IRS Announces Standards for Continuing Education Providers and Accrediting Organizations

Is your organization interested in becoming an IRS-approved Continuing Education Provider?  The IRS announced last week the standards and requirements for this process.  There are new CE requirements for certain tax return preparers beginning next year.  Make sure you are aware and your tax return preparer. Check out their news release from last week.


December 6, 2011 WASHINGTON—The Internal Revenue Service today announced the standards to become an IRS-approved Continuing Education (CE) Provider and the requirements to become an IRS CE Accrediting organization.  The guidance paves the way for the implementation of new CE requirements for certain tax return preparers starting next year.

Individuals who are required to take the Registered Tax Return Preparer competency test before the end of 2013 must begin completing continuing education courses in 2012. The 15-hour annual requirement consists of 10 hours of federal tax law topics, three hours of tax law updates and two hours of ethics and/or professional conduct. Preparers must obtain the courses from IRS-approved providers.
To be an IRS-approved CE Provider, an organization must be one of the following:

• An accredited educational institution,
• Recognized for continuing education purposes by the licensing body of any state or U.S. territory,
• Approved by a qualifying organization as a provider of CE on subject matters designed for registered tax return preparers, enrolled agents, and enrolled retirement plan agents (such qualifying organizations will be known as accrediting organizations), or
• Any other professional organization, society or business recognized by the IRS as a provider of CE on subject matters designed for registered tax return preparers, enrolled agents, and enrolled retirement plan agents.

Any organization that wants to become an accrediting organization can immediately submit the required documentation outlined in section 4 of Revenue Procedure 2012-12 to the address provided in the revenue procedure. Once approved, any accrediting organizations will be publicized by the IRS and must renew their status as accrediting organization with the IRS every three years.
New provider application process
Organizations in all four categories must obtain an IRS CE provider number. Organizations are able to apply through a new on-line process beginning today.  As part of the process, continuing education providers are required to pay an annual fee to the third-party vendor selected by the IRS to administer the CE provider application and renewal processes. The fee covers costs to maintain a public listing of all approved providers and to collect course completion information from providers, identifying to the IRS, by PTIN, those attendees who have completed a program. There is no additional IRS fee.
To apply for a provider number and program number(s), organizations should visit: www.irs.gov/taxpros/ce and click on the “Apply to become an IRS Approved CE Provider” link.  Assistance for CE Provider questions is available Monday-Fri, 8 a.m. – 8 p.m. EST by calling 855-296-3150 (toll-free) or 202-499-5606.
The IRS will maintain full oversight of approving and reviewing providers. Additional information, including Frequently Asked Questions, is available at www.IRS.gov/ptinand www.IRS.gov/taxpros/ce.

QR Codes ... What size should it be?

One of the growing trends in the association world is the use of Quick Response Codes or more familiarly known as QR Codes.  For those unfamiliar with a QR code, it is a two-dimension matrix barcode that you can scan with most smartphones, that gives you additional information.  The information could be a website url, phone number, contact information, etc. 

Over the last few months the use has grown immensely, even enough that in late summer of this year the USPS offered a discount on direct mail pieces that included a QR code.  One question that has been past around a lot is "What size should my QR code be?" I came across some great information from Kelly Flowers with GrowthVine LLC out of Washington DC.  She had great information on determining the correct size of your next event QR code.  Here is what she had to say.

Your Vote Makes a Difference

Next week, Utah voters will select new city leaders as most municipalities will be holding elections.  As an association manager in the state of Utah, you know that many decisions made at the municipal level can have an impact on your industry, organization and its members. We encourage you to get out an vote in this year's elections.

Election Day is next Tuesday, November 8th. If you want to avoid lines or think you may be busy that day, you can vote early. Voting early is easy.  Simply go to your early voting location and bring a valid form of identification, such as a drivers license or passport. If you are unsure on where to go to vote early, you can visithttp://vote.utah.gov/early-voting/ to find your early voting location.

Its important to make sure that your voice is heard. Individually we struggle to be heard, but collectively we cannot be ignored. Be sure to vote, either at the polls next Tuesday or vote early.  Early voting ends today, November 4th.

