What Matters Most?
by Mary-Margaret Zindren, EVP/Executive Director
We each have a human need to be valued and to add value – the two core aspects of the psychological term “mattering.”
As organizations, we need the many people involved in our work to feel valued. For AIA Minnesota, this means members, volunteers, and the staff we employ feeling appreciated, respected, and recognized. The recognitions and awards we give out, and the ways we engage with each other every day, make all the difference here.
Last week’s events really drove this home. We surprised Ann Voda, AIA, with the announcement that she had been nominated for and will receive the 2025 AIA Minnesota Gold Medal, recognizing the many extraordinary ways she has served the people of Minnesota and this architecture community. We also shared the difficult news that we had to lay off PaviElle French, a highly-valued member of our staff team, due to financial reasons. It says a great deal about our members and our team, and most especially about PaviElle, that her overwhelming emotion during her final days with us was one of gratitude – feeling appreciated, respected and recognized.
The second aspect of mattering – the human need to add value – is about feelings of self-efficacy and self-determination.
For a while now, AIA Minnesota has been whipsawed by multiple factors and forces over which we’ve had little control. Financially, we have been hit by reduced funding from AIA national, astronomically higher costs related to putting on events, and shifting sands when it comes to funding from grants. We tried to exert control where we could for the past three years, chasing grant revenue and taking on increasing amounts of consulting work under the AIA Minnesota umbrella to bring in non-dues revenue. Doing so stretched our team and also stretched us away from our core mission. The 2025 budget moves us back from these practices and toward a more sustainable and focused future.
Now a staff team of eight – two people down from where we were in September of last year – we have no choice but to revisit what we do and how we do it. We have no choice but to pare down our efforts and focus on what matters most to you.
This is YOUR organization. It is of and for the membership. Members have built every one of the programs, services, and initiatives we have undertaken. Only members can tell us what can be reduced or sunset, and what is most important to be built and sustained for the future.
Yes, we’ve been here before. Over the past decade, we have reviewed and analyzed every program and service, multiple times. We’ve sunset several small programs, reduced frequency of offerings, and changed our structures and ways of working to be more efficient. Everything we currently do has membership constituencies who’ve built it; who love it; who receive and add great value through it.
Together, we can and we must reshape AIA Minnesota to focus on the efforts that the membership believes matter most. We truly need your feedback to so do! During and in the weeks following the A’24 MN Conference on Architecture there will be multiple ways for you to share your opinions, ideas, and aspirations. Know that when you do so, you will be heard because you are appreciated. Because you are respected. Because you matter as an individual person, as an individual member, and as the collective that is AIA Minnesota.
