Even though our members are reporting a powerful business recovery, we face a growing demand from our community for more education and business opportunities, more professional development resources, a wider variety of programming and ways to meet the needs in emerging markets. So your board considered for the first time in seven years, a dues increase.  And I think it’s one of the most challenging decisions any volunteer leader makes for their organization.

We took a long, hard look at what our community needed and what investments had to be made for the future, and even asked consultants for a fresh perspective.  After much analysis, feedback within our membership showed support from supplier members to step up and make an investment in the professional future of our community.

As such, we’ve decided to increase member dues for our supplier members effective July 2011 to an annual rate of $/€450. To put a perspective on the increase, it amounts to approximately one client dinner over the course of a year. While this is the first adjustment to dues pricing in seven years, MPI’s member dues rate remains the lowest amongst the major industry associations.

Investment enables us to expand our base of professional planners and dedicate more financial resources into education at the local chapter and international level.  We’ve already seen initial investments in these areas begin to pay off.

Our first endeavor this year, MPIWeb Connect has exceeded all early goals.  Our increased investment in chapter education will bring more planners to chapter functions which provide more opportunities for our supplier members to meet and build lasting business relationships with MPI planner members.  This final step of our supplier members increasing their investment in our community enables us to support more education and build more diverse marketplace opportunities like those you’ll see at WEC in July.

If your company is evaluating association memberships, consider promoting your affiliation with MPI as one geared towards professional development and lead generation.  You can cite our recent commitment to develop the professional development portal as well as expanding marketplace opportunities and increased access 24/7 to our growing online communities.

I look forward to an MPI future focused on world-class professional development for our industry and lasting business relationships. I hope you continue to view your MPI membership as a valuable and rewarding resource that connects you to the world’s largest planner community with the largest buying power. Thank you for being a loyal member of MPI.