TRENDY Award (Formerly All Media Contest)

2021 | Association TRENDS

BOMA Georgia was recognized by Association TRENDS with a 2021 Silver Trendy Award in the Promotional Item category.

Association TRENDS, a community dedicated to providing association executives and industry partners the training, data and insights needed to better understand and serve their organizations, presented the award through its annual Salute to Association Excellence celebration on October 28, 2021. The celebration, held virtually, was the 41st annual awards program facilitated by ASSOCIATION Trends. The Trendy Awards, formerly named the All Media Contest, recognized excellence in association communications and educational programs.

BOMA Georgia earned the recognition for a member care initiative and customized gift presented to the association’s Executive Committee in December 2020. Below are excerpts from the awards submission:

Each year, the BOMA Georgia leadership convenes for a strategic planning retreat. The most recent in-person retreat was held in October 2019, before the reality of a worldwide pandemic was evident. The key strategic outcomes of the retreat were to increase focus on diversity, equity, and inclusion, and to increase services to help real estate professionals in Georgia – and beyond. The leadership also reinforced the need to be nimble and flexible in meeting the needs of the real estate industry.

BOMA Georgia’s volunteer leadership is also a very intuitive group and identifies symbolism and meaningful moments that reinforce that the organization is on the right strategic path. In the last few minutes of the planning retreat, which was conducted on the site of former farmland in metro Atlanta, an armadillo appeared outside of the window. BOMA Georgia President Russell Copeland looked up the armadillo’s symbolic meaning and read it to the group. However, the group didn’t fully understand the magnitude of that moment and just how much meaning it represented until months later as the COVID-19 pandemic began.

At the end of 2020, a thank you gift was given to the association’s volunteer leadership who were at the retreat. The gift included an engraved cup with an armadillo and the phrase, “BOMA Georgia 2020: Define Your Own Boundaries,” and a card reinforcing the symbolism of the armadillo and its prophetic representation of the year since the retreat.

The text of the card is below:

BOMA Georgia 2020: Defining Our Own Boundaries
During the 2019 BOMA Georgia strategic planning retreat, just as we were finalizing our strategic priorities for the next year, an armadillo appeared outside the window. As we looked, it stood still and watched us. Little did we know that the armadillo’s symbolism would define 2020 …

The armadillo symbolizes that it’s time to define your own boundaries and space. It also symbolizes trust, peace, balance, complexity, and compassion.

In 2020, BOMA Georgia defined our own boundaries. Facing a challenging year head on, we expanded our reach beyond Georgia; set records in member engagement and education enrollment; grew our web and digital capabilities; and quickly created timely educational resources and networking opportunities.

Throughout the complex year, we also trusted that we would get through it successfully together. We found peace through our faith, and we were reminded of the importance of balance in our lives and of the importance of compassion toward each other.