Chairman’s Message: Growing the Membership
One of the things I have enjoyed the most about my term as Chairman of NUCA is writing these columns, but I haven’t been looking forward to this one. This is my final Chairman’s Message before the end of my term as I hand the gavel to Tom Butler at the NUCA Annual Meeting in Las Vegas on March 13.
The focus of my term has been membership growth. At the start I laid out goals for engagement, retention, and recruiting. While some of those goals won’t be measured until March 1, all signs point to a very good response from our members and chapters.
We welcomed nearly 450 new members to NUCA in 2022. That is a very impressive number that got us to a total membership count of 1,986 members at year’s end. But the most important statistic is retention. There is no better indicator of how we are doing as an association than our retention rate. I challenged members and chapters to meet 93% retention from March 1, 2022, to March 1, 2023. I’m very optimistic that we will meet that goal.
I love the focus of our association. Our past two strategic plans included focusing on adding tangible member benefits (2016) and improving the member and chapter engagement (2019). I feel those two initiatives have improved the member experience and shown real value in being a NUCA member. They have been major contributors to our recent success.
Other initiatives in the 2019 Strategic Plan led us through a defining period for NUCA the past three years and put us in a great position to succeed. When we met last September, we decided that we would keep that same framework and only make minor tweaks to that 2019 version. With a roadmap like that, I expect nothing but continued success for NUCA.
Serving on the NUCA Board of Directors, the Executive Committee, and as Chairman will be experiences that I will always cherish. I have met so many great people from all over the country. I have had the opportunity to serve with some of the best leaders I have ever met and I have learned so much from them. Some of those leaders will be the Chairmen over the next few years and that bodes well for NUCA. And I cannot say enough for our staff. They do an excellent job of representing our industry and it has been a pleasure to work with them.
Thank you for this opportunity and I hope to see all of you in Las Vegas in March.
Sincerely yours,
Ryan Kinning, NUCA Chairman of the Board / Penro Construction Company