Hello from Florida!

To attract new members to our chapter our initial contact began early. We sent out information regarding VBMA in the incoming student packets, which were mailed in the spring. We held our first meeting, which was very successful in getting people interested, very early in the semester. We had a neurologist come and talk to us about specialty practice and people loved her, especially all of the advertising gear she gave away, including body massagers and pizza slicers.

As they say, if you can't beat them, join them. To not have to "beat" or compete with other clubs we have hosted joint meetings. In September we had a joint meeting with SCAVMA. Not only did people fulfill part of their SCAVMA requirement, they also saw the level of speaker that VBMA has to offer. Our November meeting is going to be joint as well with the emergency club SVECCS. We have had the equine club contact us because they would like to get involved with our November meeting. Our speaker is a successful equine practice owner, and it appears as though the meeting is going to have quite a few people at it, which will hopefully recuit members to VBMA. We also try to offer better food, such as sushi and Boston Market, which tends to draw more people than something more typical, like pizza.

One interesting event we are hoping to host is a session with students regarding dining etiquette. At the University of Florida we have access to people who are willing to help enhance us as far as resumes, financial management, and apparently dining room etiquette. As of now our plan is to offer this to VBMA members only and to hold it at a local restaurant. Since this is a unique opportunity, we are hoping it will not only reinforce members who have joined that they joined an excellent club and how much fun we can have, but also encourage other non-members to join. It's not everyday you learn which fork to use!

Any questions regarding our "tactics" please ask!

Hello All!

Here at Iowa State University, we try to attract new members from many different angles. We have a booth at “club day” during first year orientation before the start of the semester, a free lunch meeting to all students (this year we had the Executive Director of the IVMA come speak to us about the benefits of IVMA and organized veterinary medicine), offer 20 free business cards, a free lunch meeting once/month, and networking opportunities at events such as the fall and spring IVMA continuing education meetings.

Our numbers are down a little from last year; therefore, we are going to attempt some targeted marketing at the beginning of the spring semester. We are down in our first year student numbers, and after talking to other club presidents, they are down in first year membership as well. I think this year’s incoming class was just overwhelmed by the number of clubs at ISU and didn’t want to spend a ton of money on club dues. We are working on details to offer a “new package” to the first year class to get them to join for the spring semester. We have many speakers coming in the spring as part of the Veterinary Entrepreneur Class, and we don’t want the first year students missing these opportunities. Also, we are working with the IVMA to offer a combined fourth year membership and IVMA membership to boost fourth year membership in VBMA and recent graduate membership in the IVMA. This will take a little longer to develop as this idea needs to be approved by the IVMA Executive Committee and their membership.

We are continuing to plan an Elephant in the Room Seminar for February 10, 2010. This event is in conjunction with the Winter IVMA meeting, and we are getting excellent support from our IVMA in planning this event. We hope this will open many lines of communication between students, practice owners and the school on student debt, salaries, and expectation of new graduates.

Sincerely,
Brent Carmichael
ISU CVM Class of 2011
ISU VBMA President

Fellow VBMA chapters,

Here at LSU we always start the semester off with a lunch meeting exclusively for the incoming first year students. We normally hold this meeting within the first two weeks of classes. This allows us to be the first club to have contact with the new class. In this meeting we discuss the purpose of the club and benefits of becoming a member. Plans of future meetings are discussed as well as idea sharing for topics of interest amongst the students. We also discuss the Business Certification program at LSU.

Our one time membership fee for all four years is another great way we are able to recruit a large portion of new students every year. Not many other clubs are able to offer this low of a fee for membership. This tends to eliminate any competition from other clubs for members. It is also mandatory that a student be an active member for all four years in order to be eligible for the Certification program. Many students join so they do not miss out on this opportunity in their third and fourth year, which is when the Certification program begins.

This strategy has worked great for our chapter in the past and continues to draw a large number of new members each year. Please let us know if you would like more information about our chapter. We will gladly discuss any questions that arise and also welcome any ideas for improvement. I hope every chapter has a great semester.

