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Frequently Asked
Questions by SOT Regional Chapters
Officers (1-4)
Members/dues/member lists (5-15)
SOT Headquarters
support functions (16-23)
Banking and financial statements
(24-33)
1) Can any SOT member in good standing
become the President or Treasurer of a Regional Chapter? No.
Regional Chapter Officers in the Presidential Chain (e.g., President,
President-Elect, Vice-President) and the Treasurer must be Full or
Associate (active or retired) members in order to fulfill SOT financial
policies.
2) I'm a new officer. What are my
duties? Ideally, primary roles of chapter officers are described
in your chapter by-laws. How chapters distribute specific responsibilities
(meeting planning, newsletter production, etc.) does vary, however,
and may not be explained in detail. This question is best answered by
some of the more experienced members of your chapter if it isn't specified
in your chapter by-laws.
3) Where is information on the SOT Web site that officers
(and other chapter members) should know about? We strongly
encourage all regional chapter officers to spend some time
familiarizing themselves especially with all areas of the SOT Web site,
rather than pointing out specific areas that might cause anyone
to miss areas that
might be equally helpful or interesting. Keep in mind that certain information
provided for chapter officers, but accessible to all members with passwords,
is located within the Leadership
Reference Guide (e.g., Funding for Regional Chapter Activities and Speakers).
Other areas of importance to regional chapters are also open to the general
public, including all regional chapter web pages, opportunities for graduate
students, and SOT's public outreach initiatives (e.g., K-12).
4) Which of the officers in the chapter gets information
regularly from SOT? For instance, who receives the new member applications?
Who receives reminders for financial reports? Can we specify a second
backup
officer in case the first contact is out of town and unable to respond
in a timely manner? Generally communication is with
the regional chapter President and Vice President, unless it is
a financial matter,
in which case then the Treasurer is contacted. However, if
your chapter prefers SOT headquarters to copy another officer on
e-mail
correspondence or route something differently, please let SOT headquarters
know the process you would like followed.
5) Who approves new regional
chapter members? Applications to join a specific
RC submitted through the SOT Web site will be routed to that
RC's officers. They make the decision and notify SOT HQ whether
to add the new member information to that RC roster.
6) How does a member of SOT join a regional chapter(s)?
To join a regional chapter at the same time as paying national
dues, are National
SOT members required to fill out an application form? Where are
the RC application forms located? National
SOT members who want to join a regional chapter can do so at the time
of paying dues. However non-National SOT members who want to
join a chapter
should complete the On-Line Membership
Application. Please refer to the individual RC Web sites for specific
membership information.
7) What is the regional chapter dues
payment schedule? Is prorating of dues possible if someone
joins in the middle
of the dues year? When exactly would a person be dropped from the active
list after nonpayment of dues? The chapter year is
based on the calendar year, just like the SOT national membership
year. All
regional chapter memberships run from January 1 through December 31.
SOT headquarters occasionally receives requests to prorate dues
if joining mid-year.
Chapter dues are usually so reasonable that most people are willing to
pay the full amount to benefit their chapter; however, if a person
requests
dues to be prorated because they are joining in June, then SOT can make
the adjustment. Most people send in the full amount and for a specific
year. When
membership lists are sent out to officers, SOT only sends the names of
those who are current. Members are "dropped" automatically at midnight
on December 31 from the active member list if they have not paid
dues by that date. If
you have been dropped from the active list, you will miss any correspondence
from your chapter until you have submitted your dues payment.
For example, if dues
for a given year are paid in February, then anything sent from January
1 until membership is renewed will not be sent to those individuals
with
dues overdue unless the chapter specifically requests a special list
from Rosibel Alvarenga at SOT headquarters, rosibel@toxicology.org that would include
these individuals. You will become an active regional chapter
member once your
dues are again current, and if your contact information is still current,
then you should begin receiving any correspondence sent to the
regional
chapter mailing list.
8) If a member hasn't paid dues for a couple of years,
what does it take to be reinstated? A regional
chapter member would be reinstated as soon as he/she started
paying dues again. In the case of a national SOT member, back
dues would have to be paid to be reinstated.
9) A member in our chapter joined recently but is not
receiving e-mail notices from our chapter. What could be the
problem and how should
we correct it? Of course there are many possible reasons
why e-mails are not delivered to a given individual. Two common
reasons
we can address here are that their e-mail address changed after joining
or the information originally provided on the application was illegible
or not entirely accurate. We all know how unforgiving the e-mail system
can be if even a tiny period or space is missing! Unfortunately,
all too
often we figure out that the member gave SOT incorrect information, which
was then entered into the member database. If you or the member
suspect
this is the case, then please ask the member to go to the SOT member
database section of the SOT Web site and make sure that all contact
information
is correct
and update it if not. If this turns out not to be the problem, then contact
Rosibel Alvarenga to investigate
further.
10) How can a member check on their dues status? How
do I renew through the SOT Web site? Should I expect renewal
notices?
