The Florida Federation of Garden Clubs (FFGC) is working hard to move us ALL into ON-LINE Membership Reporting, providing a system with the capabilities of making changes to member information or status, renewing membership each June 1 and registering new members at any time during the year.

Going forward, we all will be responsible for maintaining our FFGC membership via our “Profiles” on the FFGC website.  Many of you may not feel comfortable and embrace this new on-line process right away so a manual “paper” process has been put in place to help us all through this transition.  I have been working through this new process myself to better understand how it works, to ensure that our GCGC Club Roster is up-to-date, to determine what issues our Club membership may be facing during this beginning phase and reporting those concerns to FFGC headquarters, our District Director and our President.

I will be speaking about this change at our upcoming meeting on Monday but since this system roll out is scheduled to happen on May 18th,  along with the renewal of our FFGC membership for 2015-2016, I felt it was necessary to communicate the information and what I believe will be the impact on our Club and each of you.

As I understand it, following is basically how this process will work:

– May 15, 2015 is the cutoff date for payment of your GCGC annual dues to our GCGC Treasurer.  We still have 27 members who have yet to submit their dues.  If you are planning to renew your GCGC membership, please do so asap.  If you are not planning to renew your GCGC membership for next season, please email me or give me a call.

– On May 18th, the FFGC website membership Renewal Period will begin.  An auto-generated email will be sent directly to you (and all 12,000 FFGC members) at the email address you have on file.  This email will prompt you to access your Profile and  renew your membership.  While on the site, you can also make any revisions to your mailing address, telephone number and email address.  This will need to be done on-line or you can follow the directions for a manual process (download and print a form that you will fill out and mail to your Club – that will be me of course!).  I will in turn update our GCGC records and mail it to FFGC for updating in their system.  Note:  At this time, there is no system provision for one person (such as myself) to make changes to all GCGC members’ profiles.

– By June 1st, all FFGC membership renewals for 2015-2016 will need to be reflected in the FFGC system.

– At the end of June, the FFGC system will generate a statement to all Club Presidents for the $12.00 FFGC dues for each renewing member.  Our President will forward this statement to our Treasurer.  Our Treasurer will, in turn, generate a check to FFGC for GCGC members’ dues ($12 x # of paid members).

– Going forward – any address, telephone number, email address and/or name changes will need to be made by each member directly on-line in their individual profile or each member will need to print out the change form, complete it with changes and mail it to me.  I will, in turn, update our GCGC records and mail it to FFGC for updating in their system.

– Going forward – all new members will need to access the website, “create a profile” by enteingr their name, address, telephone number and email address.  (This will need to be added to our GCGC New Member Orientation and may generate changes our current GCGC Member Application.)  A statement will be sent to the Club President at the end of every month indicating any new members.  Our President will forward this statement to our Treasurer.  Our Treasurer will generate a check to FFGC for any new GCGC members for that month.

IMPORTANT – the publisher of the Florida Gardener Magazine will continue to rely on the FFGC systems’ data to mail you your quarterly magazines.  You MUST be sure to keep your address current in the system in order to receive your magazines at the appropriate address.

1. You will access the FFGC website – ffgc.wildapricot.org
2.  If you have visited the site before and have already set up a password for your profile, log in, check the renew box and submit.  Check your contact information to be sure it is all up-to-date.
3. If this is the FIRST TIME you have tried to log in to the site, click on the LOGIN link at the top of the screen.  Enter your email address and click on FORGOT PASSWORD.  You will receive an auto-generated email from the system with instructions to create a password and complete the log in process.  If you still have problems – your email may not be recognized – that just means that the email that is on file for you is not the same as the email you are using to log in.  No worries, just contact the FFGC headquarters staff via email and let them know.  They will update the database with the email you want to use.  Once the update is done, you will be able to return to the site and follow the steps above.   Once your password is created and you have logged back into the site, check the renew box and submit. Check your contact information to be sure it is all up-to-date.
4. DO NOT CLICK ‘CREATE PROFILE’ IF YOU ARE ALREADY A MEMBER.  ‘CREATE PROFILE’ is ONLY FOR BRAND NEW MEMBERS.

If you have any issues or questions or if you need help with the above process, please don’t hesitate to send me an email or give me a call.  This will be challenging at first but the FFGC headquarters staff is working to streamline this process and escort us into the future of on-line usage!!

Thank you for your patience and support!

Mary Lou Magliocca

3rd VP-Membership