Evergreen Chapter, AITP
Community Service:

As a professional organization, it is part of the purpose of the Evergreen Chapter, AITP, to take an active role in our community. At present, the Chapter is active of five fronts:

• Student Chapter
• Open Meetings
• Curricula Advisory Committees
• Tech Notes
• The Annual Food Bank Challenge

Student Chapter

The Evergreen Chapter, AITP, is the proud sponsor of the AITP Student Chapter at Edmonds Community College. The EdCC Student Chapter has a long string of "Student Chapter Outstanding Performance Awards" (SCOPA), the Student Chapter equivalent of the Chapter Outstanding Performance Award (COPA).

The students from this chapter are active participants at our monthly meetings and are always welcome to observe at Chapter Board of Director's meetings.

The Chapter regularly provides members from the business community to participate in Student Chapter functions such as classes on resume writing and discussions of trends in the job market. Similarly, the Student Chapter members take an active role in the activities of the parent chapter. It has been more than once that their efforts for Northwest Harvest have pushed us over the top to win the Annual Food Bank Challenge.

Open Meetings

All chapter meetings are open to members and non-members alike. If the details of the coming meeting looks interesting, contact the House or Telephone Committee Chairs to make a reservation and to confirm any last minutes meeting changes.

The meeting structure is informal with "networking" beginning about 6:30 PM, the dinner from 7 to 8:00 PM, and then the speaker. You do not need to attend the dinner to come for the speaker, just let the House Chairperson know that that is what you plan to do such that we can arrange for a sufficient number of chairs in the room.

Board meetings are also open to members and non-members with the understanding that they participate as observers. The time, date, and location of Board meetings are subject to frequent changes and an officer or director should be contacted to find out the details and feasibility

Curricula Advisory Committees

The State of Washington requires that educational institutions offering "Vocational" programs have advisory committees with members from the business community. It is this committee's duty to help the institution craft a program which turns out graduates ready to meet the needs of the business community.

The Evergreen Chapter, AITP, has a long tradition of providing Information Systems Professionals to educational institutions needed such for their Advisory Committees. If you have such a need, please contact a chapter officer and we'll look for volunteers or refer you to another local chapter.

The Annual Food Bank Challenge

In 1986, a chapter member suggested that we challenge the "other" Seattle area AITP Chapter to a canned food drive to benefit the Northwest Harvest Food Bank. That year we collected cans of food from October 1st until December 31st. Our opponents -- the Puget Sound Chapter must have been a little embarrassed to drag boxes and bags of "groceries" into their meeting because it wasn't even close. Their size (ten times the number of members) did nothing for them. There was no chapter-size prorating, it was can against can.

The following year, we let them (those sneaky Puget Sounder's) talk us into a rule modification which said that a dollar was worth three "cans" and we began collecting money to turn over to NWH. While they were embarrassed to carry in groceries, they had no problem carrying their check book. We got trounced. And it happened again the following year.

So, if you can't win by effort, you change the rules. The following year, the rules were changed to add membership-prorating. Those rules continue to today:

Annual Food Bank Challenge Rules -- All of them!
1. The contest begins October 1st and ends with December 31st.
2. The proceeds can go to any non-profit food bank in the chapter's geographic area.
3. A can/box/bag of food collected counts as one "can."
4. A dollar collected counts as three "cans."
5. At the end of the contest, the number of "cans" collected is divided by the number of chapter members as listed on the close-of-business December roster provided by the Association Headquarters.
6. The chapter with the biggest "cans" per member result is the winner and has bragging rights until the next year's challenge begins.

The Puget Sound Chapter has just not been able to overcome that "per member" clause and has lost the last seven challenges by ever widening margins.

Now as we are not above accepting contributions from members of other Chapters and even those we have not yet managed to recruit as members, if you so chose, we would gladly accept your check made out to the food bank of your choice (but you'll have to give us the food bank's address such that we can forward your donation to the proper care-givers) and you may mail same to:

Food Bank Challenge
Evergreen Chapter, AITP
P.O. Box 55935
Seattle, Washington 98155-0935

As the check is made out by you to the food bank, you get the appropriate tax deductions (provided that in it's wisdom, while turning over more and more care for the homeless, poor, and other deserving to the local community, that Congress does not also remove the deduction for taking over that burden...), and we get to count the "cans." Note that to make this "legal," we only have to slightly increase our "geographic area" but then we have had members in Oregon, Iowa, Tennessee, and Bahrain, so we've probably pushed our "area" enough to cover this already.

With the 1996 challenge, the Evergreen Chapter, in a vain attempt to find some more worthy opponents, has opened the contest to all of the chapters in Region 2 and moved the start date up to September 1st. No challenges were posted.

For comments about this web page or more information,
you may Email us via Robbin L. Boston
or write to us at the address below.
We look forward to hearing from you.

Evergreen Chapter, AITP
P.O. Box 55935
Seattle, Washington 98155-0935

© 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005 Evergreen Chapter, AITP