07/19/2022
Hi SMNPPA Friends,
Thank you to all who came to Sonja’s Studio for our event yesterday with Mary Jo Hoffman. Many thanks to Sonja for hosting, Mary Jo for her beautiful presentation, and for Tom Stanley for stepping in for our afternoon presentation. We wish Dave Johnson a speedy recovery. It was great to see everyone and we hope you left with several takeaways and had a fun time.
At the beginning of the day yesterday, we touched on the future of SMNPPA. To give a little background, SMNPPA has been an affiliate organization of PPA for over 40 years. Once called the Cornbelt, it has brought in hundreds of speakers teaching hundreds of photographers. Up until recently, SMNPPA would meet monthly for education and fellowship. Programming was on a consistent day of the week (the 3rd week of every month). Schedules were cleared and that date was always marked for SMNPPA. During the pandemic, we lost our neutral in-person meeting spot and like most organizations, we worked to keep SMNPPA afloat, offering online education, and when it was safe, in-person again. Over the past couple of years, we have seen our paid membership stay somewhat consistent, but, our in-person class attendance has declined. This has unfortunately made budget and future education planning challenging. To help alleviate some of those planning challenges, we have had numerous discussions as to the frequency of class, moving from monthly to quarterly. (For this calendar year, being quarterly, please mark your calendars for Monday, September 19th to join SMNPPA at Tom Stanley’s in Faribault, MN - more info to follow)
What does the future of SMNPPA look like? It was announced at the event yesterday that the September event would be the last for SMNPPA. BUT, as surprising as it was to hear in person and may be to those of you reading this…it doesn’t have to be! We would love to see SMNPPA continue and know you would too. Each of our current board members have held positions on the board in different roles for over 5+ years. Like you, we all have families, kids, and jobs that also need our attention. It’s time to pass the torch to a new wonderful board whom we would be happy to guide. We are, after all, Southern MN - and Southern MN stretches from South Dakota to the Mississippi River.
The future of SMNPPA needs YOU! Now more than ever!! Our current board will be stepping aside at the end of 2022 and we truly hope 3-4 of you will give it serious thought to step up and in to keep SMNPPA afloat. We truly hope that this won't be the end of SMNPPA. Those interested in picking up the reigns, please let us know as soon as you can. We would plan to meet and share with you to help the transition go smoothly - and a transition we hope it is - a pause, not a cancel.
Thank YOU for being a member of SMNPPA,
We hope to hear from you soon,
Heidi, Lori, Nicole, & Lucy