Thanksgiving Thanks
It’s that time of the year when a lot of people pause to give thanks for those things they are grateful for. I need to throw in my two cents. A few months ago when I checked in at the AMTA National Convention in Orlando, I was thrilled when I opened my registration packet and found that instead of just my name badge, some kind soul had put the word “PRESS” in big letters underneath my name. To whomever that was, thank you. Since I have been blogging about the politics of the massage and bodywork profession, I have seized the opportunity to contact people at the top of some of the entities I’ve written about

The Financial Health of Our Organizations: FSMTB
This is the second in my series on the financial health of the non-profit massage therapy associations. What a difference a year has made to the Federation of State Massage Therapy Boards. In the 2007 fiscal year, the FSMTB’s Form 990 showed gross receipts of just over $43,000. The 2008 shows those revenues as exceeding $355,000. Looks like it was a good year, and the expectation is that income will continue to grow as more boards join (there are currently 33) and more students take the MBLEx. 2007 income for the Federation was below the upper limit for filing Form 990-EZ,  a shorter, less detailed form, so some line-by-line items appear on the 2008 filing that were

Reno Rides Again
Although the official election results have not yet been announced by the NCBTMB, the grapevine has it that Monica Reno has retained her certificant seat on the Board, and the new public member is Ronni Burns. I’m very pleased to hear about Ms. Burns, and less than pleased to hear about Reno. As I’ve stated on a previous blog or two, she is in my opinion part of the Old Guard That Needs To Go.  The NCB seems to be making some good strides forward here lately, and I think the more they distance themselves from the problems of the past, the better their chances. Now that we’re stuck with her, not to mention another year with Delaporta at the helm, we can on

NCBTMB Blog on the Advanced Certification Project
In my last post about Whitney Lowe’s departure from the  NCBTMB Task Force, I reported that CEO Paul Lindamood had made the promise to keep certificants informed about the Advanced Certification project. That was put into action today with the launch of a new blog on the NCB website, authored by Elizabeth Langston, the Director of Exam Development for the NCB. Langston’s post reads, in part, ” One of the questions I’ve been seeing a lot is “Why? What makes you think we need or want an advan

The Financial Health of Our Organizations: AMTA
This is a follow-up to my blog of June 19 about AMTA’s fiscal responsibility.  In the next couple of months I will be reporting on the financial condition of all our non-profit professional organizations. Someone from AMTA asked me why I didn’t pick on ABMP, and the short answer is, they are a not a non-profit organization. When an organization holds itself out as non-profit, the membership (and the public) has a right to know. Incidentally, I am a member of both organizations. The recession has not been kind to AMTA.  According to their Form 990, the organization has taken a 5.6 million-dollar hit on their investments (publicly traded securities) during the f