President’s Message – November 2020

By Renee Hoekstra, CVS – President, SAVE International

THANK YOU, THANK YOU, THANK YOU. I am very proud and thankful to all of our members, international and U.S., for your involvement and commitment to the Tiger Teams. We had two excellent presentations during our October Board meeting with some great ideas and recommendations to your Directors. We have two more that will present in November. Why was this important you might ask? Our October Board meeting had us focusing on discussing and updating the action items of the Strategic Plan, the recommendations and ideas from the Tiger Teams will have a bearing on the direction of SAVE International.

I don’t know if you remember or even read my article last month; however, I had mentioned that I was a little disappointed in the fact that I felt that I had not completed as much as I personally would have like to so far into my Presidency. What I wanted to share with you was that in order to discuss our Strategic Plan with our Board of Directors, I went back through our Strategic Plan and low and behold discovered that we have accomplished some amazing things. Maybe not exactly what I had planned, thanks to our current challenges, but I thought I would share with you what we have accomplished:

• Completion of the VM Guide – printed and PDF versions available (we’re formatting the e-book as we speak)
• Development of an Ethics Review Committee
• Partnering agreement with the USACE and discussions with the Bureau of Reclamation
• Development of virtual workshop protocols and the successful delivery of hundreds of workshops with outstanding results
• Allowing for virtual VMF 1 and protocols (auditing various VMF 1 courses) and the successful delivery of many courses – more importantly, maintaining the same pass/fail rate for the VMA exam as those courses delivered in person
• First ever successful delivery of the virtual Value Summit – thanks to all of you who attended, we actually saw a profit for SAVE
• Virtual certification opportunities for gaining your requirements to obtain your CVS
• Brand new testing approach with testing centers for the VMA exam – I’m happy to announce that we’ve seen very few problems and have continued to meet our goals for the VMA exam pass/fail rate
• New educational opportunities to gain more PDUs to help support the maintenance of your certifications – see our Fall 2020 Virtual Value Educational Event
• Establishment and conclusion of four Tiger Teams on Membership, Certification, Marketing and still waiting for input on our Government Tool Box
• We are seeing CVS certification at a rate of six per month
• A new SAVE chapter in Australia & New Zealand

I look at this list and say, WOW, I am completely excited about everything that we have and continue to do with a fabulous group of volunteers and members of SAVE International. All of you who have had a part in helping us accomplish these things, and there are many of you, THANK YOU, THANK YOU, THANK YOU.

The next question is where do we go from here? I still have many things that I would like to accomplish between now and June. June will be the formal hand-off of the SAVE Presidency to your very capable Vice President, Michael Pearsall. What I also want you to realize is that the two of us strongly believe in all of our Strategic Action Plans and these approaches and successes will continue with Mike. I am so excited.

So here are some things that we are focusing on as we move forward to add to the impressive list that we have already accomplished. Some of our future focus will include:

• Re-branding SAVE International – this will be a tall order and will be done using a professional organization
• Re-appointing a Government liaison position to the Board
• Partnering with other value organizations across the globe – lets learn from one another
• A focus on inter-organizational agreements with other professional organizations that allow both to benefit from what each has to offer
• Increasing our marketing efforts for SAVE, both for membership and certification – this goes hand in hand with our re-branding efforts
• Improving and offering more educational opportunities for our members
• A new look at the VMF 1 and VMF 2 courses to accommodate the many challenges of today’s market – make sure you look at our Education Forum in this and future issues
• Restoring the International Regional Managers positions to aid us in partnering with our affiliates and many other value-related organizations

I could provide additional items, but some of these things are going to take us quite a while to accomplish. However, I did want you all to see that we do have plans and we will probably be looking again to our membership to aid us in accomplishing some of these action items. Keep an eye out for your chance to volunteer as we put together the requirements for these new teams.

You know me, I need to continue to promote our educational opportunities with our virtual and more importantly our in-person Value Summit scheduled for June 5-9, 2021. I have mentioned this in every e-newsletter and will continue to discuss the in-person Summit in June. This is very important for you to plan on attending at the fabulous Renaissance Phoenix Glendale Hotel & Spa in Glendale, Arizona, USA. It will be so important to include each of you as the next in-person Summit will not occur until 2023, I don’t think I can wait that long to see you again. Let’s all hope that the COVID outbreak will be behind us all and we can all see each other again.

In closing this month, something profound was discussed during the Board meeting and I thought it would be very important to share with you. The following question was asked by one of our new Board members: is this a global society with U.S. roots or are we a U.S. society with an interest in global inclusion? I want our entire society to understand that SAVE International is a global society with U.S. roots. This means that we want to continue to be the premier organization leading the Value Methodology globally. You are all key to our organization. Let’s embrace this philosophy and work together to make value a household word and more importantly a methodology that is sought out by professionals around the world.

Again, stay safe and healthy and more importantly be happy.