Sincerly,
Jonathan Bova
LSU VBMA

Hello from the Bulldog Nation at Mississippi State,

We started off recruitment this year with an insert about the VBMA in a "Freshmen Survival Guide" produced by the Class of 2012 and SCAVMA. SCAVMA allows each club equal representation in the guide so that freshmen are aware of each club before they officially enter Vet School during the summer. Once the year began, we drummed up interest at a Club Fair hosted the second day of class.

Our first interest meeting featured a speaker from My Veterinary Career talking about Resume building, a topic freshmen through seniors could benefit from, which grabbed a fair bit of first year interest. Personalized business cards is a growing fundraiser for our chapter, and we offer a free set of 100 cards to any freshmen who pays for a 4-year membership up front. These business cards were a great success last year in recruiting freshmen as 4-year members and so far most of the freshmen who've joined are 4-year members. We heavily push use of the VBMA website, the National Conference, and a saturday business workshop in the spring to show a strong worth of what each member gets for paying their dues.

We'll see how well everything has gone once this semester is over, good luck with recruitment! With this economy, vet students need to know about business more than ever.

Grant Ramsey
Class of 2012
Mississippi State University
VBMA Chapter President

VBMA Nation,

At CSU we have our board member turnover at the end of spring semester. So for us, it is imperative that the new team is ready to go come fall, in order to efficiently attract new members. We try and reach students in a variety of mediums in hopes of building the VBMA name here in Fort Collins.

At CSU, we have a vet-wide event the second week in to classes with a bbq, music, etc and all the clubs have an opportunity to talk to 1st years and re-sign upper class members. Furthermore, we've experimented with a monthly newsletter to draw attention to VBMA this year...results and efficacy still pending, given that the newsletter is new for us this year.

We invited the Chair of our Electronic Medical Records Committee to give our members an introduction/refresher course on our medical records system. As for other events, we like to have a series of lunch meetings open to all students in addition to evening events for VBMA members. We feel like the open-invite events are a good way to attract new members and some topics fit a shorter, lunch presentation format.

Locally, there is a group that owns a number of hospitals (8) in the region and they talked to us about marketing/branding and their business model. Also, LIVE OAK coming to visit us, which we are very excited about.

Lastly, we sent a survey out to the student body in hopes of fine tuning our focus for the year and to communicate with colleagues. We found that 60% of our non-members haven't joined because they feel that they do not have enough time...for us, we continue to work on ways to reach students and provide valuable resources...

all the best,

CSU VBMA

Hello from the Buckeye State!

We try to approach membership from several angles. OSU VBMA sends an e-mail to the first year class about 2-3 weeks before school is scheduled to begin introducing the club, its mission, and what we can offer them if they join. We follow up the letter with an in-person presentation that we schedule during the lunch hour on their first official day of classes. We keep the presentation short and provide lunch immediately after the talk. We discuss what VBMA can contribute to their lives both personally and professionally. Topics that are often highlighted include student loans, the speakers we bring to campus, and events that prepare them for real life (such as the Interview Seminar). VBMA then pitches all of our member benefits which include 30 free business cards, one free social event per quarter, a leadership retreat (last year we did a high ropes course), a members-only wine and networking event, free access to the VBMA library, and the Business Education Fund (which reimburses students for business and leadership seminars, conferences, etc.). Our dues are $15 per year, or $45 for all four years. This is about $5 more than many clubs on campus, so we make it clear that we provide many tangible and intangible benefits. We put dues towards business cards and social events, which are members-only benefits. We print our cards at school through the IT office on business card paper from Staples. We design the cards ourselves (beware of trademarking issues! Ohio State is very protective of their logos, as I am sure your universities are). We end up spending about $500 for every 3,000 cards. We have received a lot of compliments on the cards and feel that they are a useful tool when networking and give students a sense of professionalism.

Renewing members have access to all of the same benefits as new members, and we focus on maintaining interest in the club by speaking to each class and offering them food. I am not sure how the rest of the veterinary colleges are, but at Ohio State, food is the great attractor!

