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Dear Membership

As we head into Fall, I hope everyone is as excited as I am to head to Pittsburgh for some first class educational opportunities, as well as to see old friends and make some new ones.  There is nothing to rejuvenate a Life Care Planner's enthusiasm for the work we do than to spend a few days with esteemed colleagues learning and laughing.  This will be my 16th conference [I only missed last year due to my mom being ill and a trial appearance that I could not control] and no matter how long I am in this business, I always leave with new information and a sense of energy from the networking that takes place.

As promised in June, as Board Chair, one of my goals was to provide updates on what we are accomplishing at the Leadership level. First and foremost, of course, is the work that has been put into the October Conference by the wonderful volunteers of IARP and the IALCP Section. Updates have been coming periodically from those in charge and the last time I checked, which was 1 week ago, we had 93 registrants specific to the LCPing portion of the 3 day event and more than 300 registrants in all. Our goal was to have at least 100 LCPers in attendance, so we are very close, if not already there. If you have not yet signed up, please do so now!

We hope you have enjoyed this year's Journal of LCPing publications. We are on target for the next issue soon. As always, the Journal is looking for new and returning authors, so if you have an idea you want to share, please reach out to us.

One of our Board Members, Bob Gisclair, has spent this year spearheading a membership campaign that has turned out to be quite successful. He reaches out to all new members to provide a personalized welcome by phone, as well as he calls those who may be dropping their membership to find out if there is anything we can do to keep these members.  Due to his efforts, we have found that most who don't renew by their due date are doing so by mere oversight and not because they are really planning to leave IALCP. So we have, in fact, retained these members. The feedback from the new members is very positive and they enjoy having a contact person to help them navigate their new membership. We really appreciate Bob's efforts, as this is a very time-consuming endeavor.

Our Fellow Program continues to expand. We congratulate Reg Gibbs [Billings, MT] for accomplishing this professional recognition in July; and we are happy to announce that another application is currently under the peer review process. Please keep those applications coming and help us grow the professional advancement of LCPers. The application process has been streamlined for ease of completion, so if it has been awhile since you considered applying, revisit the idea and the application.

And speaking of revisiting the website, if you have not been to the IARP website lately, it is time to take a new look. It has been revamped and has even more information available to you right at your fingertips. Thank you to Brett Wangman, IALCP Board Member Laura Woodward, and the many volunteers amongst the IARP membership who have helped with this project.

There has been much work being done this year to add to IARP and IALCP’s Affinity Programs. These are the relationships we build with vendors, which then provide our membership exclusive and/or discounted products. If you are not aware of all of the vendors associated with the Affinity Program, please check them out on our website. Board Member, Liz Holakiewicz, has been working with our newest program member, Fair Health, and hopefully you have all kept up with her communications via this discussion page, on how to use their website offerings for some of your medical cost research. Fair Health, along with many of our other Affinity Program vendors, will be on site at our conference in Pittsburgh.

This is just a short summary of all the work that is being done by the IARP and IALCP Boards in 2016. Please seek us out in Pittsburgh to say hello, as we will all be identified with Board Member Ribbons on our name tags. AND remember, we are always looking for new volunteers! So if you have some time to give, definitely let us know, and we will find a good fit for your interests and your skill set. This organization only works with volunteers like you!