MikeOberholtzer

Rocky, Are you trying to login to myipmsusa.org? The store itself doesn't require a login, but it certainly helps to be logged in to myipmsusa.org so the system can pre-fill your information. Your login for myipmsusa.org is different than your Forum login, unless you have made them the same. I see you last logged into myipmsusa.org on March 1, so your login should be fine. I've checked the site and store and everything is working. If you need any help getting in, please email me at treasurer@ipmsusa.org or call me at 708-712-2322. Thanks, Mike Mike Oberholtzer Treasurer, IPMS/USA

Hi Steve, To make changes on your membership profile you can log in at myipmsusa.org and click on the blue head at upper right. A drop down will appear including “View Profile”. Click that, and you will see an “Edit Profile” button which will allow you to update your email address or any other information. You can also send an email to our office manager, Nancy Kennedy-Hackney, at Manager@ipmsusa.org, and she can update anything in your profile for you. Thanks for your membership, Mike Treasurer, IPMS/USA

Hi Gil, Thanks for sharing this. Would you mind sending me the email address this came from and the email address they sent it to? You can send them to me privately at treasurer@ipmsusa.org. I want to investigate if this is a spam attempt or an actual Dragon marketing message. It just doesn't seem legitimate, but who knows? It certainly wasn't anything the Eboard approved. Let us know if anyone else mentions getting this. Thanks, Mike

Gil, I can answer your financial questions. 1) How much more are these changes costing us from the printer compared to a year ago, before the upheaval and changes were made. The overall cost of producing the Journal has actually gone down on an annual basis. Volunteers are now doing certain services that we used to pay about $10,000 per year for. This more than offsets a small increase in cost due to the heavier cover and any additional pages we may add to a particular issue like the Convention issue. More detail on costs is in the next answer. 2) What is the yearly budget for the Journal for the rest of 2025 and into 2026, especially compared to 2024? The Journal is our largest single expense other than the Convention. We plan our Journal expense based on 6 issues per year, but there are years with 5 or 7 issues if we are off schedule like we were in 2024. In 2023 we produced and shipped 6 issues at a cost of $12,293 each. IN 2024 that went up to $14,729 each for 5 issues. Most of that increase of $2,436 per issue was for postage and shipping; only $890 per issue of the increase was for printing. Even that increase wasn't due to changes we made; it was due to increased costs for paper and other materials. Our average cost per issue so far in 2025 is $14,992, very much in line with 2024. This doesn't include the cost reduction mentioned above in question 1, which will save us about $10,000 per year starting in 2025. Regarding your concerns about whether we are on solid financial footing, the answer is a definitive yes. Your timing is good- we are printing our annual financial statements in the next issue of the Journal. You'll see that we brought in about $33,000 more net revenue in 2024 than 2023. As you know, profit is not our goal, serving our membership is. We try to stay close to break even, and most years do see a small profit. However we have the reserves to cover us in any lean years, and as of right now we don't see a dues increase on the horizon. But like most things financial, that isn't a promise, just a prediction. The economy's ups and downs impact IPMS/USA like they do everyone else, so let's hope for a good economic outlook. Mike Oberholtzer Treasurer, IPMS/USA

Hi Mike, Don’t worry, after you renew our office manager Marie Van Schoonhoven reviews each of the special renewals and adjusts the renewal date manually. There is a glitch in the system that doesn’t find the date correctly when the membership level changes. I put a note on the renewal pages about this but you might not have seen it. Thanks for renewing, and enjoy the free year! Mike Oberholtzer, Treasurer, IPMS/USA

Hi Gil, thanks for the thanks! I guess I wasn’t clear about Nancy’s duties. Nancy is not a technical consultant. She is the day to day primary user of the system for events. In our case that means convention related. Her role includes setting up each convention in the system, managing online registration for both vendors and members, sending emails to members and vendors using the system both for conventions and local or regional shows as requested, and continuing to refine how we use the system to meet our needs. She also supports the Director of Local Chapters with data requests, email blast support, and data clean up. For Madison she participated in the weekly Zoom meetings held by the convention team, managed all of the pre-registration support and questions, provided advice and support to the convention registrar and vendor coordinator, trained the registration staff in the tools we use to register and pay for registration, arrived two days early in Madison to help check in vendors and make sure we were ready to go with registration Wednesday morning, and then worked the entire convention to keep things running smoothly. She supports a minimum of two convention teams at any one time. I would say she is really more of an IPMS convention operations expert than a Wild Apricot expert, and she has been great at finding ways to make Wild Apricot do more for us. We all need to remember that IPMS/USA is now a 5,000 member organization, and running it is a huge amount of work. The Eboard, RCs, Journal staff, and web/social media staff are all volunteers. But we do need the two part-time contractor/consultant folks that we have to do the day to day work in the trenches that keeps the Society functioning. We do pay Personify for the use of the system, a widely used, well supported non-profit membership and event management tool. The system is a bargain at about $360 a month. If you would like to learn more about it please visit wildapricot.com. I would also point out that I am not the person who said there is no requirement for Eboard members to monitor the forums. I believe that was Circuitrider. I certainly respond when a forum moderator gives me a heads up though. I can’t speak for the others, but personally I just don’t have time to check the forums every day. However I do respond quickly to any emails, texts, or calls looking for more information about how IPMS/USA works. My contact information is below. I devote about 20 hours a week to managing the finances of the Society already, and I do want to spend some time with my family and my hobby! I hope this was helpful, Mike 708-712-2322 treasurer@ipmsusa.org

I can shed some light on this also. We did have a consultant (who is a member) volunteer to work with us on our mission and vision for the future. The Eboard met with him one time, and is considering how, or if, we should move forward. In any case, this is a very kind offer from a person who has experience in the field and is willing to volunteer their time. We could use more members like him!

Yes, that is correct!

Sorry to be late to the party- I just found out about this question. The answer is pretty simple. We have two people who do a huge amount of work for IPMS/USA, Nancy Kennedy-Hackney and Marie Van Schoonhoven. Nancy and Marie are our consultants- our Member & Event System Admin and our Office Manager, respectively. Nancy is our MyIPMSUSA.org (Wild Apricot) guru, manages convention registration and vendor registration, and handles our email blasts for the convention and other contests around the country. Marie handles all things membership related and our special products like name badges. We are very lucky to have two such dedicated consultants taking care of our needs! It works out better for us and for them to have them as consultants rather than employees.

Hi Nick, Your post didn't offend anyone. I don't think it was clear to Eric that when you mentioned the email address and membership suspension that you were referring to the scam email going around pretending to be IPMS. Eric posted the scam alert this morning after we heard from you and others that they were getting these. Thanks for sharing that information. Mike

Ed, Once an email address is created and used, it will be found by spammers and hackers and inevitably you will get junk like this. Wild Apricot has not been hacked, it is just an unfortunate fact that email addresses will be misused. BTW, I like the name Wild Strawberry! I've never been a fan of apricots. Mike

Sorry Mike, I didn't quite understand the question. The convention team will be posting the vendor list when they are ready. I'll ask Len Pilhofer to jump in here. Mike

Mike, Happy New Year! Is this for the 2024 Convention or something else? We have several different lists depending on the purpose. Might be best to email me at treasurer@ipmsusa.org. Mike

Thanks Ron! I've been looking for a Blacken It replacement.

Penny, I see that this discussion was never closed out. For those following this, Penny's membership was cleared up on January 24 and all is well.