Thanks everyone and Happy Halloween!
Michelle Cook
Ohio State CVM 2011
Ohio State VBMA President

The MSU VBMA has done several things to start the year off right. We sponsored an orientation breakfast for the incoming freshman class, so they could have recognization of our club right away. We also attened the "club fair" sponsored by SCAVMA to answer questions and give out information about our club. Our first meeting featured our teaching hospital director and we offered free food for everyone attending (always gets some attendees!). We also volunteered at our annual homecoming alumni tailgate to get some interest out there to alumni and we are attemping to set up a business mentorship program with alumin and current students so our members can get more business experience out in the real world.

One benefit we are offering this year in addition to participation in the mentorship program is discounts on our polo shirt fundraisers. This drums up some more memberships since people save money by joining our club. I will keep you all posted as far as how our attempts have been going...we haven't had a huge amount of first years join yet, but this is pretty typical at this time in the year.

Katie Powning
MSU VBMA President

Hello all! So to start our year off at the University of Tennessee, SCAVMA has a dinner meeting for the first year students where all the clubs get to introduce their club officers and give a brief presentation of what the club is about. We keep our club dues to the minimum amount that SCAVMA will let us charge. We have several lunch and dinner meetings throughout the year that provide food only to our members. We also have a business symposium in the fall, the second annual of which we will have this year, that we advertise very early in the year. It is open to practitioners and we are able to offer CE credits to practitioners which helped it be so successful last year. It is also a great way for students to network especially with local practitioners, something we rarely have time for with our busy schedules! We open the symposium up to all students, but VBMA members get the chance of winning prizes, which are usually nice prizes donated by multiple sponsors. We also emphasize how neglected our curriculum is of business related material and how important making money will be to everyone of us once we are out of school, and most people realize this and want to join VBMA without much more incentive than the chance to learn some very practical information. The last thing we do is choose a first year representative student officer very early in the year who can encourage the first year students about everything the VBMA offers. This seems to help increase the first year membership because it helps make it a little more personal to them when they can ask their representative questions and the representative can promote events as a classmate and friend.

Haley Johnson
UTCVM c/o 2012
VBMA Secretary

Hi VBMAers!

Greetings from Raleigh. This is Shannon here to tell you a little about the beginning of the club year at North Carolina State University College of Veterinary Medicine.

First off, this year we were fortunate enough to have two of our officers attend the summer VLE out in Idaho. Therefore, they attended the first year orientation and did some great ice breakers and began to promote VBMA.

Secondly, our SCAVMA does a great job greeting the new first years and always holds an annual "club day." Every club has the opportunity to set up a booth at lunch to promote their club. Students can come around and ask questions to the officer, usually the president, at the VBMA booth. We set up a poster with pictures, Jim Wilson books, candy, etc. to spark interest. One point of interest in our club versus other clubs at the school is that we keep our dues at about half of their dues. Financial concern is a big problem at our school, as I'm sure it is at most, so low dues attract a large number of people.

Thirdly, our chapter holds an annual First-year only dinner meeting that is very brief. We introduce them to VBMA: who we are, what we do, and we show the "What VBMA means to me" video.

All of these events help us promote VBMA, but of course we are always looking to improve. I have read some great ideas on the forum that we will look into using next year, such as small VBMA gifts in the mailboxes, more member benefits, etc.

Thanks for all the great ideas, everyone!

Shannon VanDyke
NCSU-CVM c/o 2011
VBMA Chapter President

Hello from WSU,
We started our year out advertising VBMA to new students during our college's annual club barbique. We wanted to try and make our presence fun and inviting for students, so in addition to providing information to students about the organization, we also gave out rootbeer floats to those who signed up and paid for the certification program. More importantly though, we discussed with students the importance of the information they will receive as a member and the magnitude of VBMAs recognition both nationally and globally. We emphasized the topics of how to reduce debt, resume building, future career ideas and development, and how to develope the future life you want as a veterinarian. For those who weren't sure if VBMA was for them, we provided brochures with the organizations information and what we can do for them at WSU. WSU also has a practice management elective taught by Dr. Rick DeBowes that we are able to utilize by sharing speakers, in addition to Dr. DeBowes help in spreading the word about the club to new students during different orientation courses.

