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Administrative Professionals Day
Created By: Stephens, Robin On Tue, Mar 16, 2010 08:47 PM
I am curious about how your organization celebrates Administrative Professionals  Day- Official or non official.

I am meeting with a few of my fellow Admins. this week to plan a social gathering for our peers. We have several locations here in Columbus and while we consistantly work with Admins located in the other buildings, many have never met in person. So a thought struck me to plan a small gathering with a few door prizes and maybe even a speaker. With this not being supported as a company function - meaning there is no budget (not that I have asked) - this event will completely be on our own.  I am thinking of starting out by gathering those that I work with most and let them spread the word to those they work with.

Let me know if you have done anything similar, I'd love to hear any ideas that you may have on putting something like this together. Thanks in advance for your advice.
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John Desmond
3/21/2010
9:00 PM
As a relatively new member of the Bellingham chapter, I continue to be impressed by the level of involvement of our chapter in a wide variety of programs and projects. These include chapter-specific events as well as those with a broader scope, such as APD, which tend to include not only members from other chapters, but persons from the (non-IAAP) community as well. I attended my first APD last year and, though it was the luncheon only, I was truly amazed at the support I saw for admins that exists in our community. A "Thanks" to 'veteran' members like you, Mel, that inspire newer members to participate and, in turn, reap many of the benefits of our membership we might otherwise have missed.
Melanie Loughmiller
3/18/2010
4:40 PM
The Bellingham Chapter does a whole day event to celebrate APD. We start the morning with a 15 minute speech about how IAAP is a huge value. Then have a program of 1.5 hours with a speaker. The luncheon is held with a vendor fair, door prizes, raffle, and each attendee receives a bag of useful office items. We always have a reading of the Proclamation for APW/APD by our Mayor and County Executive. In year's past we have had an Administrative Professional of the Year. We then have a 1.5 hour afternoon seminar.
Since the luncheon-only is an option for members and visitors, we usually get a huge variety of individuals in attendance for that portion of the event. We have a pretty good showing of employers who are there celebrating with their administrative staff.
This has been a wonderful opportunity for our chapter and for me as a member. Yes, it is a fair amount of work. We have, however, been able to get great speakers for (usually) a budget price. We have worked pretty hard to keep it affordable to members and still provide quality programming (and recertification points). We do receive a fair number of executives purchasing "attendance" for their support staff.
It is always a wonderful networking opportunity!
Mary Gayle Thomas
3/18/2010
12:15 AM
Our organization as a whole does "Staff Appreciation" events, instead of APD. Our department tries to do its own individual *something*. In the past we've hired a speaker (usually recommended by me, someone I've heard at IAAP events). The speakers generally will speak for $250-300 instead of their usual fees because it's an IAAP referral. One of them had their book for sale, too, so that tends to make for a lower fee. We followed the speaker with a potluck lunch and also had small door prizes. The speakers have joined us for the lunch so they mingled with our employees one-on-one, too.
Casey Deats
3/17/2010
10:16 AM
Our chapter hosts an APW event (this year will be our 9th year), with a speaker, door prizes, raffle items, and a vendor expo. We charge a certain amount for IAAP Members and a certain amount for Non-Members usually about $5 higher than the Member Price. We also solicit different local companies to be vendors at the Expo and charge a certain amount for vendor space. We also get sponsorships to help pay for the speaker.
Last year we hosted a lunch and no expo and it didn't go as well, so we've gone back to the breakfast and a vendor expo.
We send the brochure out to our members who are then asked to forward the brochure to other admins and supervisors. We spend time in the months before the event gathering names, addresses, and e-mail addresses of local companies who might not be represented in our membership.
The organization I work for sends most of the admins, even admins who aren't members of our chapter, along with their supervisors. The APW Breakfast has an average attendance of 130.
Good luck with your planning. Would love to hear how it turns out!
Robin Stephens
3/17/2010
6:41 AM
That does sound like a lot of fun. Thank you.
Debra Pohl
3/16/2010
9:46 PM
The Evansville Chapter has planned an AP Day Luncheon this year based on results from a survey done last spring where as in the past we had an AP Day Breakfast. We charge a certain amount for IAAP Members and a certain amount for Non-IAAP Members usually about $5 higher than the Member Price. We also solicit different companies to be vendors at our AP Day Event and charge a certain amount for vendor space, but don't know how much is charged for a vendor booth.
Once the AP Day Invitation was finalized by the AP Week Committee, it was sent out to all Chapter Members and to those who attended the previous year. Then the Chapter Members and guests from previous year can forward the invitation to the Administrative Professionals they think might be interested in attending the Luncheon. We hope that changing our event from a Breakfast to a Luncheon increases the amount of people who are able to attend since this is our first attempt at having the Luncheon instead of a Breakfast.
In addition to the Vendors, our AP Week Committee also has a Style Show, Keynote Speaker, and Drawings planned for our AP Day Luncheon. It sounds like they have another successful event planned to celebrate AP Day.
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