Last week, we held the 21st annual PersoniFest, our conference for Personify’s clients, partners and friends. While we typically hold this as an in-person event over multiple days in a different city this year, we made the decision to shift to a virtual conference when local and state governments issued stay-at-home orders due to COVID-19 earlier this year. As part of the general session that kicked off the virtual event, my colleague Sarah Schmall announced the 2020 Persi Award winners.

As you may know, we launched the Persi Awards a few years ago to recognize the incredible accomplishments that our clients have made over the past year and to highlight their success stories.

Persi Award Winners for Innovation

With this category of awards, we recognized organizations using innovative approaches to acquire and engage their members, donors, attendees, exhibitors and more.

The American Pharmacists Association received the Persi Award for Innovation in the Association segment because of their efforts to restructure their membership process over the past year and transform the way that they engage their members. APhA shifted away from having traditional membership types to membership levels that focus on the benefits received and simplify the new membership and renewal process. They also restructured their IT department and made changes in how they manage financial records within Personify360.

In the nonprofit and community category, we selected the American Society of Safety Professionals for the Persi Award for Innovation. ASSP developed a Champions program to empower nonprofit leaders to drive conversations and engagement in their online Community. These champions have created more than 250 conversations between leaders, stakeholders and members in the organizations, and over 20 groups are led by Champions. Within a year of the program launching, more than 1,400 members were added to the community, 30 Champions are currently in the program and there have 400,000 pageviews in the community.

In the Health and wellness category, our Persi Award Innovation winner is the YMCA of the Twin Cities. They engaged Personify, NetPulse and eGym to leverage an Apple technology program for their members. Members can now check into facility by scanning their Apple Watch and log into equipment at facility that track metrics and progress in wellness programs. Members are also able to renew their YMCA membership using their Apple Watch, which is integrated with all of the member’s information in Personify. The YMCA of the Twin Cities is innovative in many ways. Their third-party vendors use Personify’s APIs for receipts that can be used to calculate the cost of childcare expenses for tax filing. They also have vendors that use Personify eBusiness to manage camp reservations, choose meals and more.

We introduced a new Persi Award category for event professionals and show organizers in 2020. Our Innovation award winner for this category is Emerald, a leader in business-to-business trade shows and conferences and each year they connect over 1.9 million customers across 142 events using A2Z Events. Emerald continues to innovate by providing unparalleled experiences to connect buyers and suppliers using the entire platform. They lead the way in adoption and sales of enhanced digital content, and they increase the value for exhibitors and improve the attendee experience.

Additionally, Emerald is currently launching a new events Community for a recently canceled event due to COVID-19. The team works collaboratively with Personify to remain at the forefront of creating rich event experiences.

Our final Persi Award Innovation winner is the Newcomer Friends of Greater Plano. This volunteer-run organization has been an active member of Wild Apricot for over 5 years. They have a busy and ever-growing calendar of events and a website that constantly needs updating, all while having board members on constant rotation. With Wild Apricot being a necessity to this organization achieving their goals, the board made the decision to assign nearly 15 tasks a month to one of our partners, releasing over 200 hours. This has allowed members to shift their focus back to their mission and focus on what matters most.

Persi Awards Winners for Impact

The Impact Awards are for organizations who have leveraged Personify’s solutions to drive their mission forward and meet their organization’s goals. They have fostered advocacy, vibrancy and collaboration through the use of technology.

The American Water Works Association was chosen as the Impact winner for the Association segment. They provide video training content to members and wanted to move to a Netflix-style video subscription. The AWWA team worked with Personify partner webcastcloud to develop a branded video channel and hosting to deliver training videos to members in a process that is seamlessly integrated with Personify360 via Personify’s single sign-on interface. AWWA also recently went through an upgrade process with Personify360 and is now able to take advantage of the latest updates and enhancements to better serve their members.

The next Impact recipient is the Citizens Climate Lobby, our winner in the nonprofit and community category. When this organization’s founder passed away in 2019, members created a space within the community to memorialize him. Across the world, people shared news clippings, video and reflections within the community. The founder’s wife even became involved in thanking members. This is a very large community, but the organization’s leaders were able to make this very personal for members.

During this time, the community had 420,000 pageviews, which is an all-time high for this community and the memorial made up 78% of all pageviews during that time. While we are sad about this organization’s loss, we want to applaud the Citizens Climate Lobby for the great work that they have done to keep members connected.

Our Impact winner for the Health and wellness segment is the YMCA of Metropolitan Chattanooga for their commitment and engagement in their recent implementation of Personify360. They reached out to Personify to help them build an online presence for members and sell memberships online.

After going live, they sold 15% of memberships online in the first month and did this with no advertising. This allows members to sign up for memberships much quickly and freed up staff time to focus on programming and other activities.

Our Impact winner in the new event professionals and show organizer category is Taffy Event Strategies who has a team of top-notch industry experts from some of the most well-known and respected tradeshows and companies globally. Taffy uses A2Z Events as their platform of choice for show and conference management as well as mobile solutions. They were also the first client to add the Virtual Connect Suite for one of their largest show management clients when the event was canceled due to COVID-19. The event is the largest international tile and stone show in North America and is on the Gold 100 List.

Our final winner in the Impact category is the Fort Worth Mothers of Multiples, a new Wild Apricot member. They utilized the all-in-one software to double their membership in the last 12 months. They have since seen an increase in sponsorship, engagement from stakeholders and members and have acquired a budget increase allowing them to go into 2020 thriving.

Trailblazer Awards

Our next category is the Trailblazers category. These are organizations that use several of Personify’s solutions to take their constituent management and engagement approach to a new level. They leverage technology in innovative ways and are making significant strides to better acquire, engage and retain their constituents.

Our first winner, the Council for Advancement and Support of Education, went through a significant upgrade in 2019. CASE had previously used a customized system but wanted to benefit from the latest product enhancements. By upgrading their technology, they lowered their spend on customizations and reinvested those dollars into the programming.

Additionally, CASE has affiliates across the world and leverage multi-currency functionality to interact with affiliates in different countries. They are a new A2Z Events client and will have many events take place across the globe this year and next. While some of their events may be postponed or canceled due to COVID-19, they will be positioned well to deliver strong events in the future and can tie all the data back into Personify360.

The final Trailblazer is the American College of Physicians, an organization that has been a longtime client that also recently went through a technology upgrade. This upgrade was well executed and organized on their side. They are very methodical about their process and committed to making the best use of their technology.

ACP leverages A2Z Events to manage their online booth space application, reservation contracts and sponsorship contracts. They take advantage of the revenue acceleration program to deliver more value to their exhibitors before, during and after the show. While their show was canceled this year, ACP will be able to create and execute amazing event experiences for their clients in the future.

Congratulations to all of our 2020 Persi Award winners! This is just a sample of the great things our clients are doing every day and truly what the PersoniFest user conference is all about. We’re thrilled to be able to recognize the work that they do to grow their organizations and increase their impact!