When Bill St. John, president and CEO of the Association of Nutrition and Foodservice Professionals, retires from the organization next May, he will leave a legacy of nearly continual change and improvement for the organization founded as the Hospital, Institution and Educational Food Service Society and better known through the years as the Dietary Managers Association.
St. John announced his retirement earlier this week at ANFP's annual conference in San Diego. But, true to form, before he did he talked about several structural changes to way the association will provide content to its members. Noting that although the association's membership is about 15,000, the national conference attendance has plateaued at around 400, he said it was time the organization reworked its meetings strategy.
"In talking with our members, two words that we heard over and over as things they were looking for from the association were connection and leadership," St. John told attendees. "But many people don't have the money for a plane ticket, and the $600 or $700 to stay in a hotel, plus meals and transportation, to come to the national conference."
As a result, the ANFP board plans to alter both the regional meetings and the national conference to address this reality. On the regional side, a series of multi-state regional conferences will be created that will replace the former regional meetings. The planned changes come just one year after the organization changed its name from Dietary Managers Association to the Association of Nutrition and Foodservice Professionals.
"We had regional meetings, but we called them by their cities, like the Greenville regional or the Chicago regional . . ., and they drew people from Chicago and Greenville. These new meetings will be multi-state on scope, in convenient locations to draw more people from the surrounding areas." These meetings will revolve around a theme such as Jourmey to Excellence, he added.
At the national level, the meeting will change in title and focus. Whereas the 2012 conference is known as the Annual Meeting & Expo, the 2013 event will be called the National Leadership Conference. it will be held July 28-13, 2013, in Savannah, Ga.
"The regional meetings will be designed to help you connect, and the national meeting will be designed to help you lead," St. John said.