In the February 2004 edition of SAME News, I provided members with the SAME HQ staff's top 10 priorities for 2004. Below, I have reported the results and ranked our success, using Red for Poor, Yellow for Good, and Green for Excellent.

Help Posts Increase Membership.

We did not do well on this task since we failed to compete the Membership Kit. We plan to have it published early this year and get it out to Posts for recruiting new members.

Make Individual Membership Renewals Easy.

We improved the SAME Web site and launched the new annual individual member renewal process in January 2005.

Launch New Affinity Programs.

We launched several new programs including life insurance, long distance phone service, SAME Store and SAME Job Center in 2004, a of which are designed to better serve our members.

Provide Conference Guidelines and Assistance.

The Board approved new Regional Conference Guidelines that include a variety of services provided by SAME HQ, including assistance with the RegOnline registration system. Several Posts have taken advantage of our assistance. The guidelines are e intended to result in better regional conferences that serve the needs of Young Members as we as the Pubic and Private Sector.

Partner with the Uniformed Services and Professional Associations.

We are enjoying some excellent partnerships with AEA, ASCE, IFMA, USACE, MATHCOUNTS and learning for life due to the fine efforts of the SAME HQ staff and the Small Business and K-12 Outreach Committees.

Help Posts Implement Web Strategies and Set Guidelines for Post Web Sites.

We have published Post Web site guidelines on the SAME Web site and we have investigated the need to increase the 5 MB free space allocation we have given to Posts. We would like to be more proactive in helping those Posts that do not have Web sites establish one; therefore, we will continue to work on this in 2005.

Update and Align Post Operations and National Committees.

We competed a major update of the Post Bylaws template and eliminated the need for Posts to have a constitution. A form for Posts to designate points of contact with national committees for which there normally is a Post counterpart was paced on the SAME Web site. We began to update the Post Operations Manual with the publication of new Financial Guidelines and an online Financial Report; we will compete the revision to the Post Operations Manual in 2005.

Improve and increase the Use of Post Rosters.

While we have done much to improve Post Rosters and Post access to them, we still get many questions from Posts. We will need to continue our efforts to train Posts on how to use Post Rosters throughout 2005. In addition, we had a Membership Workshop to address membership issues and reestablished a national Membership Committee to work with the SAME HQ Director of Membership.

Support National Committees.

We have provided assistance to our National Committees, including support to Committee workshops and Committee Web sites. We also re-energized the Executive Team, chaired by 1st Vice President Rear Adm. Loose, CEC, USN.

Listen and Respond to Members.

As far as I know, we have responded promptly to member inquiries and concerns and treated each member with respect. If this is not the case, I would like to be the first to know about it. We do make mistakes, but we freely admit them and work to correct them when you tell us.

In summary, we have seven Greens, two Yellows and one Red. Not too bad, but we'll work to improve our record in 2005.

On behalf of the entire SAME HQ staff, I want to express my appreciation for your support in making SAME a great team effort. Please take a moment to see what our Top 10 priorities are for 2005, noted in the XD's Corner.