AFP-NYC recently sat down with the Emerging Leaders Committee Co-Chairs, Juliana Weissbein and Jace Prokupek, to learn more about their motivation to rebrand.

 

AFP-NYC: What was the main motivation behind renaming your committee from the ‘Young Professionals Committee’ to the ‘Emerging Leaders Committee’ and what do you hope to convey with the new name?

 

Juliana: We constantly got questions from AFP members about age criteria to attend our events. Of course, all AFP-NYC events are open to everyone and we never have any types of attendance requirements. Nonetheless, we understood the confusion.

 

Simply put, including ‘Young Professional’ in our committee name was confounding. ‘Young Professionals’ signifies a very specific type of fundraiser. We commonly heard feedback from people that using this term causes our network to think that serving on the YP Committee or attending our events are only possibilities for folks who are ‘young’. Additionally, this term does not include fundraisers who may be older in age but new to the industry. While our committee constantly communicates that we want to attract fundraisers of all ages and stages in their career, we felt keeping our YP name caused an unnecessary battle that would be eradicated with a name change. Additionally, we hope this name change will increase membership at our programming and attract a more diverse crowd.

 

 

AFP-NYC: Great point. So what type of AFP members do you hope to attract to your events? Is there any age limit to who can attend your events or join the Emerging Leaders Committee?

 

Jace: The goal of the Emerging Leaders committee is to steward and create content geared towards those who are new to the fundraising industry. The mission and activities of our committee have not changed. The purpose of the Emerging Leaders Committee is to create a strong community of individuals new to the fundraising industry within the NYC Chapter of AFP and the philanthropic and non-profit community in the greater New York City area by providing professional development opportunities, networking events and cultivating a deeper sense of engagement within the Chapter and its activities. We feel that ‘Emerging Leaders’ still signifies our committee’s purpose but takes the emphasis off chronological age.

 

 

AFP-NYC: What is your committee looking forward to in 2019?

 

Juliana: There is so much to look forward to! Each year we host three networking happy hours and three professional development events. This year we are excited to be collaborating with other AFP-NYC committees to increase our impact and diversify our content. Specifically, we have a Spring Happy Hour coming up on April 4th where attendees will be able to meet our committee members!

 

Most importantly, the Emerging Leaders committee is thrilled to be formally working with the IDEA Committee to ensure we are setting the gold standard for how professional membership associations welcome, embrace, and engage people of all backgrounds and perspectives into the association and in the fundraising field as a whole, thus making the fundraising community better equipped to fund social-good works, ultimately, fully serve our country’s and our world’s needs.

 

 

AFP-NYC: How can AFP-NYC members learn more about what your committee is up to?

 

Jace: The best way to stay up to date on our activities is by signing up for the emails at AFP-NYC as we routinely blast out invites. Our chapter calendar, Facebook or Twitter are great places to follow as well. 

 

And of course, we are always happy to answer questions too! Feel free to reach out to us at jace.prok@gmail.com or juliana.weissbein@gmail.com