A double bogey for FPS dues

A double bogey for FPS dues

Recently, I ran into an old buddy whom I hadn't seen for nearly ten years. We used to see each other at monthly meetings of our local Fluid Power Society chapter. In fact, he might have even been at one of our annual golf outings to witness the only two birdies I ever shot in my sporadic golfing career.

It's been at least ten years since the Cleveland Chapter of FPS had a regular meeting. The same goes for most chapters across the country. Oh, a handful still holds regular meetings. But, only six of the country's 72 chapters currently are active!

Local activity has not declined suddenly. It's been eroding for decades, so don't blame the Internet on this one. When I first joined FPS in 1987, I was asked to serve on the local board while attending my very first meeting. I remember thinking how desperate these guys must have been to ask a first-time attendee to become an officer. But I accepted, and soon became involved in coordinating meetings, rounding up speakers, helping out with the annual golf outing, and even organizing technical seminars.

After a short time, I realized the same handful of people was always doing all the work. It then became clear that to try to turn things around, I'd have to serve on a national level. So I became a regional director, which gave me a voice on FPS's board of directors.

Around the same time, FPS had recently launched its certification program. During one of the board meetings, Jim Morgan, who was executive director at the time, described the certification program as having become "somewhat of a cash cow." Certification was pulling in more money than FPS was spending, so the board had to find a way to use the expendable income to maintain the society's not-for-profit status. The iron was hot, so I struck.

I expressed concerns that local chapters were wasting away and explained how relying entirely on volunteers to run a chapter was no longer practical in an era of downsizing. To operate effectively, chapters needed more than the $10 rebate per member they received annually from FPS headquarters. Having more money would allow a chapter to support a part-time employee to print and distribute meeting notices, coordinate events, and perform similar detail work that volunteers simply don't have time to do. My pleas were all but ignored.

Even though only a small portion of membership dues - if any - is given back to chapters as a year-end rebate, inactive chapters get nothing. So it's actually in the best interest of FPS to have no active chapters. That way, they could keep all the membership dues for themselves instead of having to refund any back to local chapters.

Interestingly, though, FPS does allocate more than a third of each member's dues to a subscription to its official for-profit magazine. But members don't have a choice. Whether they want the magazine or not, $24 of their $65 membership fee goes to the magazine instead of their local chapter. So little or none of your dues gets back to your local chapter, and a sizeable portion goes toward a magazine subsciption you may or may not want. It sounds as if FPS shot a double bogey on this one.

Alan L. Hitchcox
editor