This month’s update provides news on progress with the Society Operating Model and outlines our plans to address your feedback from the 2022 Society Partnership Effectiveness Survey.
Society Operating Model Update
We regret to share that we will be postponing next week's planned town halls and distribution of the pre-read document. We are very thoughtfully fine-tuning the society service standards and our funding approach, and require additional time to finalize our recommendations. Look for an update soon, and thank you for your patience.
Partnership Effectiveness Survey Action Plan
Our annual Society Partnership Effectiveness Survey—the instrument we use to gauge the quality of the partnership between societies and CFA Institute, identify what is important to society success, and determine gaps between what we offer and what societies need—gives us a built-in opportunity to stop, reflect, and assess where we are and where we want to go. Distributed throughout July and August of last year, the 2022 survey surfaced several areas of opportunity to improve our partnership.
To be more purposeful and accountable to your feedback, we have developed an action plan that will help us address the key themes we heard.
This fiscal year, the Global Society Relations team will work in tandem with our Society Operations and regional Global Partnerships & Client Solutions colleagues and in consultation with our business partners to focus on the following themes:
- Brand awareness and marketing resources
- Society-to-society collaboration
- Member engagement
- Data and reporting
- Transparency and communication
- Society consultation and collaboration on CFA Institute initiatives
Our Principles of Partnership were forged to help us define our commitments to each other to strengthen our impact and make our mission a reality. And although each principle is important in its own right, one especially resonates as we consider our action plan: We recognize that a successful relationship requires attention, investment of time and resources, and openness to evolution.
As my team continually refines the way we communicate and consult with the network, we ask you that you also improve your engagement with us: read the emails we send, explore the platforms we provide, and participate in the calls we host. We are mindful of the many demands of your time and are committed to efficiently delivering you the information you need to help your society run smoothly, serve your members, and carry out our shared mission.
Read on to learn more about the specific actions we have taken and our plans for the rest of this fiscal year.
Brand Awareness and Marketing Resources
The topics of brand awareness and marketing resources were persistent in responses to the prompt asking your society what information or resources you needed to be successful. The responses represented a range of requests, from the need for more global recognition of the CFA charter to the need for marketing toolkits and assets your society can use locally.
Societies also expressed a need for more marketing materials to leverage in your local markets. Many of these marketing resources exist; however, they are distributed across several platforms and can be difficult to locate.
Our actions:
Communicate milestones of the brand work as it develops
- On the global front, Tom Berry, our Chief Marketing Officer, is evaluating our overall brand, including our value propositions, brand architecture, and imagery, as well as our customer experience strategy. We will keep the network apprised of this initiative throughout the year.
Create a central hub for storing and sharing marketing materials
- Please access the new Marketing Resources Hub on Society Center (Marketing & Media Relations tile) where you can browse folders for materials promoting our key products and initiatives. We will continue adding to this library and notifying you through the Weekly Connexion email when new materials are available.
Make recommendations informed by society input to Marketing and Customer Experience (MCX) team for marketing material needs
- To provide societies access to a more consistent suite of marketing materials, we have consulted with our regional MCX colleagues who helped us identify societies’ immediate marketing material needs and delivered those to our product marketing colleagues. We plan to administer a short survey to societies in the coming months, asking for more detail about your specific needs, that will help us refine our ongoing recommendations.
Provide a CFA Institute-hosted website platform that enables syndicated content
- In March, Microsoft is decommissioning the SharePoint 2013 websites currently used to host 120 society websites. In considering a replacement platform, CFA Institute selected an option that allows us to push syndicated content across all sites we host. We plan to use this feature to highlight the products and content that align with our global marketing efforts.
Society-to-Society Collaboration
You expressed a desire for a forum that would allow you to collaborate with colleagues from other societies and share best practices, resources, and ideas.
