Poudre Valley REA Goes Virtual

Poudre Valley REA held another successful annual meeting on April 4. And it was all virtual. Due to statewide social distancing requirements, the electric co-op hired a professional marketing company to film the annual meeting in the co-op’s community room at its headquarters in Fort Collins. Linden Marketing also did all of the post-production for the co-op, overlaying the video with slides, titles and pop-up prompts. PVREA uploaded the video to YouTube and scheduled it to air on the original annual meeting date using the YouTube Premier feature.

“Over 700 consumer-members tuned in to the meeting on April 4 and we received great feedback,” PVREA Communications Specialist Jessica Johnson said. The election of directors proceeded as planned with an independent third-party performing mail-in ballot counting and ballots were even allowed to be cast onsite the day of the meeting. Any consumer-member who submitted a ballot was entered into the co-op’s prize drawings. The grand prize winner won a home package that consists of electric outdoor equipment as well as smart gadgets.

The innovative solution to making sure co-op consumer-members still had a chance to participate in the annual meeting and director elections will surely be replicated across Colorado and the nation as the need arises and social distancing measures are still in place.