want to get involved in any of these groups, please check out the call for volunteers. And now I'm going to turn it over to Flo Hoskinson for the secretary’s report.

Flo Hoskinson: Thank you, Julie, and thank you for the comprehensive overview of our achievements under your leadership. It's truly remarkable to see the growth and positive impact URMIA has experienced during your Presidency. Your dedication to expanding connections and fostering engagement among our members has been truly inspiring. The 2022 annual business meeting minutes from just before our annual conference in Indianapolis were approved by the Board of Directors just last week via electronic vote. For those of you listening, the visuals are linked to this recording in the podcast show notes, also a link to the minutes are published on our website. In fact, all of our minutes are filed in the URMIA governance folder in the URMIA library that members can access 24/7. If anyone has comments about the minutes, please reach out to me or any board member. I also wanted to make you aware that we've launched a revamped version of the URMIA resource guide in late 2022. The URMIA Resource Guide was developed by season risk managers in higher education to aid those new and the profession of higher education management. This guide explains the foundational concepts and curates powerful content, providing a guiding light for those for managing risks in institutions of higher education. I encourage you all to check it out.

Jenny Whittington: Once again, we've had no bylaw changes this year. As a reminder, our bylaws were completely rewritten in 2018 and launched in 2019, and the documents continue to serve us. Well, our governing documents are up to date on the website. I am looking forward to seeing many of you in the at the conference in a few weeks. I also wanted to make you aware of a new resource that we just recently published to the library. It's the enterprise risk management resource. You can see the cover here up on the screen. It will provide you and your team with a better understanding of how to implement strategic ERM programs utilizing various levels of resources, while allowing you to embed risk mitigation and focus on the goal ahead. And thanks to Gary Langsdale for his really awesome effort to get that project all the way to fruition, and I will turn it over to Jim Mulholland.

Jim Mulholland: Good afternoon, all. I'm Jim Mulholland, URMIA treasurer. Please see the 2022 and 2021 financials on the screen. And for those of you listening, the visuals are linked to this recording. I will be reviewing a summary of our financials and informing the membership that we have no plans to increase the dues in 2024. We thank you for your continued support of the statement of positions, which is a balance sheet is first. We ended the year with about $630,000 in cash, which is about 230,000 less than the same time the previous year. However, we had $500,000 in certificates of deposit which increased interest income by about $2250. We have a six-month CD at 3.6% and a 12-month CD at 3.9%, if our cash position remains relatively stable, the six-month CD could move to a 12-month CD. We purchased our CD through old national investments. We currently have around $400,000 at Raymond James in cash equivalents that are earning around 1.35 %. The current rate of return for a 12-month CD through Raymond James is between 4.6 and 4.75 %. We need to consider moving that money into a CD. Our investments with American funds totaling 2.558 million and are down $266,000 from last year. In a volatile market overall, we had a net deficit of $162,000, which is fairly positive considering our investments are down. Statement of activities income statement we increased dues rates and experienced solid retention of members. Staff and board members focused on renewals resulting in dues revenue rebounding. Dues revenue closed at $630,000. We retained 93% of our membership. Total revenue from the regional conferences were $121,000, while expenses were 73,000. The annual conference closed the revenue of $923,000 and expenses paid through December were $686,000. The net revenue was $237,000 for the annual conference budget versus actual. Total dues revenue was healthy and exceeded the budget expectations by 5.76%. Total revenue for the annual conference exceeded the budget by $244,000, which was 35.97% over budgeted projections. Annual conference expenses exceeded budget by $168,000 or 32.4.7%. The budget included a net operating surplus of $161,000 for the annual conference and a net revenue outperforming the budget by $76,000. Staff and board travel expenses exceeded the budget by about $55,000, but payroll was less than budgeted by $50,000. If we wouldn't have had the significant loss in investments, we would have had a net operating surplus of approximately $100,000. And I'd like to introduce you to Courtney Davis Curtis, Chair of the Leadership Development Committee.

Courtney Davis Curtis: Thanks, Jim, and good afternoon, everyone. I'm Courtney Davis Curtis sometime is better known as Emerson's mom, but I'm here today in my capacity as the Chair of the Leadership Development Committee, it's always the role of the immediate past president of URMIA to hold this position, which is really part of our governance, and it's a great way to transition from a lot of responsibility and being super involved to a little bit less involved. But still nonetheless have a very important duty for the organization and that we're finding the future leaders for URMIA. I'd first like to take an opportunity to thank the members of the committee who worked really hard to find such a wonderful slate of candidates. And I'd also like to extend some appreciation to our colleagues who've answered the call and ran in the election that we've held this year. And also, to all who have voted as well, we had a great turn out for our election this year and with a terrific set of candidates, the future of URMIA is in great hands.

So, I'd like you to join me in congratulating our president-elect, Sandy Mitchell of MIT. And our Board of Directors, who will serve in a three-year term at Tuttle of the University of Utah, Tim Wiseman, University of Wyoming, Nakeschi Watkins of Cornell University and serving a one-year term for our Board of Directors, Melany Patrong of Texas Southern University. Big congratulations and sincere thank you and appreciation to all the members of the Community, who continue to volunteer such good work in serving their time in many different capacities to make our association the best that it really truly can be. We do have one board member who is completing her service and will be honoring her departure at Baltimore, but would like to find the opportunity to just highlight Keesha Trim from the University of Richmond now, as well as Julie mentioned in the beginning, our professionals of color community has kicked off earlier this year. We really welcome all persons of color who identify non majority ethnicity and who are biracial to exchange thoughts and support and empowerment of higher education, risk management community. And really, of ourselves as well. It's really open to the professionals of color and anyone in their membership who feels that they belong in these diverse populations. So, one and all are welcome and will have a kickoff event during the conference, which will be able to convene in person as well. I will now turn it over to Craig.

