Pub. 8 2017 Issue 3

www.wvbankers.org 6 West Virginia Banker A MESSAGE FROM THE PRESIDENT & CEO By Sally Cline Looking Forward to Member Bank Visits F irst let me say that this past year has been a humbling and gratifying experience and I now have a newfound appreciation for association management and for the fine work my friend and predecessor, Joe Ellison, did for as long as he did. As many of you know, the year prior to Joe’s retirement, he and I were able to travel the state and visit almost all of our 60+ member banks. But after Joe’s retirement, I felt it was important to focus on our internal operations, to learn more about our strengths and weaknesses and our challenges and opportunities, and to work towards achieving the goals outlined in our 2015 stra- tegic plan. Several of these goals will take several operating cycles to reach but trends are positive and we are making great progress. During the past year, we’ve made several notable changes that I’d like to highlight. In August of last year, we hired Loren Allen as in-house Gen- eral Counsel and Director of Government Relations, and in December we hired Amanda Cunningham as Director of Ed- ucation. These were great hires and I believe with their fresh and innovative ideas, both programs will flourish and provide a greater return to our members. I know that having an efficient and effective government rela- tions and legislative affairs program has long been identified as the number one priority of the Association among our member banks. Prior to the start of this past legislative session, we introduced VoterVoice, a new grassroots advocacy platform that has already proven to be a useful tool in tracking and measuring the Association’s GR activities, and well as establishing, main- taining, and documenting relationships between bankers and their elected officials. This tool allows us to alert members to government affairs issues and match them with their elected officials in order to communicate directly to either support or oppose legislation at both the State and Federal levels. We make it unbelievably easy by drafting the message to send to elected officials or members have the capability of editing the message. VoterVoice also allows us to see who is participating. This past year we documented grassroots engagement by a total of 38 different member banks, representing 56% of total membership and an 81% increase from documented bank activity the previous year. We have also documented direct grassroots engagement by a total of 110 individual bankers, representing an 82% increase over the data compiled from the previous year. The increase in grassroots activity is reflected in our recent success at the State Capitol with the passage of SB 344, our key state legislative initiative. Finally, other highlights from the past year: • We moved our offices to Kanawha City in May in order to reduce operating costs; • We added a new bank member, MVB Bank, which results 91% membership of all banks operating in WV. • Our Pension Committee continues to focus on reducing the unfunded liability in our frozen defined benefit pension plan; • Our premier school, the WV School of Banking continues to be highly successful and this past session had the highest number of attendees over the past six years; • Last year, we trained more than 600 bankers through our various seminars, conferences, and other professional development opportunities; • We graduated the first class of the Emerging Leaders Program to help develop the next generation of leaders, and are planning to expand the program further; and, • Our for-profit subsidiary, ProServ, continues to identify products and services that are of most value to the membership. I’m extremely proud of the work we have done this year, and I look forward to what we can accomplish together in the year ahead. My personal goal for the upcoming year is to once again meet with all of our member banks, and I hope that you will share with me some of your thoughts on how we can be more effective and create a greater return on your investment. I look forward to seeing you soon. 