Hope this is of help to you guys, if you have any questions or suggestions feel free to shoot us a response.

-Eric Renner
WSU VBMA Vice President

Hi fellow VBMAer's!!
So to attract members, we started by advertising at the school's information fair the first week of school. We had candy and our banner set up with sign up sheets available. Then we sent out a mass email to the whole school. I also placed special fliers for the first year students in each of their mailboxes to explain to them about our organization and get them interested. As part of our membership we offer 10 free business cards, with the option to purchase more at a low cost. We also offer preference to members at dinner lectures and other VBMA sponsored events.
Something new we tried this year was hosting a "Meet & Greet" dinner session where the officers introduced themselves. Our co-president presented a powerpoint presentation on reasons to join the group. I'm not sure if it worked, we didn't have many immediate memberships but after looking at our total numbers, I think it helped a little with membership. I also took the time to put a membership sign up sheet in each student's mailbox in the whole college. We were really pushing for membership, so I'm hoping our efforts continue to pay off!!
It's great to see what everyone else did to bring members into the organization and I definitely picked up some ideas to pass on to next year's officers!
I hope everyone's school year is going well and the VBMA events are going well too. We're getting ready to hold an "Elephant in the Room" type event in conjunction with the New York State Conference, so I'll have to check in and let everyone know how it went. Wish us luck!!

Emily Camp
Co-President

Hi from the North!

We really started the recruitment early! The first day of school non-members were greeting with brochures about the history of the VBMA, VBMA benefits, meet the officers, events to look forward to, and how to become a member. To our current memebers we left them a card thanking them for their membership. Our SCAVMA holds a club fair and we held a booth to start answering questions and getting them hyped up for the first meeting. We held a lunch meeting at the end of the week for the 1st years only and gave a basic presentation about the VBMA and the events we are planning for the year. This was a great opportunity to answer questions and take memberships. We followed this up with a letter from our president, Mike, thanking those that came to the meeting and inviting those who couldn't make it to ask questions. This week we held a general club meeting presented by the U of MN Veterinary Medical Center Director, Dr. Lee, on "Finding a Job in a Challenging Market." We had a HUGE turn out and even more memberships. We are over the 50% membership rate for each class and still growing! Our biggest incentive is the ability to pay for membership for all 4 years at a reasonable price that includes free business cards and a business card holder with the VBMA logo on it. Our biggest strategy was to start early and try to avoid competition with other clubs. A GREAT start to the school year!

Lisa Thompson
U of MN VBMA Marketing Chair
U of MN C/O 2012

Greetings from The Zou!
Our first exposure to the incoming Class of 2013 was at our week long annual retreat before school begins! We provided the students with some ice cream after surviving the hot Missouri weather on the high ropes course!
After we got to school we held a dinner informational meeting open to all students interested in joining or learning more about our chapter. During the meeting the potential members met our chapter's exec board and faculty sponsor. Our president, Lauren, spoke to the potential members about the mission statement of VBMA, our past meetings and activities, and future goals. We also showed clips of the movie from the website. After the movie we held a Q&A session and encouraged potential members to stop by our booth at "Club Night"!
Our local SCAVMA chapter holds an annual "Club Night" where every active club has a booth set up in our large conference room to display their activities and meeting information. We had two laptops set up to enroll new members online as soon as they paid their dues! We set up a couple of incentives for new members to join that night: entered new members names in a drawing for a $25 gift card to our College of VetMed bookstore and discounts if they signed up for all 4 years!
Thank you for all of your great ideas in the posts! We are always looking for ways to improve our chapter and hope that some of our ideas can help yours!

