PAA Annual General Meeting, 20 September 2024
Welcome to the Annual General Meeting for 2024, covering the 2023-24 financial year.
Apologies
Lisa Jackson, Meredith Brooks and Donna Oliver.
2023 AGM Minutes
Minutes of the previous AGM were accepted.
President’s Report
Vision & Mission: Our vision is for the Pilates Method to be recognised as a professional and valued healthcare and fitness discipline. Our mission is to advance the interests of the Pilates Method and its member professionals.
This vision has stood the test of time without significant change. There’s one minor change made to the strategy, which I will cover briefly later.
2023-24 Projects
Rebranding
2023-24 has been a pretty busy year beginning with our conference in Melbourne which was a huge success. At the AGM during that conference, we agreed to rebrand the association and to change the name. The rebranding was more work than we anticipated but it has mostly been done and the new branding looks really good. We also changed our name to Pilates Association Australia, which is more relevant to what we stand for.
New Member Management System
A major project this year has been the implementation of the new iMIS system for member management, replacing the old Bookings Essential system. The process was challenging and a huge learning curve, but the system has finally gone live this week. People are logging in and setting up their accounts and we’re excited to start using the new features now available to us.
I must say thank you to Kerry Haywood, System Support Officer, and Sharan Simmons, Member Relations Officer for the enormous amount of work that they’ve put in to get it running.
Natural Therapies Review
We’ve continued to participate in the Natural Therapies Review and are expecting a report soon which may indicate whether or not we get health fund rebates back. We’re working hard on advocacy to ensure that happens. Again, my thanks to Dr. Penny Latey for her work in that regard.
Pilates Science Website
We also continue to manage our Pilates Science website which records a lot of the Pilates research that we submitted to the Natural Therapies Review. I’m trying to keep it up to date with research as it emerges, however there’s still a bit of a backlog to be put onto the website.
Occupation Code for Pilates Instructors
A few years ago, I talked to the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) about the fact that there is no occupation code for Pilates instructors. They’ve recently done a major review of several categories of occupation code and have now added Pilates Instructor as a code.
We’re not happy that it has been classified as fitness and have put in another submission arguing for it to be moved to healthcare.
On a positive note, having a dedicated occupation code for Pilates will make it much easier to bring instructors in from overseas if you need visas for them.
New Instructor Training Providers
During 2023-24 we’ve approved instructor training courses from several new training providers including Merrithew, who we’ve been talking to since 2013.
A lot of work from Sharan went into Merrithew’s submission to get them across the line. So well done on finally recognising them as one of our training providers.
Member Masterclasses and Workshops
I would like to highlight that we’ve had huge success with our masterclasses. These are held monthly for members only and are just $10 a session.
We have now expanded the offering to include a 90-minute workshop once a quarter that costs just $20. We’re hoping this will assist people with their continuing education.
Marketing & Lead Generation
The association experimented with lead generation through a checklist for opening a new studio, which resulted in 50 new contacts for $70. This project will be revisited in the coming year as we try to attract new members.
Podcasts
We continue to produce Pilates podcasts featuring conference presenters, educators, Committee and other interesting guests. Thank you to Bruce Hildebrand for his continuing work on these.
Scope of Practice
We finally finished our scope of practice and standards of practice for all membership levels and made sure that their core competency criteria and our training provider curriculum aligned with those.
This was a project that has taken many years to develop and has now been finalised.
Professional Development
We’ve had lots of new PDP applications during the year. Education subcommittee Lisa Jackson, Sharan Simmons and Deanne Castronini have been involved in getting all of those assessed and approved.
Member Benefits
I’d like to thank Karen Goh for her work conducting a review of our member benefits.
Media Exposure
We’ve had quite a bit more media exposure this year. My Channel 7 interview on injuries in Pilates broke all our records for hits on social media. We’ve also had some published articles and representation on a couple of discussion panels.
On Social Media, Natalie’s done an amazing job. Our Instagram followers are up 15%, our Facebook followers are up 2.8%. We also have much better figures on reach and clicks through.
Strategy Summary
As mentioned earlier, we have added an additional item to our Strategy Plan: Focused stakeholder management for maximum influence. Thanks to Susie Bond who has been working with the Australian Physiotherapy Association on this aspect of our strategy.
One Strong Industry Voice.
I’m very pleased that, with the APMA members who have joined, we are now the only association that solely represents Pilates professionals in Australia.
