ISST Treasurer's Report for the Executive Board Term 2018 to 2020
by Eckhard Roediger
The treasurer is in charge for all formal issues concerning following the Society’s purposes laid out in the statutes. This includes the financial management as well as building up the organisational set-up in terms of office management and organization of payments (including e.g. maintaining the PCCI compliance level for customer´s protection).
After the last GMA in late 2018, some formal changes had to be made with a notary´s help at the German law court. We settled the Dual Membership regulation which allowed us to offer reduced ISST membership rates to members of a national schema therapy society that is affiliated to us. So far this has been applied to members of the Dutch and Brazilian Societies. At the present GMA we are not calling for any further changes to the ISST statutes as our current statutes are catering well with our current needs.
The report about the last two years is twofold. Let me start with the positive side of the coin, the financial situation:
Now to the more critical developments:
As I introduced in the beginning, the office organisation so far has also been another task of the treasurer. In 2018, it became obvious that the increasing number of members, certification applications and the growing events require more office staff. In summer 2018, we tried to employ additional local office staff, but we could not find somebody fulfilling our expectations. This sheds further light on the multitude of tasks Angeles was dealing with all the time. Meanwhile our membership grew up to about 1800! This is exciting – but also a tremendous challenge to deal with!
The solution was contracting Volunt, an Association Management Company (AMC) who promised to support us in developing our office infrastructure and building up a more individualized Customer Relation Management tool (CRM). However, progress was disappointingly slow, and it was slowed further by attempts to link it to the conference tool for Copenhagen. By March 2020, however, we realized, that the recommended CRM was not running smoothly and repeatedly breaking down. So we decided to terminate the contract, hired a project manager and tried to set up a new platform using Salesforce. This, however, proved to be much too costly. At this point, Volunt announced that they were withdrawing entirely and terminating their contact with us. With respect to the CRM, Travis once again stepped in as our “saviour” taking the lead in getting consultants who can customize to our needs Wild Apricot, our web platform, that was already serving as our CRM in the background. In this way we will gain additional virtual office power. I can hardly express what kind of relief that meant to me (and Angeles, of course)! Meanwhile we still need to address the question of what further office staff we need to run everything efficiently.
Looking back, with respect to developing our administrative infrastructure, we have lost 2 years. I seriously apologize for all the inconveniences and the delays this caused for you as our members and for Angeles who sacrificed herself to keep our services running as best she could. I personally will leave the board after 12 years now, as required by the ISST statutes. Supporting Travis I will do my best until the end of this board term to leave my successor a clear table in terms of a well working CRM and office staff. Travis and I will continue serving backstage as a member of the new found Administration Advisory Board to contribute the knowledge we accumulated in the past years, while we clear the front stage for new faces carrying the torch further into the future. It´s time to say good-bye now and I wish them the very best!
Looking back, I feel deeply enriched by the insight I gained while contributing to building up our society from scratch, the stimulating encounters with people I learned to know along the way and the personal growth I received as a gift in return – especially in my term as the President from 2014 to 2016. Thanks to you all!
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