The Your Virginia Steering Committee is pleased to announce that three local associations have accepted the invitation to serve as model or pilot programs for the Virginia Homeowners Alliance/Your Virginia initiative. The three associations, Virginia Peninsula, Greater Piedmont, and Southside Virginia, were selected because of their enthusiasm for the program and for their current successful public policy programs in their respective areas.
“The three associations already have varying levels of public policy programming in place,” commented Cindy Stackhouse, chair of the Steering Committee. “The largest, Virginia Peninsula, was selected because they have a GAD (Government Affairs Director) who has been working successfully with the area for the past 18 years, and because some of their initiatives can provide new ideas for other associations who also have a GAD in place. Greater Piedmont and Southside Virginia have a great enthusiasm for the Your Virginia program as well; while they do not have a GAD in place, can show off some of their programs to other smaller associations. Our local associations have a long history of learning from one another, and this pilot program can offer new shared ideas from those who are already doing the right things and moving forward in building a public policy program that really works.”
In addition to creating a new social media strategy for Virginia Peninsula to adopt to communicate with their younger members, VPAR will serve as a mentor to the other two associations throughout this pilot program. The goal of the model program is to work with each association to forge a new facet to add to their existing public policy program, and to then provide their success stories to the remaining 25 local associations in Virginia so that these ideas may be emulated or modeled by others.
“The eventual goal of the Your Virginia program, especially as it relates to the pilot association program, is to provide opportunities and ideas for all of our local associations to add to, or in some cases, create, a successful public policy program,” added Stackhouse. “We’re excited about this announcement, and look forward to sharing their success stories with others in the coming months.”
