______________________ BY NANCY TOTH, MA Professional Development Manager ______________________

During the past few months, professional associations, as well as other non-profit and commercial providers of professional development, have invited the department into different levels of cooperation in events.

Basically, some PD providers are saying they’ll give us a deal if we help them promote their events. These deals range from discounted registration charges for APEGGA members to full partnerships, in which APEGGA shares any profits and is fully involved in planning and promotion.

We’ve been carefully considering these relationships, and that’s led to the formalization of the basic guidelines necessary to make them work. It’s important to us that APEGGA and its members benefit from each arrangement, so it’s the value of the benefit that determines how involved we want to be and what we’re willing to offer.

In cases of collaboration with other professional associations, we’ll sometimes just trade promotional advertising space. If the provider is a non-profit organization, we’ll sometimes discount how much The PEGG charges for advertising.

If the APEGGA PD Department is a full partner in planning and profit-sharing with another non-commercial group, we’ll likely cover a significant share or even all of the PEGG advertising costs.

We are currently talking with Alberta government departments and other providers of PD about developing more partnerships. Our hope is that we’ll increase the number and quality of PD seminars and conferences we can offer members.

The department is developing standard agreements for future partnerships, so we handle them in a consistent and well-documented manner.

I should note that this doesn’t have anything to do with that The PEGG runs under the PD Opportunities calendar. That section remains open to non-profit PD providers offering events relevant to members. There’s no charge for service, but publication there remains at the discretion of the editor.

One side benefit to all this is that the increased interest in partnerships prompted us to revisit how we approach professional development within The PEGG. That led to the creation of this section, which we hope will make it simpler for everyone to pursue their professional development goals.

Mentoring Program Update

Newsflash! The APEGGA Mentoring Homepage is up and running. You can find it at http://www.apegga.org/mentor. The links are live with the exception of the one for registration as the Colaboro software has not yet been installed.

You will recall that earlier this year APEGGA arranged for a random survey on mentoring. Results indicated over 2,500 members have interest in being mentors and about 1,200 are interested in being protégés – you may be one of them! Over the past several months, we reviewed the features and benefits of the Colaboro mentoring software and purchased it. Electronic matching will provide the most efficient, time-effective and cost-effective way to run the program for our many interested members.

If you think you may be interested in being a mentor or a protégé, please note that at the end of March, the registration process will begin. There will be a nominal fee of $50 to the protégé for the first year ($25 for subsequent years) and no fee to the mentor. All you will to do is go into the Mentoring Homepage and follow the prompts to obtain an authorization number. With the authorization number, you will be able to go to the Colaboro registration site.

See APEGGA’s Mentoring Homepage for information on the mentoring software. For information on mentoring that may help you decide whether or not you want to participate in the program, click on the Mentoring Handbook. By the end of April, when a pool of interested members has registered, the matching process will begin. Watch the website and the next PEGG for more information on this exciting opportunity.