Craig McAllister: Hi everyone. I'm Craig McAllister, Assistant vice President, risk management at the University of Miami and the president-elect of URMIA. I've been a member of the Executive Committee for almost a year now. We meet once a month and really have a pulse on the work of the association. Do you know that the president-elect gets to review all contracts we need to enter into? Yes, that is true. Like, I don't get enough of that at my day job. But seriously, the governance URMIA previous leaders have set up really works. I am proud of the work we've done and the Executive Committee has oversight of the Home Office in conjunction with Jenny Whittington, our executive director. So with that, if you've not yet met our team, you should. They're all on the zoom with us today. Please wave when I introduce you so Executive Director, Jenny Whittington, Director of Information Technology, Ronna Papesh, Resource Manager Lou Drapeau, Senior Director of Events, Michelle Smith, Education Manager, Sue Liden, Director of Membership and Marketing, Theresa Ransdell, and Learning Specialist, Rachel Kuper. So please just a quick round of applause for the for the Home Office here. Silently. Of course, the office also has two wonderful student workers, Carson and Natalie, from Indiana University, to help support the mission of URMIA. For those of you attending the conference, you may get to meet Carson. We're looking forward to having him along, and it would be a good experience for him at the annual meeting. The staff is always there to answer any questions for you. If you want to know more about what goes on, it's flow informed you our monthly meeting minutes are filed in the URMIA governance folder in the Urmia Library. I would also like now to introduce Rachel from Johns Hopkins. Tell us about the Baltimore Conference in 2023.

Rachel Pluviose: Thanks, Craig. I hope everyone is excited for what is promising to be the absolute best URMIA ever. That's what we're going for and that's exactly what's going to happen. We will have the usual great things lined up, but some things will have a very unique B’more twist. So, we're still going to have golf, but it's going to be top golf. URMIA cares will still do its wonderful thing, but we'll have a regatta, which I learned through this process means it is a race of sailing boat. Everyone is more than welcome to join us and sign up for our boat. No sailing experience is needed. We will have an experienced sailor on board who will tell us exactly what needs to be done. There'll be some training at a time as well, they're still available if anyone is interested in signing up to be on a board or to potentially captain a boat, which just means raising money for a really good organization that we've already pre selected. There is still time. We're also going to still have tours, but the tours will include a football stadium and, of course, the incomparable campus of JHU. We will have a 5K as well, but the 5K this time will be along the beautiful waterfront of the inner harbor. As always, we have timely and informative sessions prepared, engaging speakers lined up and gorgeous venues selected. I know everyone will have a great time. Bring your walking shoes. Harbor East has a lot of great places to shop, eat and explore and I look forward to seeing everyone and be more for the best URMIA conference ever. With that, I'll turn it over to Colorado Robertson. He is going to try to keep up with us and NOLA in 2024.

Colorado Robertson: Yes. And we're following Rachel. We can even be the better best conference next year, right?

Rachel Pluviose: There you go. There you go.

Colorado Robertson: So, we're sharing the 2024 annual conference will be leaving behind little Waters and the sail boats and the and traveling to the to the Mississippi River, which I doubt we'll be putting some sailboats down there. On Saturday, September the 28th through Wednesday, October the 2nd, so look forward. The committee is looking forward to hosting everyone in New Orleans for a very unique experience like no other. To build off our 54th annual conference and on track for both professional growth and to ensure our continued success as risk managers of institutions. Conference Committee is already working hard on bringing some of the flavor sounds and sights of New Orleans into the conference. But hopefully, since we're gonna be in such a great city, people will find some time to both immerse themselves in New Orleans, which definitely has a unique way of life, that's both steeped in European traditions and definitely some Caribbean influences, so we'll be spending some time and hopefully you'll find some time to enjoy some jazz, maybe some dishes, but try not to have a sensory overload, which we will get definitely an authentic experience. So, we plan to keep everybody in the loop as we continue to plan the conference to be looking for more information on the AC 2024. But what I can tell you today is we'll be hosted and based Marriott, which will serve as the center in the of the conference, which is a prime location right in the heart of the city, just absolutely from landmarks and other attractions throughout the city. It's also right past the hotel travels, the historic streetcars, which is going to be the emblem of our conference. And there you can get into all aspects of the city. Just walk across the street, you can board in the neutral ground and get anywhere throughout the city. So again, we're looking forward to having you in New Orleans. And again, market calendars now. Put a save the date September 28th through October 2nd. Laissez les bon temps rouler. Alright, kick it back over Jenny.

Jenny Whittington: Now I'll kick it back over to Julie.

Julie Groves: Thank you all. Thank you all for all that you've shared. It's been very helpful, and we promise we keep it short and sweet and we meant it. So, we hope to see many of you in Baltimore at the conference or online for the virtual session and most of all, thank you for being a member of URMIA and supporting higher education and risk management. Thank you all for being here today and the meeting is now adjourned. So safe travels to those of you who are coming to Baltimore.