Our actions:
Launch Higher Logic, onboard society leaders and staff, and begin to build community
- We have invested in Higher Logic, a community management platform, to enable our society leaders and staff to learn from peers globally, allow for consistent collaboration, and offer real-time communications and information sharing. Beta testing will be completed by the end of January, and we anticipate the site will be live in mid-February.
Launch and host global Society Exchange calls
- Beginning in February, we will host bimonthly peer-to-peer discussion calls on evergreen topics of interest. These calls are intentionally designed to facilitate collaboration and will involve small-group sharing in breakouts on topics such as candidates; member value; governance; programming; and research, advocacy, and standards. We will also introduce a Professional Learning product breakout topic where society leaders can discuss a featured course or program. Look for registration details for our inaugural calls later this month.
Member Engagement
The pandemic forced membership organizations to reckon with changing needs, and CFA Institute and the society network are no exception. Your comments in the survey raised a number of shared concerns that we must navigate: How can we best serve members in a landscape of shifting professional and personal priorities? What membership trends are surfacing as we emerge from the pandemic? Which engagements are better conducted online, in person, or in a hybrid format? What efforts are effective at maintaining or increasing our membership numbers? We believe there are a few actions we can take to better serve members as we navigate this changing landscape.
Our actions:
Develop and distribute promotional materials for three CFA Institute webinars/pieces of content
- Our Research, Advocacy, and Standards team produces high-quality content that is relevant to investment practitioners. We will provide you with the tools and resources to help connect members with products and content that deliver member value.
Launch Inside Track, a new series of virtual product training sessions
- We are excited to launch Inside Track—focused, virtual sessions that will give society leaders and staff a behind-the-scenes look at a specific product. In the sessions, we plan to inform you of new product releases or changes to existing products, review promotional toolkits, and answer your questions. We hope these sessions will help you understand our offerings, plan your outreach, and connect prospective customers and current candidates and members with our content and products. Join us for our first session, focused on the relaunch of the Investment Foundations Certificate, in late January and early February.
Keep societies informed of CFA Institute membership strategy development and create society input and consultation opportunities
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By consolidating our Society Relations and Global Membership teams under one group, we can better consider how we collectively serve, engage, and grow our membership. We plan to seek the insights of the network to help inform our membership strategy and report our milestones to you. CFA Institute will soon be launching a significant member research study to evaluate how we can improve the member value proposition and experience and better support today's investment management professional. This work will help inform future potential membership classes, subscription tiers, and product offerings with an eye toward growing our global community and increasing our influence in the industry.
Data and Reporting
Your feedback expressed a need for more insights on our candidates and members to help you make more informed decisions about your society’s strategy and the ways you serve current and prospective members.
Our actions:
Close awareness gap about what we have and what we can and cannot get by providing a library of current data sources and resources
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As more of our data moves to Salesforce, we have a more central repository for customer insights, much of which is already available to societies. To help you navigate this information, we plan to provide you with a better understanding of the data available by collecting this information on Society Center.
Provide additional resources for accessing data and information previously available in Society Databook
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Most of the data previously available in Society Databooks is still accessible; however, we recognize societies would benefit from additional training not only for accessing this data but also for making it easy to share with your Boards. We plan to provide you with resources and training to help you retrieve and present this data.
Establish Higher Logic community about data and reporting
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Once we launch and onboard your society to Higher Logic, we plan to dedicate a community to data and reporting so you can consult other societies on your data and reporting needs. Members of our Society Operations team will be available in the channel as subject matter experts to answer your questions.
Transparency and Communication
Although 63% of respondents rated the frequency of communication from CFA Institute on our strategy and other key issues as “just right,” 30% responded that there was “not enough” communication. Moreover, many open comments asked for more transparency from CFA Institute, especially around strategic initiatives, and noted that our platforms were difficult to use.
Our actions:
Establish consistent process for delivering outcomes of Board of Governor meetings
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We are working with Presidents Council Chair, Jennifer Garbowicz, CFA, CIPM, to develop a way we can use our communication channels and platforms to help distribute information and outcomes from Board of Governor meetings in a timely manner. Please look for more information after the mid-February Board meeting.
