FOTA Member Concerns Annual Report



FOTA Member Concerns Annual Report

February 6, 2009

Submitted by Barbara Ingram-Rice

General Report:

Participated in the following activities in the last year:

• Strategic Planning

• Conference Planning (as web master as well)

• Developed & Implemented Sustaining Membership program

• Assisted in orientation of new Member Concerns Coordinator Debbie Misrahi

• Quarterly phone duty for FOTA phone line

• Solicited the assistance of Yvonne Berecz to download the licensee list from the DOH Board of OT Practice and format for mailing of special FOCUS issue to promote conference (see action item)

• Respectfully requested to change to Government Affairs Coordinator and Accepted position.

Web Master Report:

Participated in the following activities in the last year:

• Phone conference with Regional Reps to educate them on the function of the website and how that can help them in their committee work

• Managed membership questions generated from the website.

• Thank you Betsy Burgos, FOTA VP for stepping up, learning to use the website and generating the conference pages on the site and for working with me to edit the forms associated with conference

• Established online form for receiving donations from the Silent Auction at conference

• Established an online form for Conference evaluation which will be emailed to all conference participants on Sunday after registration closes so they will have it in their in box when they arrive home.

• Developed conference registration form (see action item on this )

• Added fields to the member profiles so that various committees can be more efficient: These include

o A list of volunteer activity choices (see action item on this) Note: we have had some to sign up for various activities already. Need to promote this.

o Updated SIS lists

o Membership by county list

o Whether a member wants to receive FOCUS electronically or by mail

o Added a field for student graduation date so we can track our student’s progress and better keep in touch with our student members.

o Added a tracking mechanism for Myra McDaniel winners

o Added Name Tag Credentials field to match online registration form to increase ease of printing name tags for conference

• Have attended monthly webinars by MemberClicks to learn more about our complete web solution and how to best utilize all the functions

• Have attended webinars on:

o How to appeal to the younger members by Boston Confrerenceing

o How to use technology to provide continuing education by Boston Conferencing in prep for 2010 conference year.

o Private webinar for optimization of our product with Member Clicks

• MemberClicks has increased their basic fees by 5% as the cost of business has increased (but so has their service to FOTA). This means a monthly increase of $11

• Will be providing web training to the Regional Reps and SIS chairs at conference

• Instituted the Web Room at conference for onsite registration and to teach members about the capabilities of the website

• Instituted a Members Home Page on the website where members are greeted by name on long in and have links to other areas of the web site in the members only section.

• Have begun to add FOTA documents to the web site. Completed documents are under FOTA Documents accessed from the Member Home Page and documents still under review of the board are found in Board Resources available only to Board Members.

• Have created a Board Resources Page just for board members.

• Assisted in getting new members of the board up and running with Skype.

• Worked with schools to get students registered for conference.

• Assisted in orientation of Treasurer new treasurer.

• Developed Memorial Page for Kathy Torberntsson will plan to print comments and send to the family.

• Updating and recreating Legislative pages

• Plan to do an annual update of all forms to keep our record keeping clean and give us some history to track. This means a new membership and renewal form each fiscal year as well as other forms as necessary.

• Had a request from a member re: a pediatric practice question. Did a search for all members with pediatric related SIS selections and emailed them the question from the system. The member received 9 good responses. Per my experience, much better quality responses than those found on the list serv and much quicker responses as well.

FOCUS Report

Tanya Feddern-Bekcan produced the following activity for the last year:

• Gotten the FOCUS out on time every time.

• Has been working with FOCUS Advertisers

• Has a beautiful new baby and we need to make a resolution to get her the info she needs BEFORE the Deadline! Thanks!

By Laws Report

Carol Gwin produced the following activity for the year:

• Gave By Laws input to the Strategic Planning Process

• Will update the By Laws once the Strategic Plan is Approved by Membership

• Is an active member of the Nominations Committee

Nominations Committee Report

Debbie Oliveria is the chair and produced the following activity for the year:

• Developed a slate of candidates for this year’s election

• Needs help, new members on the committee

• Still need an election for VP elect

Recognitions Committee Report

Tim Finlan produced the following activity this year:

• Received nominations via the online form and his committee approved the following for awards at this year’s conference:

o Award of Recognition: Catherine Pierce

David Clark Award of Excellence: Melissa Morgan (her nomination stated award of recognition but write up states that she was nominated for excellence)

Louise Samson Leadership Award: Jim Hammond

Award of Appreciation: Custom Mobility

o Myra McDainel Winners

• Tim has now been appointed Treasurer of FOTA and will vacate this position and we will need to appoint a replacement well in advance of the 2010 awards.

Open Positions

Membership Chair

Student Chair

Action Items for the Board

• All board members are expected to stop by the FOTA Web Room to get their questions answered about how to use the FOTA web site to their best advantage for their committee work. All board members are expected to be proficient in use of the website. After this conference I will be happy to answer questions, but please do not feel I am mad at you if I begin to practice OT on you and give you the instructions and ask you to do it yourself.

