We received a few questions from membership during the business meetings at the annual conference. The following is information we'd like to provide back to membership on the status of these questions:
1) Can MSRT/ASRT provide a bundled package for membership?
The bundled package would have to involve the ASRT/MSRT/AND ARRT as this is a bundle of our certification AND professional societies. MSRT can continue with this suggestion, as it is a great idea. We urge members to contact those organizations as well with their input. ASRT original feedback was that if it was just bundled with ASRT and state society, it could actually be detrimental to ASRT as their membership is more expensive and current state society members wouldn’t renew if they had to pay an ASRT membership as well. Without the requirement from the certifying group (the ARRT), it could potentially harm both ASRT and MSRT membership.
2) Can we advertise our conference with the neighboring state societies?
Unfortunately we did not take advantage of spreading the word to neighboring state societies for this last year. It was published on our Facebook page numerous times, and many of the neighboring state presidents get the Facebook feed. We will ensure that this information is shared for next year’s conference.
3) Can we change our fiscal year?
- On July 26, 2012 discussion took place at an MSRT board meeting. The following is the discussion from the Treasurer’s Report at that meeting, we will put this on the Nov 6th board meeting agenda for discussion:
Treasurer’s Report
Sonya reported that Glen McClusky sent the letter this last week to Mickelson Wealth Management to see if we can gain access to our investments with Options Express(approx $53,000) and will update Sonya on response.
Sonya discussed changed the fiscal to calendar year with Karen our MSRT accountant. If we change our fiscal year from August through July to January through December, we will have to change our accounting system (will cost approximately $5,000).
Our Treasurer, Jill Lucas, is currently having conversations on the correct costs as this would just involve the cost of a new accounting software & filing short year taxes.