Develop and implement refined communication strategy
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We have developed and begun to implement a communication strategy that considers push and pull channels, includes better governance for our platforms, and better accounts for your preferences. We will also revisit and continually use Partnership Effectiveness Survey feedback to refine our communications.
Develop quarterly engagement reports with CFA Society communications and channels and report results internally and to societies
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To help us better understand the content and activities that resonate with our society leaders and staff, enhance our communications, and improve your engagement, we will develop quarterly engagement reports. In December, we distributed our Q1 report, which determined a baseline for your participation. Explore the Q1 engagement report now, and look for the next report in March.
Society Consultation and Collaboration on CFA Institute Initiatives
A common factor across many open comments and survey responses was an appetite for more consultation of and collaboration with the society network. As the strategy at CFA Institute advances, the way we have consulted the society network has also shifted. We are seeking opportunities to understand what’s working and what needs improvement so we can feed those insights back to the business.
Our actions:
Establish working group and comment period for Society Operating Model; report milestones and outcomes
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At the regional FY23 Society Leadership Conferences (SLCs), more than 310 society leaders and staff participated in workshops to provide input on the suggested foundational services societies should be expected to conduct within each proposed segment. Another 40 society leaders provided input during the Society Operating Model Open Comment Period and Working Group. This feedback was collected and considered in our latest proposal for the Society Operating Model.
Engage Society Partnership Advisory Council (SPAC) and Presidents Council Representatives (PCRs) to plan society input opportunities on Board of Governor agenda items
Establish CX & brand council and report milestones and outcomes
Report results of engagement opportunities back to societies
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Although we solicit the insights of our network, we have not been disciplined in how we report those findings back to you. To help you see what is being done with your feedback, and, when appropriate, see the sentiments of your society peers, we commit to maintaining a new Society Engagement and Feedback page on Society Center that features this information. We invite you to explore the page now.
Continue to host regional Society Leadership Conferences and build in opportunities for society collaboration
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A resounding theme from the 2022 regional SLCs was the value our society leaders placed on having access to the CFA Institute leadership team, whether through workshops, presentations, or informal interactions. We are thrilled to continue this exchange in the 2023 regional SLCs, and we will be mindful of building in opportunities for CFA Institute and society-to-society collaboration into our programming.
Thank you for all you do, and we look forward to improving our partnership this year.
ETHICS AND RESEARCH, ADVOCACY, AND STANDARDS
Crypto Assets: Beyond the Hype
Research, Advocacy, and Standards has released their latest paper, “Crypto Assets: Beyond the Hype.” This paper distills research interviews conducted over the past year with a variety of investment practitioners and crypto experts to offer a framework of key issues for people to study before investing in crypto. The paper also recommends some policies for regulators to consider to ensure the best investor and market protections. We invite you to read the report and access our social media toolkit to help promote it to your audiences.
Exposure Draft Published for Potential Revisions to Code and Standards
CFA Institute has published an exposure draft for revisions to the CFA Institute Code of Ethics and Standards of Professional Conduct. We encourage societies, CFA Institute members and other interested stakeholders to submit a comment letter on the revisions in the 60-day consultation period ending 6 March.
The exposure draft and comment form can be found on our website. We invite you to register for our 1 February webinar discussing the potential revisions.
OUTREACH
FY24 Board of Governor Nomination Deadline Extended
The Nominating Committee of the CFA Institute Board of Governors has extended the deadline to apply for the FY24 Board of Governors to 31 January. Explore the application or read our article on Connexions to learn more about the qualities we’re looking for in our next set of nominees, or contact our Nominating Committee representative, Katelynn Rosson, with your recommendations by 31 January.
CREDENTIALING AND CANDIDATE SUPPORT
Application Window for Access Scholarships Opens Next Week
The next Access Scholarship application window will open on 17 January and close on 14 February. Decisions will be communicated no later than 31 March 2023. Please visit our website for more information.