Morning Buzz by Kirsten Wyatt
What I’m Reading: The Color of Law by Richard Rothstein
What I’m Watching: The Romanoffs on Amazon
What I’m Listening To: The Hearing on NPR
Why This Buzz is on a Sunday: We’re making some change to what non-members have access to on ELGL.org and the Weekly Reader and I want to make sure everyone is well aware of these changes so you don’t miss out on any great content or events.
Earlier in 2018, after a digital upgrade analysis, ELGL instituted a new membership software system, and in mid-2018, we upgraded ELGL.org to the site you’re looking at now. We also fine tuned our discussion forums on Facebook, and enhanced our job board to be self-service for our members.
These upgrades were the result of extensive member feedback on what our members most expect from a modern professional association and as we approach the end of 2018, we’re pleased with the upgrades we’ve made and are thankful to our members for offering thoughtful feedback to build out these digital tools and services.
We’re now starting the next phase of this process, which is to fine-tune our members-only offerings for our members.
ELGL currently has 4,000 active members and 38,000 people on our email list. We also have 3,600 Facebook friends, 1,300 members in our members-only Facebook group and job board, and 10,000 Twitter followers.
Effective November 1, we’re locking down some of our digital services for our members. This means that if you’re not currently a member but have been enjoying the Facebook discussion forum, job board, or the Weekly Reader content compilation each week, you’ll no longer have access.
If you’re not sure if you are a member, you can quickly check your membership here.
If you think there’s an error, please email our Member Services Coordinator Emily Edmonds and she can help you out.
Why this change? A few reasons:
First, our commitment to sharing the best local government content and trainings remains. We’re not adding paywalls to ELGL.org and we rely on the good nature of our members and followers who enjoy the content they find on ELGL.org to pay for membership to support our work.
However, given that we have so many members who willingly support the organization, it’s important to recognize those members with offerings that go above and beyond what you can find if you simply visit ELGL.org each day.
Simply put, we believe that we’ve created the very best local government job board… the very best local government webinar library… the very best local government discussion forum… the very best local government weekly email newsletter: these are valuable resources for our members.
And so, if you want to continue to receive access to these services, make sure your membership is up to date. Our dues remain remarkably low – $15/student and $30/person – and so this isn’t a money grab. This is our way of recognizing the 4,000 of you who have said “YES, I’M IN!” with the ELGL mission to engage the brightest minds in local government, and we’re ensuring that our members get access to the very best in local government.
We also continue our commitment to affordable events. As an example, tickets to last month’s #ELGLPopUps were $50 for a full day of local government learning. We work with our sponsors and use their financial support to directly reduce attendees’ the ticket price, so cost is never an impediment to attending one of our events. We know this is important for both our local government members, and the sponsors we work with. Their financial support creates events that anyone can afford so they can build their knowledge, skills, and abilities which makes cities and counties stronger.
In closing, I encourage you to do two things:
- Check your membership status – is it current? If not, please join or renew.
- Encourage your local government network to join ELGL – membership directly supports the great benefits that you enjoy and helps us engage the brightest minds in local gov.
One final note – when you check your membership, be sure to check using the email address that you most likely used when you signed up. Many of you have two email address (for example, both personal and work accounts) and so if you can’t find your membership with one account, try your second account. And don’t forget to email Emily if you run into problems.