Author Archives: Lauren Bartholomew

Happy October! I hope you are enjoying the cool fall nights and warm fall days. Here is what I am covering this month:

• CONTACTING ME
• OUR SCHOOL PAGES
• MONTH END UPLOADS (INVOICES RUN 10/5)
• MEMBERSHIP CARDS
• REVIEWING OFFICER INFO IN MEMBERPLANET
• REGION 2 MEMBERSHIP TRAINING MATERIALS
• MEMBERPLANET PAID THRU DATE/BANK INFO

CONTACTING ME:
I wanted to make sure that you will contact me if any of these are true:

• You have not uploaded or input any members into MemberPlanet
• You don’t think the assigning membership levels (or activating membership) in MemberPlanet will work correctly for your PTA
• You badly want to attend a membership help session
• You have detailed unresolved issues with OSP or MP
• You are not getting the Washington State PTA newsletters that are sent weekly (hopefully to your email box)
• You need a workaround because membership cards have not been sent out yet, and people want to use their discounts

Again, please contact me ASAP with any of the above issues, please? 

OUR SCHOOL PAGES:
I’m so happy that Our School Pages upload functionality is available for those who signed up for it with their subscription to OSP! Yay! Don’t forget you will always have to assign membership levels in MP after the upload (this is just the activation of membership after contacts are loaded). I am hoping that everyone has joined the OurSchoolPages Admin Community group on Facebook – lots of great discussion as to how to work with OSP and MP and resolve issues.

MONTH END UPLOADS:
Here is the info from WA State PTA regarding month end uploading and activation: It’s time for PTAs to check their roster to make sure the memberships assigned accurately reflect their paid members. The first invoice is scheduled to be processed on October 5 and scheduled to be emailed to each local PTA on October 10. We highly encourage all local PTAs to review their current membership counts and make any corrections before the invoice is processed.
To do this select Membership from the navigation list on the left of the screen. Look for the Membership Summary in the upper right part of the screen. Is the number shown for Quantity of memberships what you expect as the number of paid memberships? Compare the number of Total active member records shown to the Quantity of memberships – the number of memberships would normally not be more than the active members. Select the Member levels report just above the Membership Summary to see a list of assigned memberships. Please contact support@wastatepta.org if your Quantity of memberships number seems off. Please include “Roster Cleanup” in the subject line.
The sample PTA in this image has a little work to do to clean up the roster. WSPTA staff can help with that.

MEMBERSHIP CARDS:
I have not heard about when the functionality for State sending membership cards will be active, but they are definitely working on it.

REVIEWING OFFICER INFO IN MEMBERPLANET:
Here is info regarding officer names and email addresses in MP:
Currently, there is only tracking for the following board positions: President, Vice President, Treasurer, Secretary, Membership, Communications, Reflections, and Advocacy. There is no option for adding other committee chairs or specialized Vice Presidents. Memberplanet plans to release enhanced functionality to improve the board and committee management experience later this year. If an available position has a co-chair, the additional chair can be added in to the singular field separated by an ampersand. Find this information under MP under Group Info then Additional Info.

REGION 2 MEMBERSHIP TRAINING MATERIALS:
Here are all the training materials from the May 23rd membership training seminar run by Region 2 (where I was a trainer): http://www.issaquahptsa.org/membership

MEMBERPLANET PAID THRU DATE/BANK INFO:
Technically memberships are good through 10/31 for state and national, so the paid thru date could be set to 10/31/20. However if you do that, MP won’t prompt you to send reminder emails to rejoin until the fall, so I don’t think that is a good date. OSP shifts current year members to past year members around 7/1, then people rejoin around 8/1 or after. The paid thru date could also be set to 7/1 (or 8/1, if you choose). Right now, just be consistent. All dates should be the same. That way if there is consistent standard in the future, it will be easy to bulk change all members. Please let me know what date you are using.
Some PTAs are not putting bank info into MP, because they will be cutting a check to pay for state and national dues.  Since state will invoice you instead of debit what you owe, if you do not put in bank info, this is an alternative.

Please contact me with any issues,
Valerie Yanni
Membership Chair for Issaquah PTSA Council

Support@memberplanet.com for systems issues with MemberPlanet or questions (can also contact through form on MP after you log in)

Support@wastatepta.org for MemberPlanet issues regarding WA State PTA. 

FIND BELOW:

New Upload Update
Need Resource 
More Resources for youReaching me

Upload Update: I just got a response back from OSP that the OSP auto-upload feature will NOT be ready by month end, but I’m told that it should be available during the beginning of September. 

