2011 IA Institute Annual Report Released

March 28, 2012 08:53 PM

The IA Institute Board of Directors is pleased to announce the release of the 2011 Annual Report. Heartfelt thanks go out to everyone who helped us progress through 2011, which was a very challenging year.

In 2011, the IA Institute Board of Directors developed a new framework to guide our strategy and allow us to meet the needs of an evolving membership. This framework defines a series of constituent relationships that we believe will create value and enable both the Institute and the discipline to stand out in a growing, yet still turbulent space. We are confident that all of our members, partners and others interested in our progress will find themselves and their respective needs within these relationships.

Some of the year's highlights:

  • Organization: In February, the Board of Directors participated in a retreat in Reykjavik, Iceland to develop a new direction for the Institute, with a goal of defining the needs of the Institute and its members and a strategy for meeting these needs. One artifact that was produced is a concept model for the IA Institute which will serve as the litmus test for all current and future initiatives, materials and functionality. We also named Bev Corwin as Development Manager, a new role overseeing grant and partnership program development.
  • Membership: We ended the year with 1,423 members in 55 countries, an increase in membership over 2010. Our member renewal rate was 48.8% versus 51% in 2010, 45% in 2009 and 44% in 2008. This is a loyalty measure based on the number of eligible members that chose to renew in a given year.
  • Infrastructure: Using our new concept model as a guide, Board Member Dorian Taylor has begun to inventory and analyze the contents of the IA Institute's Web properties. We are fairly confident that the Semantic Web will play a lasting role in our progress, at least in some form.
  • Communications: The Institute's new framework for building relationships was announced at the Annual Members Meeting in April. A podcast discussing the changes was released in August, which the board would like to continue to do as a regular feature for communicating to our members. Also, we replaced our Facebook group with a Facebook Page, added a few new social media accounts and are now featuring new Library additions in our newsletter.
  • Events: We did not host an IDEA Conference in 2011 but instead explored and began planning a new concept, World IA Day, which would be held on February 11, 2012 in 14 locations. World IA Day will allow us to focus on developing local communities of practice throughout the world.
  • Partnerships: We expanded our list of event, education and product partners. With Bev Corwin's guidance, we are exploring collaborative partnerships with external organizations, both to support our infrastructure initiatives and to develop projects for volunteers. We feel these partnerships will strengthen our status on collaborative, grant funded projects in the future.
  • Initiatives: Our member initiatives continued to flourish.


We closed the year with a plan for redirecting our activities toward facilitating seven defined relationship paths. Over the next year, we look forward to implementing changes to our partnership and membership models and continue improving our website and interpersonal infrastructure to better serve our members and the IA profession. We thank you for being a part of it all, and look forward to keep working with you to help our profession flourish.

Read the full report .

We are delighted to learn from and share with our members throughout the year. Please forward any comments or feedback to us at info@iainstitute.org. To those showing your continued support through 2012, you have our eternal gratitude. You really make the IAI a Community.