In late 2011, I was approached by two PSI officers who coaxed me to run for the position of President of the Passiflora Society International, as Ron Boender was retiring. The gist of the multiple conversations was that the PSI would cease to exist if someone passionate and determined did not step up to the plate to accept the position, and urged that they believed that person was me. I did not wish to damage our friendship with Cor Laurens, who I ended up running against, but I felt I had an obligation and opportunity to benefit the Society, and ultimately did lose a good friend. I also had no desire to take on this responsibility at this juncture in my life, nor did Crystal, my wife, and I want the onus of the failure of the Society to be on our shoulders, so we ran for offices. An election was held, and I was voted in as President and Crystal as Treasurer. In February, 2012, we took office with approximately $4,000, an extremely basic website, an almost entirely new set of officers with no position descriptions or direction, 84 paying members, and nothing else but the passion and drive to succeed.
Immediately, Crystal and I, with the assistance of the talented Liza Rock, designed a new website with all the bells and whistles we had heard people wanted in the past PSI meetings we had attended, both in the USA and Europe. Many things we began to implement, such as an easy payment system for Premium memberships, the ability to hold a seed sale directly through the site, info on the society’s upcoming events, PDF downloads of past newsletters for Premium members, the ability to register a hybrid entirely through the site, a place to Ask the Experts, the ability to buy PSI logo merchandise, contests, and more. The largest immediate change that this new website allowed was the initiation of the Basic free membership level. As of this writing, our membership has grown to 775 Basic members, while still maintaining a similar level as when we started of paid Premium memberships at 93.
Even while all these changes were beginning, Crystal as Treasurer focused on minimizing costs of all kinds. She found a new printing facility that would end up making newsletters cost significantly less than what they used to, asked Dan Long to host the website, which he did for free, and many other things that helped the PSI stay afloat while in transition.
Rob McPhail began producing even more beautiful, larger, and more diverse newsletters, and Crystal and I packed and shipped them from our living room to save money on postage and packing costs. Julie McGowan-Hoffman put together the first, second, third and fourth seed bank sales, undertaking hundreds of hours of accepting donations, cleaning, sorting, storing, then packing labeling and shipping them. These seed sales ended up being the bread and butter of the PSI, making far more than the annual membership fees, which has allowed us to not only continue, but to thrive with excellent meetings, including for the first time in the society’s history, putting money toward a meeting not held in the USA – the 2014 UK meeting.
Many other things happened during the last 4 years, in no specific order:
– Tim Skimina continued his role of professionally answering questions posed through the website link Ask the Experts.
– At my urgent behest, Dr. Shawn Mattison took up the reigns of Registrar, and began the grueling task of recording a supplemental list, along with reviewing, modifying, and approving new registrations submitted through the website.
– Crystal took on the massive undertaking of creating a web-based database method for hybrid registration.
– The 2014 UK meeting and 2015 San Francisco meeting both had an astounding number of attendees from several countries.
– Kyle Rahrig assisted me with several projects, including much editing, so we created an officer post for him as a Special Projects Coordinator.
– Crystal created our 2013 PSI meeting T-shirt, and Liza created the one for 2015. It is a shame more people don’t have them, as they are truly works of art.
– The website surpassed 125,000 page views, with an average of over 100 per day.
– Kyle Rahrig spearheaded a campaign to create a PSI calendar for 2015 composed entirely of member submitted photos which were publicly voted on.
– Crystal created a specific domain email system for all officers with group functionality, and an efficient format for emailing all members and tracking responses.
– Rob, Kyle, Shawn, Julie, Liza and Crystal did so much more than I could possibly remember… I simply cannot list them all. Without this amazing group of people, the PSI would surely not exist today.
~~~~
Effective following the 2016 election, I, Eric Wortman, President, and Crystal Stone, Treasurer, resign from our offices of the Passiflora Society International.
After 4 years, we are leaving the PSI with more money than we started with, almost 800 more members, a working multi-functional website, many new accounts and partnerships, a Facebook page with over 1000 followers, and a drastically increased international Passiflora community with which to do business. We wish the remaining and newly elected officers the best of luck and continued success, building on what Ron Boender began in 1990.
Crystal and I will still be attending as many meetings as we can in the future, as well as assisting in their creation, funding, and advertizing whenever possible. We will still have a presence on Facebook, and will soon have time to add more to this website, (which has been dormant the last few years).
It was a tremendous joy to be working with the wonderful members and contributing officers for the past 48 months. It is not an experience I regret in any way, and will take with me many wonderful memories, especially from the meetings when we get to all meet in person, share experiences, tips and tricks, and get to know each other. We have made dozens, perhaps hundreds of friends throughout this experience, and treasure them more than I can put into words.
Best regards,
Eric and Crystal
For more information about our term in office and resignation, please visit www.bloomingpassion.com/psi/term
Blooming Passion – A Place for Passiflora Enthusiasts Worldwide.