• Under the item of “Volunteer Activity” in the profiles, the following is a list of what is there to date:

o Assist with conference

o Host an FOTA Board Meeting at your facility

o Assist in developing a new Forum

o Appointment to a board position

o Join an Ad Hoc Committee for:

▪ Government Affairs

▪ Fincances

▪ SIS

▪ Education

▪ Membership

▪ Fund raising

o Represent FOTA to other groups

Is this good for now or are there other suggestions to add?

We ALL need to promote members in updating this field in their profiles

• SIS sections need review. We currently have:

o Education

o School systems

o Phys dys

o Mental health

o SI

o DD

o Administration and management

o Gerontology

o Home and community health

o Phys dys- hands

o Health promotion & wellness

o Work programs

o Technology

o Sensory system

• Need to discuss keeping listserv or is it outdated. Would we do better to promote the SIS, RR via email as discussed earlier in this report and also promote bulletin boards. I speak in favor of closing the list serv

• Advertiser Management

o Could this be a function of a fundraising committee and/or admin assistant

o I have left the forms for each medium separate as this way the system can be set to send a notification to the person responsible for the individual pieces. This also helps in financial tracking.

o Would like to delete the language re: discount for multi-media (newsletter, and website and at conference) as this is confusing advertisers and causing a lot of unnecessary extra work for the web master. Would like to return to individually negotiated discounts if someone asks.

o Would like the board to consider offering a discount to members for advertising. We may be able to increase vendor and other advertisers if we do this. It only needs to be 10%. But would be another member benefit that would not cost us anything to add and yet add value to our membership and we could even make more money in volume!

o Discussing the online FOCUS with advertisers, perhaps we offer a virtual vendor area so they get double exposure when they sign up for the whole year w/FOCUS since we are offering both paper and electric versions. Other discussion?

• Appointments needed:

o Student chair to coordinate FOTA efforts with the schools and students. Could do coordination via FLOTEC. This would speak to our Strategic Plan re: coordinating with other groups and within our own board and membership. This person could also keep up with and promote the Myra McDaniel fund and even email a congrats on their graduation. We now have student grad date in the data base.

o Need new recognitions chair

o Need a membership chair to assist Debbie

• To consider for next conference registration:

o Need to reconsider offering membership as part of non member registration.

▪ I know we all think it is a good way. But in fact, it seems that folks sometimes don’t even realize they are members (based on email and other feedback).

▪ With presenters registering at a discount and possibly not being members, it takes a lot of work on the back end to separate these out before converting the rest to membership status

▪ The funds collected as non member registration has to , by hand be accounted for separately in the financials by the treasurer

▪ We have had a great number of renewals and new members separate from conference registration since conference registration went live (about equal to registration if not more)

▪ When a member renews/joins online their access is immediate access to member rates in the online conf registration so they are making one transaction instead of two and we still get their money

▪ Bottom line, after two years of this, it is a LOT of work on the back end that most of you don’t even realize and is likely a large part of the reason that our database was such a mess when we got it from Derek.

o Discounts for OTA Registrations

▪ I notice that we are just about the only CE provider that offers this discount so my suggestion is either:

• Make the rates the same for OT and OTA members

• OR market the heck out of the fact that we are about the only CE provider that offers this discount as evidence that FOTA does support the OTA community within its membership.

▪ Registration pricing in general

• Next time, the Board may , by decree of the webmaster, ONLY choose One percentage off for ALL discounts. And it must be a percentage and not arbitrarily decided amounts.

o This conference has had 100 price points. This made the registration form waaaayyyyy more complex than it had to be.

o Was unable to create a simple discount code because every choice offered different percentages for each thing.

o The board may discuss the amount of the percentage discount but NOT whether we choose a percentage or assigned amount.

• Student pricing

o Can we consider one price for students that basically cover their cost to be there?

o By doing this I can create a group registration for students that will make the schools lives easier and mine too. This has been a nightmare again this year.

o Need to work closely with FLOTEC to make sure schools do not wait until the last day to register students.

o Again, one more way to demonstrate that FOTA is supporting students.

o Would at least help with conversion of new members. None would be getting new membership with their registration.

o Most that are not members register as presenters

o Many think they get membership no matter what category they sign up for. Very confusing for all involved.

o Will keep our database clean.

• Same points to be made for presenter , LCC and Executive Board discounts

▪ Timing of conference activities:

• To consider with setting Early Bird Registration dates

o My birthday as web master for a Feb conf

o Check on Forum meeting schedule. This year early bird closed just a week before the South Bay Forum meeting. This is an example of a strong forum and it would have been nice to give them about a week and create some urgency for registration instead of announcing Oops we just closed early bird reg.

o Most providers close early bird 2 weeks out. No problem in us doing this either.

o Whole point of early bird is to create urgency and we all know OT’s are not going to register until the very last minute.

o Publish early bird closing a week before we actually close it. Members feel special when we can tell them, “just for you I’ll do it at early bird rate” No one has to know we are doing this.

• Liase with FLOTEC on student registration is a must. See notes above for ways to do this.

• More debriefing to follow after conference

Respectfully submitted

2/06/09

Barbara Ingram-Rice,OT,LMT

FOTA Web Master

FOTA Past Member Concerns Coordinator

FOTA Government Affairs Coordinator

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