New Year’s Evolutions -The Pedorthic Footcare Association’s Plan for Survival.

The recent letter to the PFA Membership by the Pedorthic Footcare Association’s current President, Rob Sobel, ( a copy of which can be seen below) represents a courageous and bold move by the PFA’s Executive Committee to present an agenda to save the Association from collapsing and one I believe that should be applauded.

The 55 year old association has suffered severely from the impact the economic recession has had on PFA membership subscriptions, the revenue lost from poorly attended Symposiums by both practitioners and exhibitors over recent years, and the disproportionally high association management fees in relation to paying members. The BOD at the PFA has successfully managed to negotiate an exit from the current management contract with AMG without penalty.

It’s going to be a tough challenge for the board of directors at the PFA to self-manage and entice both old and new members to re-subscribe and join, but I think it’s not an insurmountable task by any stretch of the imagination.

Here are just a few ideas for consideration in the hope of regenerating some discourse about what can be done in this era of change.

Increase the voting membership.

The PFA membership has been in decline for many years and for many different reasons. There currently exists different levels of membership fees dependent on the nature of your relationship to the PFA industry. Where high fees may have been necessary to accommodate a budget to pay for a management team in the past, this is not the case now. I’m sure the high membership fees also dissuaded some from renewing or joining the Association. Arguably getting membership back up is the most important priority for the survival of the PFA and one area that needs to be reviewed.

Membership yearly subscriptions range from $75 a year for a student membership without voting rights, to $210 for a Certified Fitter, again without voting rights, to $295 a year for a regular individual membership with voting rights. That’s a tough sell for non - voting members and a chunk of change for voting members. Numbers would surely increase if the cost of membership for both Certified Fitters and Certified Pedorthists was dropped to $150 per year and if there is a student that is even considering a future in Pedorthics then let them join for free. If you are a member of the Association you should have a vote regardless of your subscription fee.

Embrace the Certified Shoe Fitters

Where the number of Certified Pedorthists has been in decline for the past ten years or so, the number of Certified Shoe Fitters has been increasing. Although this statement may seem like a platitude as the shoe fitter designation is relatively new, it is believed that there are now more Certified Fitters than Certified Pedorthists (in Rob Sobel’s letter he explains that there is some discrepancy in the membership numbers being reported by the management orgainzations.)

The American Board for Certification in Orthotics, Prosthetics and Pedorthics (ABC) has worked with the National Community Pharmacy Association (NCPA) to establish training standards for pharmacists providing therapeutic shoes to Medicare beneficiaries. You can read more about the Certified Shoe Fitter designation here The upshot is that shoe fitters are here to stay and they should be embraced by the Association as the future of Pedorthics. A fitter should be encouraged to aspire to become a Certified Pedorthist. The PFA needs the Fitters onside to survive.

Get the Symposium rocking again.

This year we will see the PFA’s 56th Annual Symposium combine with the APMA’s meeting in July in Orlando. The cost to attend is $595 if you’re an early bird and $795 if you are not. It’s too late to do anything about those rates this year but if you are a small Mom and Pop storefront it’s an easier decision to make not to go than it is to attend. Flights, hotel rooms, registration fee on top of lost revenue if the store has to close for two or three days make it a non-viable option for many of the Pedorthists who essentially are the core base of the PFA. There are costs, of course, associated with providing continuing education but the budget should be based on a minimum expense for the attendees that the manufacturers want to see in the Symposium exhibit hall. As the bulk of the revenue for the Symposium comes from those manufacturers that pay to exhibit, everything should be done to make it affordable for their customers to attend and by extension make the exhibitors happier and more likely to attend. The best attended Symposium and the biggest we’ve ever had was the International Symposium held with the Canadian PFA also held in Orlando several years ago. Premier, tier one cities encouraging international attendance is a must for the future, and an easily accessible resort destination doesn’t hurt either.

Elevate the Role of the Certified Pedorthist in the Community.

In my opinion a really smart move the PFA has made was the decision to host a joint meeting with the APMA. Whether the decision was made out of necessity or serendipity, it’s bodes well for the future profile of the PFA. Sure, a minority of Podiatrists may see Pedorthics as a threat to their profession in some way, but I think the majority see the benefit of working closely with their local Pedorthist and elevate the public awareness of the Pedorthic profession. It should be a symbiotic relationship benefitting from mutual referrals.

Shoe Fitters should be motivated to invest in the education required to become Certified Pedorthist. It’s not inconceivable that once the financial stability of the PFA has recovered that the annual membership dues of the C.Ped should be dropped all together as a reward of some sort for supporting the profession, with the only onus on the C.Ped to attend the Symposium every other year to maintain their continuing education points (CEP’s). Shoe Fitters would be motivated to become C.Peds with the reward of an honorary membership. Lower the bar for entry to the profession, elevate the standard of Certification.

By enhancing the role of the C.Ped as an allied medical professional, the branding associated with the Pedorthics profession will raise the profile of the profession in the public domain. There should be a vehicle created for manufacturers of Pedorthic quality foot care products so that they can apply for licensing rights for their brands to use the PFA logo.

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Re-energize discourse and debate.

As a final thought, the social media resources available to manage an association of industry professionals are many. A good example of this would be to leverage the LinkedIn group for the PFA. If the association were ever to employ another marketing professional, the position would be best described as one that would encourage members of the PFA to engage and share in industry related issues. The LinkedIn group already exists and is a ready-made platform to grow the PFA membership back to where it used to be and beyond.

