Membership Drive Post: Not Just Some Random CA Clinic

Last night WCA’s management collective voted to convert WCA into a 501c3 nonprofit. At this point in time, there are all kinds of benefits to doing that  — but that’s actually not what this blog is about, it’s about how grateful I am that WCA has the opportunity to be a clinic member of POCA.

WCA first explored becoming a 501c3 nonprofit back in 2005. It didn’t work out and I spent years trying to talk other people out of doing the same. There are two categories of reasons why it’s different this time around: a) we know so much more about our business now than we did then; and b) the economic landscape has changed a lot in 9 years.

And both of those have everything to do with the Membership Drive!

When I think back to 2005, I can imagine a completely different trajectory leading to an alternate reality for WCA circa 2014, in which POCA never happened and WCA ended up being just another random community acupuncture clinic (only incidentally the first, because who would have cared?) In 2005 I knew the model had potential to spread, but I didn’t have a clear picture of how that should happen. I know now it could have gone other ways — say, via Acupuncturists on Facebook.  Think about that for a minute.

I also know now that running your own business, especially your own acupuncture business, has the potential to wear you down and make you cynical, bitter and lonely. Not just because I’ve seen it happen to other people, but because I can feel in myself the accumulation over the years of little nicks and scratches. In the context of POCA they’re something to make jokes about with my friends who understand completely. In the context of POCA, they’re experiences I can try to use to help make life better for somebody else, and thus transform them: it’s not just that they become useful to my comrades, it’s that they then mean something different to me. In lots of ways I was not cut out to be a business owner. When I imagine myself having survived 12 years of it,  without POCA for context, I don’t much like what I see.

The first time we tried to make WCA a nonprofit, it was discouraging. The process was like a continual reminder of how weird we were and how poorly we fit into society. A well known nonprofit lawyer told us she couldn’t understand why we were trying to do this (and the implication was that “this” included not just applying to the IRS but the entire business model). Even if somebody had told me, “hey, Lisa, the IRS rules are really different now” I don’t think I would have had the energy to try again. I’ve thrown myself at a lot of closed doors over the years. I was just too tired to throw myself at another one.

However, another POCA clinic owner sat down outside the same closed door and patiently figured out how to pick the lock. And when the door opened, she posted her lock-picking instructions on the forums.  Thank you, Michelle Rivers!

There have been other examples of this kind of thing over the years. We knew WCA should convert to using electronic medical records, but the process just seemed overwhelming. In a management collective meeting, we got on the phone with Andy and he walked us through it. Just knowing somebody else had successfully done something really daunting made all the difference. Some of what we know about our business now that we didn't know in 2005, we learned from other POCA members.

And then there was the time we were short-staffed at our Hillsdale clinic, and our only likely job applicant had virtually no CA experience. But she came to her interview not only having joined POCA, but having watched all of the videos on the Punk Channel of POCA Tv.  We hired her of course, and she got up to speed in record time.

WCA in 2014 looks nothing like it did in 2005. I could not have imagined us being where we are today. And as our accountant pointed out — the very same accountant who talked us out of applying to the IRS in 2005 — WCA makes much more sense as a nonprofit than as a for-profit now. But the fact is, whatever our status with the IRS, the bigger we’ve gotten, the more help POCA has been to us. There is no form I could fill out that would quantify the benefits of us being able to send our staff to a POCAfest: to being able to plug in to a culture that will always be bigger than we are.

In 2005, one of the things that hadn’t happened yet was the Great Recession. I have to wonder if the IRS rules have changed in part because a lot of traditional nonprofits couldn’t survive. (Pathways to Wellness in Boston is a very sad recent example in the acupuncture world.) These days, a nonprofit that earns its own money instead of relying on grants looks sober, proactive and respectable; back in 2005, we were told it made us look suspicious.

And even though the Recession is technically over, income inequality in the US is only getting worse. Becoming a 501c3 nonprofit has so many practical benefits for WCA that pursuing it is a no-brainer. Even so, I think I would have a hard time swallowing the idea of  WCA becoming a charity if I didn’t have the consolation of belonging to a coop. Our society doesn’t really need more charities, it needs economic transformation, and the spirit of mutualism that drives cooperatives seems to me like our only hope.

Everybody’s got so much going on, it’s easy to let your POCA membership lapse. And if you’re a clinic member, by definition you’ve got a million things on your to-do list already. But since it’s the Membership Drive, please take a moment to join or to renew. In the long run, I promise, it means everything.

Author: Lisa Rohleder, L.Ac.