Here is a link to the Excel template you can use to upload: http://wastatepta.memberplanet.com/uploads/9/8/3/8/98381396/basicmemberloadtemplate.xlsx

*Could you please forward this email to your PTA presidents? I do not have all their contacts, and they need to know what is occurring.*

If your PTA (president/board) decides that your upload will not happen month end, please just be aware that your next due date would be prior to your general membership meetings in September. At minimum an upload needs to happen before a PTAs first general membership meeting in September to officially have the members on the books as you conduct your voting. At one PTA, new members have asked about using their member discounts for school supplies, which they normally could not do without their membership cards in some of the publicized offers. However, members from last year can use their existing cards, since those do not expire until October 31st.

By the way, if you do not have the info to set up bank info in MP, please check with your president or treasurer; they can also add that info if they become an admin.

Need Resource: I have Member Chair asking questions about the member levels, etc. Are there a couple PTAs who successfully went through the process who would consider being a resource for other PTAs in Council? If so, please respond all to this email, or at least respond to me, and I can share with other PTAs.

More resources for you: Quick Links from WSPTA and Issaquah PTSA Council Membership

Login: Every     Password: Child

WSPTA Website
Leader Resources
WSPTA Membership Handbook
WSPTA Membership Benefits
National PTA Membership Benefits
WSPTA Facebook Page
PTA Store
Our School Pages Facebook Page
Contact OSP:  info@ourschoolpages.com  or  rajeev@ourschoolPages.com  or contact Rajeev Goel or his team at 866-616-3247 or 315-677-1766

Within OSP, here are some help topics for OSP issues under admin / help / user guide (thanks to Heidi N.):

Here is a National PTA DIY Kit for Membership Growth (thanks to Sara C.) that you can request from PTAKit.org/Membership and also there are more resources you can access (see second pic):

I have been asked for the handouts from the Region 2 Membership training that happened on May 23rd, and I am trying to get those in digital form for all of you.

Reaching me: Please continue to let me know what issues you have and how they are resolved, so I can keep helping other PTAs. My contact info again is:

Valerie Yanni
membership@issaquahptsa.org

FIND BELOW:
Getting your Login and Password
What to do first
Finding MP Training
First Upload by August 31st and upload tips
A comment by someone who has uploaded successfully

Getting your Login and Password:  Earlier in August, emails were sent to the identified Admin for each PTA (see attachment for an example). This email provided instructions on how to claim your MemberPlanet (MP) database account. Please contact support@wastatepta.org if you have not yet been able to claim your account or just did not get an email.

What to do first: Once you have claimed your account there is a checklist of items to complete including adding additional admin access and updating board member and officer information. Since I believe most people are using OSP for membership sign ups, find the Offline checklist here: http://wastatepta.memberplanet.com

Finding MP Training: To view a recorded webinar and other training materials at your own convenience go to: http://wastatepta.memberplanet.com

First Upload by August 31st: You always want to upload members by month end, of course.  Rajeev from OSP has said that the OSP membership upload will be live by 8/31, so let’s collectively keep our fingers crossed on this, so we don’t have to upload by Excel spreadsheet.

If we have to upload by Excel Spreadsheet here are some MemberPlanet Upload tips:

• File type-Only Excel spreadsheets can be uploaded – other file types are not supported, so do a “save as” of the downloaded OSP file and save as Excel.
• File size-Only 1,000 members may be uploaded at a time
• Worksheets (Tabs)-If your spreadsheet contains multiple worksheets, only the first worksheet will be uploaded.
• State abbreviations-When uploading a member’s United States address, you must use the 2-letter state abbreviation (e.g. “CA”, NOT “California”)
• Phone numbers-Phone numbers cannot be more than than 10 digits long (not including separators like “(” or “-”).
• Multiple-choice fields-Answers to multiple-choice Membership Questions (checkboxes or drop-menu) cannot be uploaded
• Gender-When specifying Gender for your members (optional), “F”, “Female”, “M”, and “Male” are valid formats

Additional tips:

• Check “Ignore the first row of my file (choose this option if the first row is just labels)” for your OSP file.
• Make sure your file includes at least a first & last name OR an email address for every person you are uploading.
• There is a Member Upload Report (under Reports) in MP that shows errors.

Here is a Facebook comment by someone who has uploaded successfully:
I created an export report in OSP that had the fields I wanted to upload to memberplanet (first name, last name, email address, street address, city, state, zip, home phone, cell phone, notes). Then I got rid of the spaces, parentheses, and dashes in the phone number fields because memberplanet doesn’t like them. Finally I put the data into the same order as the memberplanet match tool and uploaded the file. After uploading I went through and assigned the membership levels. It worked but was pretty labor intensive. Right now it seems that adding people and assigning memberships to them is a two-step process.

If you are struggling with any of this, please contact me at membership@issaquahptsa.org or call or text.  I respond quicker to texts and calls. I don’t have a lot of information, but I am on your side and can work with you to find solutions.

I wish everyone good luck and minimal headaches!

Valerie Yanni
Membership Chair for Issaquah PTSA Council
www.issaquahptsa.org