If you’ve read this post thus far I’d encourage you to post your comments and help get the discourse started.

PFA President's Letter to the Membership

"As the President of this great organization my responsibilities are to lead the Board of Directors (BOD) and the membership in maintaining the current wellbeing, and planning the future of, the PFA. This letter is to inform you of a crisis averted. At the 55th PFA symposium in Orlando this past October the PFA leadership was given grave financial news by our management company, AMG. The financial issues at hand have led us to make some changes to the day-to-day operations of PFA, but in a fairly short amount of time will put us in a much better financial position. Let me explain some of the reasons why we are where we are, and how we got here, then explain where we go from here. This will not be brief, but I encourage you to read it in its entirety as it will give you as much information as possible so you understand. After all, this is YOUR organization.

PFA membership has been declining for years. Membership dollars are one of the main sources of revenue that allows us to keep the organization operating. Right until his abrupt departure several weeks before the October 2014 Symposium, Brian Lagana (PFA Executive Director for the past eleven years and employee of our management group, AMG) told us that our membership numbers were 1200-1300 members. We were told this repeatedly, in group and in individual conversations. That turned out to be untrue; the true number (792 members) was only revealed to us as the PFA Executive Committee (EC) pressed for answers at a meeting during the symposium in October 2014 (other creative accounting practices to be covered later).

We had already been taking measures to retain and recruit members.

We sent BOD members to schools to promote PFA to pedorthic students.

We attended other group's conferences in an attempt to gain additional membership, often at the BOD member's own expense.

The PFA BOD has for the last two years been reaching out to members both current and whose memberships had expired to keep them in the organization, by calling and emailing each of these individuals.

We knew there were going to have to be some changes in the way we were running PFA during Jay Zaffater's tenure as President, and we were constantly being reassured by AMG that things were going to be "tight" but if we made this change, or that, we would get by.

Last year I had multiple budget discussions with Brian Lagana, cutting more than what he recommended, but it needed to be done, and the BOD passed those budget cuts.

Changes to Current Pedorthics magazine were also implemented to make it more cost effective.

More webinars and workshops (often done as a donation of their time and effort--thank you, Erick Janisse) were offered to help the PFA sagging bottom line.

We tried to market the PFA bookstore more to generate additional revenue.

These financial issues did not start last year, however. The financial issues started before Jay Zaffater's presidency, and Past President Kristi Hayes saw that we needed to get out from under the huge management fees charged by the management company (Smith Bucklin). There was a sizable early departure penalty in the tens of thousands of dollars, but without breaking that relationship, PFA would have been bankrupt during Kristi's tenure as President. For at least the last four years that I have been on the BOD (probably more), PFA has been using the revenue from exhibitors securing their booth space to pay off the expenses incurred at the previous year's symposium. This not sustainable. The 2011 and 2012 symposia were disastrous. Two thousand thirteen and 2014 were better in every way, but PFA had carried over a $60,000 debt that did not show up on financial statements the BOD were given. We found that out at the meeting during the October 2014 symposium from Bruce Wardle, CEO at AMG. Even at the symposium this October, we were making cuts and being told that we could probably make it to the shared PFA 56th annual symposium with APMA's National Conference.

PFA's only hope to continue as a self-standing organization is to self-manage this organization. We have been working extremely hard since the symposium to come up with a viable business plan to keep PFA here for all of us, and I am happy to say the EC has come up with a plan that should allow us to not only retire our debts, but actually start rebuilding the financial stability of PFA by the end of 2015. Bruce Wardle has graciously allowed PFA to exit our contract with AMG prematurely without penalty. The self-management model has been part of the history of PFA in the past. It is not easier, and it requires a greater commitment by the BOD and the membership who volunteer, but we have received those commitments and it allows us to put this organization back in a much stronger and healthier financial position. At least during my tenure as President, we will not be utilizing a management company to run the day-to-day operations of PFA. There will be changes that will become obvious, however we are working to make those changes as benign and seamless as possible.

Current Pedorthics magazine will become an online magazine. I know that the survey in 2014 had the majority of members wanting the magazine to remain a printed magazine, but due to the budgetary constraints, it is either online or no magazine at all. We can revisit the idea of Current Pedorthics going back to print in 2016. Please understand this would not have been done if it was not absolutely necessary.

There will not be an Executive Director (ED) for the time being. Those jobs formerly done by the ED will be taken on by various BOD members.

The PFA Book Store will have a brief retooling and be back up and running normally in the next couple of weeks.

Your phone calls to PFA Headquarters will be answered and a timely response will come back to you by either the person answering the phone, or the appropriate BOD member handling that aspect of PFA's operations.

PFA will remain the premier location for webinars, workshops, and symposia for thepedorthist.

We have some great ideas on growing this organization and the pedorthic industry. The changes we have set in place will not only make PFA sustainable, but will put PFA in a financial position it has not enjoyed for some time. It is easy to fall into the blame game, but the situation we find ourselves in did not happen last week or last year. We as an organization need to come together now and focus on the future of PFA. We have an opportunity here to take adversity and turn it into prosperity. This will be a hard transition on the members of the PFA BOD and the people who volunteer on the different committees, but they see the benefits of this transition and are committed to it. We look forward to preserving and strengthening this organization for today, tomorrow, and many years to come.

Thank you,

Rob Sobel, PFA President"