Financial Viability
I’d like to thank Meredith Brooks, Treasurer, who unfortunately had to resign during the year. Meredith spent quite some time reviewing our membership fees and ensuring that we maintain our financial viability.
Introduction of New Member Management System
In the Strategy Summary, the introduction of the new member management addresses two strategy areas;
- utilising technology to ensure organisational goals and provide good member services and also
- facilitate connections within our community to share experiences, ask for and offer support and mentoring.
Whilst we have the system up and running, there are also some features that we haven’t turned on yet, including some community facilitation which will allow better interaction between our members.
Projects for the next 12 months
- Improved member directory: development is underway to connect this to the new membership system and offer additional functionality
- Website Revamp: The website and member directory will be revamped in the next 12 months.
- 2025 Conference: Planning for the next conference has begun.
- New Marketing initiatives: A couple of new initiatives are in the pipeline – more information to come soon!
- Mentoring Program: A new mentoring program is almost ready for launch.
- Member Survey: There are plans to conduct the first membership survey in some years to gather your feedback.
- We’ll also be looking at engagement scores, which are available through the member management system, to see how engaged our members are and how we can improve that engagement.
Acknowledgements
I’d like to recognise the dedication of our staff.
Sharan Simmons, Member Relations Officer, Kerry Haywood, Systems Officer, and Natalie Ryan, social media assistant, who has also now taken on a large chunk of the responsibility for newsletters.
Also, Claire Arnold was recruited for six months work on specific projects after she impressed us all volunteering at the conference in Melbourne.
I’d also like to recognise the work and dedication of the committee:
Susie Bond, Vice President and liaison with the Physiotherapy Association. Also an ex-APMA member, she represents the interests of APMA. Lisa Jackson, our education chair; Karen Goh, our secretary, who has also been reviewing member benefits and scoping our new website.
Meredith Brooks, Treasurer, working hard on stakeholder management, the website, and generally just a great sounding board.
Daniella DeFabio in Adelaide is working on a new marketing subcommittee, along with Bruce and Lisa – we will be getting more information to you on that soon. Daniela’s also been writing articles for us, in collaboration with an organisation called House of Wellness.
Bruce Hildebrand, who’s been hosting and editing our podcasts, also shares an education perspective, working for Tensegrity, and just generally great, thoughtful comments he provides to the committee. And Donna Oliver who has been working on the new mentoring project, so I’d like to thank her for that.
I’d also like to thank PAA member Deanne Castronini, who works on the education subcommittee.
Financial Report
The organisation remains solvent with net assets of $157,000, down from $203,000 last year. The decline is mainly due to investments in the new member management system. This was expected.
There was a 5.8% increase in membership income, though expenses, particularly for the new system and conference, remain high.
Employment expenses are up by 3.5%, which is actually quite good considering the extra hours that Sharan and Kerry worked in the last six months for the introduction of the new system.
As always, we need a profitable conference in order to cover ongoing expenses and we are very focused on increasing membership numbers so we can achieve a surplus in future years.
Constitutional Changes
Several changes to the constitution were proposed and voted on, including:
- limiting the number of committee members to 10
- allowing non-members to be appointed based on expertise
- to allow the maximum tenure of a committee member, currently nine years, to be waived by ordinary resolution at a general meeting of members
- to include wording recommended by the ATO to allow us to remain tax exempt.
The motion was carried unanimously.
Committee Elections
There were only two nominations for Ordinary Committee positions, matching the vacancies, therefore Olga Tamara and Arwen McCutcheon were welcomed as new committee members. Robyn Rix continues as president for another three-year term.
The incoming Committee consists of:
Executive Committee
Robyn Rix – President
Susie Bond – Vice President
Treasurer position – vacant
Karen Goh – Secretary
Ordinary Committee members:
Lisa Jackson (Education chair)
Bruce Hildebrandt
Daniela Di Fabio
Donna Oliver
Olga Tamara
Arwen McCutcheon
Congratulations to Olga and Arwen on joining the team.
Closing Statement
I would just like to finish off with a big thank you to our members. If it wasn’t for our members, we wouldn’t exist. And I do appreciate the trust and faith that you place in us.
We are really looking forward to this coming year now that the new member management system is in place, to give much better service and focus to our members.
So, thank you. We do appreciate that you all continue to be members of the Pilates Association.
Robyn Rix, PAA President
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