Printing Lessons Learned at the FEA Annual Summit

by Hannah Bagell, Account Executive, Mimeo

Last week, I attended my first Fraternity Executives Association’s Annual Summit. Since I work closely with fraternities and sororities here at Mimeo, I was excited to arrive both to meet current clients I’ve worked with, and to learn everything I could about the challenges and opportunities facing the fraternal world.

• Time Management

The kick-off keynote speaker, Harrison Coerver told a great story: When Hasbro saw their Monopoly sales dwindling, they commissioned a study and found kids don’t have enough time to play the full length game any more. Think about that- if kids lack the time to play, then how the heck are we as professionals supposed to get everything we need to, done? There’s just not enough time in the day!

For everyone who belongs to the FEA, this is especially true because almost every organization has just a small team of people wearing multiple hats in order to service the entire national reach of their fraternity or sorority.

This rang true for me since Mimeo’s mission is to save our customers time. When you can make a process easier for someone – like Hasbro making a 20-minute version of Monopoly – you empower them to do more with their time.

• The Importance of Community

We all know that individual fraternal chapters are all about community, I know I’ll be best friends with my sorority sisters for life. But what I hadn’t realized is how close the different national organizations are with each other. Again and again, I saw an Executive Director of one fraternity give a director of another fraternity a huge hug! Directors discussed and reflected on the past school year’s successes and were so welcoming to the new Executive Directors joining the event for the first time. As a sponsor, Directors and staff members came up and thanked me for my support and really made me feel like a part of their tight knit community.  

For me, this all goes back to these small teams getting a lot done. Everyone at the Annual Summit has a common bond of accomplishing huge tasks for a national community with limited people, resources, and time. When they come to the Summit, they get to see friends who know their pain and share their challenges. And from each other, they learn better processes, get tips for saving time, and commiserate, giving them new tools for the year ahead of them.

All in all, the FEA Annual Summit was a fantastic event. I had the opportunity to meet many of my clients, made new connections with awesome people, and learned a whole lot about the fraternal association world. I can’t wait for next year!

Learn more about how Hannah helps organizations like SAE save time with this case study.

Hannah Bagell is an Account Executive at Mimeo, where she specializes in helping fraternities and sororities save time by printing with Mimeo. She is a proud alumni of AEPhi. Connect with her on LinkedIn.