The RCAG meeting will be moved to August to coincide with the Basin Electric Annual Meeting for 2023. Final meeting details and location in Bismarck/Mandan, North Dakota, are to be determined.

• Monday, Aug. 14: Group dinner or activity in the evening
• Tuesday, Aug. 15: RCAG meeting (all day)

About RCAG

The RCAG is your chance to get together with your fellow cooperative communicators and marketers from a nine state region. The group provides a networking and relationship-building opportunity between us at Basin Electric and member co-ops.

As group members, you provide us at Basin Electric with feedback to identify issues and common products and services needed from Basin Electric. Basin Electric staff provides relevant information to the group to keep you informed on Basin Electric's position on issues and new products and services to help you with your role at your cooperative.

To keep costs down, we meet in-person in Bismarck, North Dakota once a year. The meeting is held adjacent to Basin Electric's Annual Meeting in November.

Presentations from Nov. 2022 meeting

• Legislative Update - Jean Schafer, Basin Electric
• Understanding the Power Markets - Nikki Braunberger, Basin Electric
• Making the Most of Touchstone Energy Resources - Carrie Vugteveen, Sioux Valley Energy
• Beneficial Electrification Advertising Campaign - Lee Boughey, Tri-State G&T Assn.
• Strengthening Member Engagement with Who Powers You - Chelsie Bakken, East River Electric Power Cooperative
• Crisis Communications for Cooperatives - Matt Merritt, Paulsen Agency
• Putting the Heart Back Into Member Engagement - Rebecca Undem, Inspirational Speaker, Author & Podcaster
• Basin Electric Update - Jeremy Woeste, Basin Electric
• Basin Electric Sustainability Report

Goals and objectives

• Identify and prioritize the common messages we want to communicate in our advertising and marketing communications.
• Identify resources and opportunities to work together on singular joint advertising and marketing communications efforts with a common message and goal saving costs through economies of scale.
• Identify Group Members' existing creative materials that can be inventoried and shared with other co-ops to adapt for their local use, lowering their production costs. The money saved can be redirected to additional media placement for more effective results/return-on-investment.
• Network and collaborate as a group throughout the year, helping each other by sharing information, ideas, advice, and suggestions to improve our joint advertising, marketing, and communications efforts.
• Identify and prioritize the products and services you need from Basin Electric to help you with your advertising and marketing communications efforts.
• Identify and prioritize your preferred channels of delivery from Basin Electric to distribute media products to you (email, US mail, online, streaming, etc.).
• Identify what digital assets are most valuable to you from Basin Electric via the Internet Assets. Would be available 24x7 on central server and can include: photo images, videos, audio files, articles, power points, graphics, print ads, marketing materials, etc.
• Incorporate the Touchstone Energy Cooperatives (TEC) brand into all our advertising, marketing, and public relations materials and efforts, creating the "linkage" to the local co-op.
• Identify and implement ways to educate, promote, and advance the TEC brand throughout the Basin member systems to become best-in-class TE member co-ops.