I’m pleased to serve as chair of the San Francisco Public Relations Roundtable (SFPRRT) for 2018. After chairing the club’s Scholarship Committee for several years, and serving as the organization’s vice chair last year, I’m looking forward to helping steer the organization toward reinvigoration, with more members, and members who are more involved. I’ll be aided in this effort by a very strong Board of Governors who are all leaders in the field — you can see the roster on the SFPRRT.org website.
Membership Renewals
We hope to keep this venerable organization vibrant and relevant, and broaden our reach to growth industries in the Bay Area. You, our members, are central to this goal. If you haven’t already renewed, I encourage you to do so today by the January 31 cutoff, via the link on our site at sfprrt.org/membership/, or directly on Eventbrite. You’ll receive significant discounts on the lunch programs and Holiday Party, and access to our exclusive Member Directory of senior PR contacts in the Bay Area.
Membership is just $75 for the year, a bargain compared to other PR organizations around town. And you can do your part to expand our membership by inviting a colleague or coworker to join, and promoting our activities on your social media networks.
Exciting Changes in 2018
Responding to findings of our recent survey, big changes are in store. For starters, we will hold meetings every other month instead of monthly. Please mark your calendars for the SFPRRT lunches on the fourth Tuesdays ofFebruary (27th), April (24th), August (28th) and October (23rd).
Our June meeting will be an evening mixer, and we’ll cap the year with the always popular PR Round Table Holiday Party, set for Tuesday, December 4, once again at the lovely Victor’s atop the Westin St. Francis Hotel. We believe that fewer meetings will translate to greater attendance, along with more participation and energy on the part of our busy members. In addition, we plan to offer activities for club members in the off months – stay tuned to the SFPRRT.org website for details.
Based on your survey responses, we’re also making our meetings more affordable, with a new location and format for lunches. Courtesy of Board Member Blodwen Tarter, we have a terrific new venue at Golden Gate University (536 Mission Street, San Francisco), in the school’s well-equipped University Center.
In lieu of a formal sit-down lunch, we’ll be offering tasty boxed lunches, which will lower the member price to $25, and and the nonmember price to $35 (with a modest Eventbrite processing fee) — just half the member cost in 2017. We might be the only club in town that is reducing our prices in 2018!
Upcoming Speakers
Our February 27 luncheon will feature Dan Mogulof, UC Berkeley’s vice chancellor for public affairs. Mogulof was front and center with the media in 2017 as a series of highly polarizing speakers – from Milo Yiannapoulos to Ann Coulter – turned the UC Berkeley campus into a literal and figurative political battlefield. Click here to sign up for the February lunch.
The following meeting, on April 24, will be SFPRRT’s annual scholarship luncheon and feature public affairs and crisis management expert Lance Kasselman, whose high-profile PR career has included stints with Uber, AT&T, BP (during the oil spill) and various politicians. After leaving Uber, he and colleague Matt McKenna started Greenbrier, a high-powered crisis management and public affairs firm in San Francisco. Kasselman will detail how he navigated a course to the top echelons of the PR realm, and offer his predictions of where the profession is heading.
Scholarship Deadline
Speaking of our Scholarship Program, the deadline for applications is January 31, 2018. Our scholarships are generous, in the $2,500-$3,000 range per winner, so it’s well worth spreading the word to any local universities you’re in touch with, or to any young people in your sphere who are studying PR, communications, journalism, marketing and the like at either the undergraduate or graduate level. Applicants must be attending a college or university within a 100-mile radius of downtown San Francisco. Students can apply at sfprrt.org/scholarship-program/.
Volunteers Needed
There are many opportunities to get involved in 2018. In particular, we are looking for volunteers for the Membership Committee, the Communications Committee (which handles website updates, social media and eblasts to members), the Program Committee and the Events Committee (which will oversee the Holiday Party, the member mixer and other activities), and the Silent Auction Committee.
Please contact me directly at my personal email, brenda.kahn@yahoo.com, if you can help with any of these gigs. A few hours of your time and creativity a month will go a long way toward strengthening our organization, and making it a vibrant forum for the exchange of ideas about the future of the PR field.
Stay in Touch
I hope you will stay in touch with each other and the organization by following the PR Round Table on Facebook and our LinkedIn page. Share our posts, tag us and let us know if you have news or a great post to share.
