Soaring the Future

It’s an exciting time at the American Diabetes Association! Our theme for the year is Mission in Motion. There’s a lot of buzz around our Alexandria, VA headquarters these days as changes are coming to our organizational structure with great intentionality.

Not only is the landscape of the diabetes world changing all the time, the numbers of those living with diabetes and who have prediabetes go up by the day.  For these reasons and many more it’s unacceptable for us to keep doing the same things the way they’ve always been done. If we are truly going to improve the lives of people living with diabetes, we need to put our mission in motion.

Along these lines, I have shared with my staff four major organizational areas of focus for 2016.  And we’re busy at work on each of the areas.

First, we’re REALIGNING internal operational functions for greater efficiencies.

This means we’re consolidating publishing operations including book publishing, membership and subscription services and scholarly journals into single business unit under the leadership of our Chief Operating & Integration Officer, Cindy Hallberlin.

We’re also improving IT efficiency and delivery by outsourcing services and migrating to the Cloud. The biggest push this year to streamline our operations will be the implementation of a new donor management system.  This system will allow us to better steward our donors and understand their unique interests.

These projects are underway now and I’m so proud of how hard our team is working—often going above and beyond the call of duty to make this happen seamlessly.

Second, we’re CENTRALIZING communications so we’re all on the same team as one Association.

This means we’re expanding the services of our marketing and communications team based in our National Office. Our goal is offer our departments and offices nationwide with greater capabilities in content creation, graphic design, multi media design, and videography.

We want to tell better stories so that millions more can learn about our programs, our research and our activities. As a collective unit, we want to move forward with unified strength and one voice.   Part of this transformation includes on-boarding new members to our marketing and communications service team!

Third, we’re INVESTING in new and innovative programs.

We are the American Diabetes Association and being the leader in the scientific community is non-negotiable. So we’re focusing on new technology and platforms to deliver population health programs, greater stewardship for professional membership, and expanding type 1 and type 2 programs.

We’re working to create a new advocate program to fuel increase the number of voices championing our cause. Stayed tuned in the coming weeks and months as we unveil some exciting new programs.

Fourth and finally, we’re FOCUSING on how we can be a better steward to you, our donors.

It’s essential that we show greater appreciation to all those who champion our work.  So, in 2016, we’re establishing a framework that allows for far more flexibility, creativity, innovative strategies and testing on how we best communicate and show appreciation to our donors. And we want to hear from you too—all of our donors, partners and friends—how can we better appreciate you? (Leave me a comment).

Though I know all of these changes don’t come without growing pains, I’m confident of the course we’re on at the Association. There’s a plaque in my office that says, “There’s nothing like a dream to create the future.” And as I look at it every day, I truly believe it. We’ve got a lot of dreams at the American Diabetes Association. And I know we’ve also got a great future. Now’s the time to live it and soar!