Thanks!
Meagan Brophy
VBMA Vice President
University of Missouri
Class of 2012

Hi from Grafton :)

In order to recruit new members to the Tufts VBMA chapter, we had an introductory lunchtime talk during the first week of school. Our chapter officers gave a modified version of the "Why Business Education is Important" presentation and discussed chapter membership benefits and previous Tufts VBMA activities and events. All the new V'13s who joined the VBMA were entered into a raffle for a Physiology review textbook. The VBMA officers also staffed a table at the SCAVMA clubs fair, where we spoke with V'13s about our experiences at NAVC and answered more questions about the organization. Finally, we invited Jim Mahan from Live Oak Bank to give a lunchtime presentation on student debt and its impact on practice ownership. Jim's talk was a big hit and many students signed up after hearing him speak.

In order to promote our talks, we send out emails a few days in advance and on the day of each event. We try to arrange nice lunches to encourage people to attend (we had Indian food at our intro talk and sushi at the Live Oak talk, both of which were well-received). Holding our introductory events at the very beginning of the year was a little hectic for us, but it cut down on competition with other clubs. Offering a discount on multiple-year memberships also helped to convince new members to sign up for VBMA membership for all four years of vet school.

In order to continue our fall membership recruitment, we will be distributing membership renewal forms to students who have been in the VBMA in the past, but haven't signed up for this year yet. We are having another lunchtime presentation in early October, as well as a meeting for current officers and members who expressed interest in officer positions.

Let me know if you have any questions!

Lily Nieh, V'12
Vice-President, Tufts VBMA

Howdy from Texas A&M!

We started recruitment early this year with a flyer about the VBMA in the acceptance packet for the incoming 1VMs. This gets our name out early while they are excited about being accepted into the greatest profession in the world! Our VBMA chapter sponsored a lunch and informational booth during the 1VM orientation and got 15 minutes to introduce the officers, talk about why they should join VBMA, and promote the informational meeting planned for the second week of school. Every first year student got an aluminum water canteen sponsored by Live Oak Bank. The canteens were also given to members who joined VBMA for the year. Our entire student body was invited to attend the informational meeting where we provided free Fazzoli's for lunch and our advisor (and one of the students' favorite professors) spoke about why our business education is so important for life after graduation.

We are really excited about kicking off the new year with so many new members and many more great ideas!

Greetings from Philadelphia!

We’re getting ready to welcome the Class of 2013 and kick off the new school year on September 1st. We have already updated our bulletin board with information about the club, certificate program, and upcoming events to pique interest. We’ve worked hard this summer to plan our fall semester events in order to be able to advertise them as soon as school starts. The first lunch talk of the year is traditionally hosted by the VBMA. We provide pizza and introduce new students to the club and the certificate program. In addition, we will host several lunch talks/evening events, such as an interviewing techniques dinner, a gender and economics lunch talk, and two career-focused dinner/panel events sponsored by the Pennsylvania VMA. We consistently work hard to maintain a strong relationship with our faculty. We heard the benefit of this effort this summer when the Dean specifically mentioned us at a town hall event for all faculty, staff, and students.

Please feel free to contact any of us if you have any questions.

Sarah Cannizzo, V’12
Vice-president, UPenn VBMA

Hello from the Midwest!

I just wanted to share some of the ideas that the K-State Chapter had for attracting new members. First, we include a VBMA flier in the welcome packet that goes out to all new freshman. I believe that we are the only club that does this giving the students a great first impression of the organization! We also give the "Why Business Ed is Important" lecture (and show the VBMA video) to the first year class during a lunch meeting during the first week of classes and this year Webster Veterinary is hosting a follow-up lunch lecture a week later to re-emphasize how important it is to get some business knowledge while in vet school. This year we are borrowing an idea from another chapter and sending letters to our members that only joined for one year to hopefully increase membership among the upper classman. We also scheduled a dinner meeting at a nice restaurant in town for VBMA members only. Dinner will be covered by our sponsor and the topic will be improving client communication. We are hoping that events such as this will encourage students to become involved with the VBMA. In addition, our chapter is funding all travel expenses for the newly elected 2010 officers to attend NAVC during the spring semester which was not previously done at K-State. We hope that this will help us elect a strong executive team to continue to build our chapter. I am anxious to hear what others are doing to encourage involvement as our chapter is one of the smaller chapters and we would really like to grow!

Jennifer Darby
KSU CVM C/O 2012
KSU VBMA President