Moving the Region Forward

TO: Chapter Presidents of the Eastern Region
CC: District Directors of the Eastern Region
FROM: Bro. R. Anthony Mills, Eastern Region Vice President
DATE: January 2, 2015

Happy New Year!

I hope this message finds you in good health and spirit. As we begin a new calendar year and approach the closing of my first term as your Eastern Region Vice President, I wanted to take a moment to thank each of you for your support and leadership. It has been a pleasure to serve this Region over the past two years and I look forward to serving for another two years.

At the beginning of my tenure as Eastern Region Vice President, a strategic blueprint specifically aligned to the tenets of the fraternity’s mission statement ¹develop leaders,²promoting brotherhood, ³academic excellence and ⁴community advocacy, was presented. Since then we have made some strides to complete these goals and we still have plenty of work to do.

With your support, the region has been committed to developing leaders. The Region has led the fraternity in chapter compliance at 97% and we have increased our College Brother participation in the Alpha Leadership Academy, with 13 attendees during the Academy’s Rho class. Fiscally, we have improved our bookkeeping capabilities with the implementation of Quickbooks™ software, the creation of a regional chart of accounts and the production of regular monthly reports – a monthly balance sheet, cash flow analysis and budget vs. actual. Administratively, we developed a draft constitution for the Region and became the first region of the Fraternity to implement electronic voting for candidates seeking regional office.

With your support, the region has been committed to promoting brotherhood. We have chartered 3 new college chapters; Upsilon Epsilon at Salisbury University, Upsilon Kappa at SUNY Plattsburgh and Upsilon Nu at Lehigh University, in addition to the re-activation Beta Chapter at Howard University and re-establishing a chapter on the campus of UMBC. We have reclaimed over 400 Brothers into “The House of Alpha.” While maintaining registration costs at the 2012/2013 levels, we had over 900 brothers registered for the 82^nd Annual Eastern Region Convention in Baltimore for 2014. To capture and document the history and success of the chapters within the Region, we launched the AlphaEast Legacy Project.

With your support, the region has been committed to academic excellence. We established a goal to “Increase No. of chapters reporting their GPAs by 20%” based upon 30 College Chapters reporting their GPAs in 2013, there were 60 reporting in 2014 with an average GPA of 2.83. We’ve had over 150 chapters have worked with 13,147 youth through our “Go to High School – Go to College” national program. Additionally, we’re actively working to document the number of college Brothers moving into graduate schools and professional opportunities.

With your support, the region has been committed to community advocacy. At the 82^nd Annual Eastern Region Convention in Baltimore we hosted over 30 Baltimore City High School young men to participate in our on-site Leadership Development Institute program and provided each participant with a suit, dress shirt and tie. Collectively, we have distributed over $150,000 towards philanthropic causes, contributed nearly $90,000 to the March of Dimes, engaged nearly 895 youth in Big Brothers / Big Sisters and have had over 1200 Brothers host 4872 youth in Project Alpha.

As we continue to work together to move AlphaForward, please avail yourself for our Quarterly Presidents’ Round Table call 9am, Saturday, January 24, 2015. Details are included below:

Meeting Website (Screen Sharing Only): http://freeconferencing.com/meetings/811-306-497
Conference Call info – Conference dial-in number: (712) 432-0900
Participant access code – 533183
Skype Instructions – For callers joining the conference call using Skype, first add freeconferencing.7124320900 to your contactsAt the scheduled date and time of the conference call, Skype callers should select the contact and click Call

Next, locate the key pad and enter the Access Code 533183 when prompted.

The above are just a few examples similar to “The History of Alpha Phi Alpha: A Development in College Life,” where Bro. Charles Wesley Harris reveals “…Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity was not simply a “good time” group of college men. It was a brotherhood, existing for the improvement of its members.”The platform to move AlphaForward is about bringing the best out of our Brotherhood by focusing on the core of our mission statement – Developing Leaders, Promoting Brotherhood and Academic Excellence, and Providing Service & Advocacy to our Communities.

Thank you for the honor to serve as a servant-leader and prove AlphaEast as the quintessential model of Fraternity leadership, driven by resilience, bold ideas and a commitment to move AlphaForward.