Mortgage association embarks on a full-court press with its advocacy efforts
The following article was written in association with AIME – the Association of Independent Mortgage Experts.
The role of a US senator is so critical that the Constitution allows for each state to have two of them representing constituents’ interests. In a similar vein, the Association of Independent Mortgage Experts recently launched its “state captains” initiative to give voice to membership rank and file.
The mission of the initiative is spelled out on AIME’s website in succinct, staccato style: “Thousands of members. Dedicated champions in each state. One powerful voice.” The economy of words hints at the single-minded focus of each state captain, each with his or her own area of expertise.
Advocacy state captains are volunteers who are active in their local community and are a driving force for state-level legislative efforts. Community state captains, for their part, are volunteers who are active in their local community and are a driving force for amplifying AIME’s initiatives on social media.
In a recent interview with Mortgage Professional America, Jamie Cavanaugh expounded on each of those roles. President of Amerifund Home Loans Inc., Cavanaugh does double duty as vice president of outreach for AIME.
“The main focus here really is connecting our members together at a much more local level and then amplify our voice overall,” Cavanaugh told MPA. “One is an advocacy captain role which is what it sounds like – members who are involved at the local level in their smaller, local, state-run organizations. Advocacy captains include AIME members who may have experience in advocacy with other groups and who are passionate about legislative issues that affect our members, brokers and wholesale mortgage professionals, and consumers in their specific state.”
Another key role of advocacy captains is to gauge other AIME members for issues resonating with them, Cavanaugh added. “Really focusing on communicating to AIME leadership on the thing impacting their state and their members and also communicating to the members of their state to get feedback from them on what they’re passionate about and what they’re seeing.”
Cavanaugh then described the role of community state captains. “Those are really fun roles,” she began. “Those folks are pretty much officially doing the things many have been doing already – being in the weeds to handle state-level questions that come up and maintaining an active presence on social media to spread the word to our communities across the country.”
Take Arizona, for example, where there are specific requirements on preapproving clients that necessitate weekly data submissions, Cavanaugh noted. Then there are nuances in Texas, California and Florida that differ from other states, she added.
“So having members in captain roles at the state level allows for AIME members in those states to get immediate help on things they’re dealing with to help their clients and referral partners in a much more efficient manner than if they had to ask someone on the leadership team,” Cavanaugh said. “There are seven of us, so it’s a little bit harder for us to understand all the state-level issues going on,” she said of the group’s leadership team.
AIME CEO Katie Sweeney posited the state captains initiative as an outgrowth of the group’s rapid expansion. The state-by-state patchwork of engagement will support the broader AIME fabric, she suggested.
“Our main focus is to figure out how to go further faster, so efficiency is very important,” Sweeney said. “We haven’t been around that long. We’re only five years old – we’re in our sixth year now – but the impact that AIME has had in the five years we’ve been around has gone further than anyone expected us to go in that period of time. We’ve got all this attention, but we’re still in the process of building the resources that are needed to support it, and one of those things is this local presence for the group.”
A quick glance at the AIME portal focusing on the initiative illustrates how many members are already on board with the program – from Alabama to Wisconsin. The former state already has its two captains in place in the form of Porch Point Mortgage president and CEO Darius James and mortgage broker Ross Sykes of Homefront Lending while the latter has one in Matthew Titel, president of Commonwealth Mortgage Group.
States still devoid of captains include Arkansas; Iowa; Nebraska; New Mexico; North Dakota; Oklahoma; Rhode Island; South Dakota; Vermont; and Wyoming.
An athlete through her high school and college years – particularly in basketball and volleyball – Sweeney likens the state captains effort to a sports team of sorts in terms of its makeup. “We’ve got a general manager and then we’ve got coaches that have specialties with different parts of the team. If you want to take a football program as an example, we’ve got an offensive coordinator, defensive coordinator, special teams coach, quarterback coach, head coach – all of those roles. We’ve got the general manager and president of operations responsible for the club overall, but each of these state captains play a role on the field.”
Clearly, AIME has an eye on the end zone for a touchdown.
