Dear SRS Members,

In continuation of reviewing the progress made toward our Strategic Plan goals, I would like to take the time to highlight our success in Society Stewardship, Membership Communications, and Fundraising.

Over the past year we have continued to carry out society stewardship activities as in recent years. It has only been a fairly recent event that the SRS hired a full-time, dedicated Executive Director.

It has been immensely beneficial to have someone “watching over” the SRS every day. However, the Board of Directors decided that a formal process should be developed to align the goals of the Executive Director with the goals of the Society including a systematic assessment of results. This is important because the Executive Director and the Board have a method to discuss, agree on, and prioritize the activities of the SRS to drive its mission forward.

There are various ways that the Board of Directors communicates with the membership. It is critical to the effective function of the society that successful communication is achieved. To this end, we developed a new website that includes several new features aimed at providing easier access to society information. I encourage you to visit the website and browse through these features if you have not done so already.

This year we completed a momentous and unprecedented fundraising effort that led to generating nearly $2.5 million dollars over five years for our society. This campaign was led by Kathy Reid, PhD, President of SRSF, and Allan Pack, Past President of SRS and SRSF. Many of you contributed greatly to this effort and were instrumental to its success. We are now transitioning to collecting the pledged donations and providing benefits we offered donors. Most importantly, we are working to develop a sustainable long-term fundraising strategy. In order to successfully collect donations, provide promised services to donors, and to articulate and implement a long-term, sustainable, fundraising program, we hired a full-time Development Manager who will focus on achieving these fundraising objectives.

Over the next two days, the Board of Directors will be discussing the society’s goals for the upcoming year. I look forward to providing you with an update in my next blog.

Sincerely,
Andrew D. Krystal, MD, MS
President, SRS