By Katherine Ingrao, Assistant Director of Prospect Management and Research at Rush University Medical Center

What a beautiful day at the Chicago Shakespeare Theater on Navy Pier! We had  35 attendees who joined us as we broke down the basics of a profile. Our workshop this year was organized around a new format and we thought it went really well. The workshop utilized materials from the Prospect Research Institute.

The first half of the day consisted of a lecture by our Co-Director of Programming Lindsey Humphrey and our APRA-IL Secretary Karla Davis. They focused their discussion to the “Building Blocks of a Profile” section in the workshop workbook.  They broke down each section with clarity and efficiency, finding the right balance for the beginner and advanced audience member. Lindsey and Karla provided a considerable amount of tips and tricks during each section. I know I took away a few new websites to add to my research resource tab! One especially good find came from Karla regarding salary information for careers that are more on the creative side, such as blogger. The site Roberthalf.com provides a list of these less traditional career salaries annually with pretty unique names like Moolah Palooza. Definitely worth checking out!

Following the morning lecture, our presenters broke everyone up into small groups of four to work on creating an event brief from the information provided during the lecture. This was a great activity in that it allowed for the dialogue among the attendees about the materials and research in general. The results were shared with the larger group at the end of the day.

After lunch we welcomed Grace Vigilante (JDRF), Kirstin Leiby (NorthShore HealthSystem Foundation), and Heather Ruggio (Northwestern University) as our ethics panelists. All panelists came from  different types of organization; social services, healthcare, and higher education but could still relate on similar challenges. We had a very engaging discussion regarding researchers’ role in data security, privacy, and advocacy.

It was a very successful and informative day. APRA-IL greatly enjoyed being in a new venue and trying out a new format for our spring workshop. We are looking forward to hosting Jen Filla the author of the materials from the Prospect Research Institute along with Preeti Gill of the Vancouver Foundation at our fall conference.