Photo Sharing Made Simple

Todays smartphones make it easier and easier to take and share photos. Other social media tools such as Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn have made it easy to share photos with your friends. Well I came across a relatively new application that allows the sharing of photos by friends into a single photo album. Now all your friends or association members could share their photos of a specific event in real time all in the same photo album. No worrying about collecting photos from multiple people to create the album. Create the album, invite, and share in real time. If this is of interest, check out www.liveshare.com. The smartphone free app works for iPhone, Android, WP7, and you can always access and share simply from the web. Try it with your next event, you'll probably get those event angles typically not seen by your usual event photographers.

True Randomness for Your Organization

More and more every day we see organizations that offer a drawing or prizes by doing simple things such as a "like" on the organizations Facebook page. So how do organizations pick winners like this and keep it all completely random. If you are looking for a great tool that enables you to do this, look no further than www.random.org.

Their website gives a little insight into what random generated randomness really is...

Perhaps you have wondered how predictable machines like computers can generate randomness. In reality, most random numbers used in computer programs are pseudo-random, which means they are a generated in a predictable fashion using a mathematical formula. This is fine for many purposes, but it may not be random in the way you expect if you're used to dice rolls and lottery drawings.

RANDOM.ORG offers true random numbers to anyone on the Internet. The randomness comes from atmospheric noise, which for many purposes is better than the pseudo-random number algorithms typically used in computer programs. People use RANDOM.ORG for holding drawings, lotteries and sweepstakes, to drive games and gambling sites, for scientific applications and for art and music. The service has existed since 1998 and was built and is being operated by Mads Haahr of the School of Computer Science and Statistics at Trinity College, Dublin in Ireland.

Random.org offers both FREE and paid services depending on what you are looking for. Services range from lottery picks, to dice rollers, to coin flippers, to sequence generators to random geographic coordinate generation. Go to their website now and check it out.

RANDOM.org

Understanding Your Hard & Soft Benefits

I thought I would share a quick idea i received from the ASAE 199 Ideas...

Hard benefits are things like education, publications, and legislative representation. Soft benefits, or “affinity programs,” offer a personal perk such as a hotel room discount or low-interest credit card. A prospective member generally doesn’t make the decision to join an association based on the desirability of its affinity programs unless they’re unavailable (or not as affordable) somewhere else. Still, while a prospect may not become a member simply to gain access to, say, car rental or credit card discounts, once people do join, they may be more satisfied members because of the affinity programs.

Perhaps we should all evaluate our organizations benefits and ask ourselves if we are trying to get members to join because of "soft" benefits.

Does Your Association Need a Brand Refresh?

An article in the September 2011 ASAE Marketing Insights asked the question, "Does Your Association Need a Brand Refresh?" This got me thinking about our association clients and how often they have had a "brand refresh." Often enough associations don't take this consideration into their Strategic Plan. How often have you looked at an association logo or tagline and thought, "how 1970's?" If you association hasn't looked at a brand refresh in the last 20 plus years, it's probably time that you do.

If you are looking at this "brand refresh" check out the ASAE article for a great guide to get started on your next refresh.

ASAE Marketing Insight Article: Does Your Association Need a Brand Refresh?

Engagement at all Levels of Experience is Crucial to a Healthy Organization

A recent article I read talked about the differences in association membership demographics and how demographics are changing drastically. The article linked below shows some inside on this topic, including statistics from ASAE.

The Graying of Associations

The question you need to ask your organization is what are you doing to bring in the new younger generation members? If you are not putting any focus on it, then your membership will dwindle.

Sharing Documents Across the Country

I recently had communication with a few association executives asking about options to share meeting minutes, agendas, bylaws and more with board members across the country. I thought I would share some of our results that are FREE plus a couple other options.

A great option for sharing documents like this included Google Docs and Dropbox. Both are great options and provide the service for free. If you need a few more options like milestones and timelines then you may want to consider the services of Basecamp. Its simple and the service is relatively inexpensive. Check them all out and let us know what you think. If you have something you prefer, please let us know.

Remarkable Associations Don’t Come Easy

In my thirty-five years of experience with association management, I’ve been exposed to nearly every situation that an organization can experience. Association management reminds me of a story I once heard ...

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