ITPA reaches 10,000 members
In July last year what was then the Australian Systems Administration Guild (SAGE-AU) relaunched as the IT Professionals Association. In the 23 years prior to the relaunch, the total number of active or past members that SAGE-AU had attracted was just over 5,000 individuals. When ITPA launched, we set the ambitious target of 10,000 members for the organisation by the end of calendar year 2016.
We undertook a number of activities in an attempt to achieve our 10K membership goal including initiating our "Certified Practicing Member" professional development program, migrating to a new website and membership management system, rebooting our eNewsletter "The Download", offering free online short courses and releasing regular public comments on several topics of interest to our industry including the NBN and the explosive growth in IT 457 visa approvals.
We didn't quite reach our 10,000 member goal last year, but we have just broken through the "ceiling", and currently have 10,024 members and of that, 10 of our members have already gone on to achieve ITPA Certified Practicing Member (CPM) status. All of this has been achieved with almost totally volunteer run organisation with our total paid employers being 0.4 FTE of an administration resource.
I'd like to thank everyone who has contributed to this milestone for the organisation - not only the board (who have worked tirelessly to achieve this significant goal) - but also our members for their continued support and faith in us as an organisation. Going forward, we are absolutely committed to driving the organisation forward to better represent our industry and to improve service to members, and are confident of achieving our goal of 20,000 members by the end of 2018.
Regards,
Robert Hudson
President, ITPA