Your chapter membership and dues status can be checked and dues paid
electronically by accessing the SOT Web site. The steps are a little
different depending
on whether you are also a national SOT member. If you are
also a national SOT member, then (1) Go to the SOT Web site www.toxicology.org,
(2) Log into the site (last name, ID number)***, (3) Select the Membership,
Membership Renewal On-Line from the left navigation option drop down,
(4) Click on "Go to payment history" and check that you've
paid your chapter dues. If you are not a national
SOT member, then (1) Go to the SOT Web site www.toxicology.org, (2) Select Regional
Chapter from the left navigation option, (3) Select the option for
Regional
Chapter Non-SOT Members to pay their dues on-line, (4) Log into site
(last name, ID number)*** , (5) Click on "Go to payment history" and
check that you've paid your chapter dues. In both cases if you haven't
paid your chapter dues for that year, then use the on-line renewal form
to pay your dues. ***If you don't know your ID number or are unable
to
complete dues payment via the web for some other reason, then e-mail
Rosibel Alvarenga at SOT (rosibel@toxicology.org) or call Rosibel
at (703) 438-3115, Ext. 1432. Chances are that if you can't access the
site, then you haven't
paid your dues! As for reminders to pay dues, chapters may elect to send
reminders to their chapter members. Currently this is not done automatically
through SOT headquarters.
11) Why does our member list contain names of people
who do not reside in our geographical region? Other chapters
have told us that people from our region are in their chapter
list. Are these mistakes? Were these people placed into the
wrong regional chapters? More
than likely these are not mistakes. People can join any—and as
many—chapters
as they wish. SOT does not assign people to chapters. People apply to
join specific chapters. Also, if you yourself wish to resign your membership
in a chapter, then you must contact SOT headquarters and ask to be deleted
from that chapter database.
12) I've
recently moved out of my original regional chapter area and
updated my contact information through the SOT Web site.
Am I still a member of that original chapter? Yes,
updating contact information does not change your status
in that chapter.
13) Can non-SOT members join our chapters through the
SOT Web site? Individuals who are not national
SOT members often ask to join a chapter having found information
about SOT chapters through the SOT Web site. Although these
individuals cannot join on-line, information provided on the
chapter Web sites should encourage others to contact the chapter
officers or SOT headquarters to find out about joining.
14) Does
the number of members shown for our chapter on the secure
web page include non-dues paying members (retired, honorary,
etc.)? How long does it take for a new member to show up
in that count and on lists we may request? At
the present time, the number of members shown on the Web
site count includes only members
in good standing; i.e., those who are current in dues payments
(or in the case of one regional chapter that does not require
dues, everyone that chapter officers have requested SOT to
renew annually). Once SOT is notified that a new member is
approved, it usually takes at least a day or two to transfer
information into the system. In the future, SOT hopes to
be able to offer some refinements to the membership lists
and sorting capabilities. For example, a place on-line where
the officers can access and download their lists in real
time would be useful. Also, some chapters have asked that
anyone
who has ever been a member remain on their list but identify
the status (e.g., dues current, dues not paid, honorary [should
remain on roster but will not pay dues], student member,
etc). We are also working on that refinement.
15) We'd
like to request a list to print mailing labels and want to
reach all of our members—not just those shown as having
paid dues recently. Can SOT do this? Yes, a
variety of different customized lists and subsets of your
list may be possible. Contact Rosibel
Alvarenga with specific requests. For example, you may want
to contact only those you believe to still be chapter members
but have not paid dues.
Or, you may want to increase your regional chapter membership
by contacting national SOT members within your chapter's
geographical area who are not regional members.You also may
want to contact chapter members in another chapter (e.g.,
to invite
them to your annual meeting), although you must get permission
from that regional chapter's officers in order to do so.
16) We understand that SOT staff
can help with bookkeeping, membership lists, maintaining our
chapter Web site,
elections, publicizing chapter events, and possibly more. Are there any
charges to our chapter associated with SOT headquarters staff
assistance?
Generally no charges are associated with the routine types
of assistance mentioned above, although there may be some exceptions
(e.g.,
hard copy mailings vs. e-mail distribution). If there is a charge involved,
then SOT will discuss this with you in advance. If you would like SOT
staff to assist you with any of these tasks, please contact Rosibel
Alvarenga at sothq@toxicology.org.
17) Can
we get messages sent out to our members or our region through
SOT headquarters? Yes, SOT can send out broadcast
e-mails for each chapter. An officer sends the text to Rosibel
at SOT headquarters and makes the request. If the chapter
wants to send a message
to members outside of their chapter, then the request has
to be approved by the other chapter Presidents or the SOT
President before the message can go out.
18) We
prefer to correspond directly with our membership by e-mail.
Can SOT provide us with e-mail lists of our regional chapter
members? Certainly. Regional chapters can
get e-mail lists at any time; however, because members may
update their contact information through the SOT Web site
and new members join from time to time we encourage relaying
e-mail messages through SOT to take advantage of the most
up-to-date lists, or at least requesting the most current
list for each e-mail notice being sent directly from the
chapter.
19) Can
SOT help us with chapter elections? Yes, SOT
headquarters will disseminate ballots on-line or through
the mail for all elections and revisions to by-laws Specialty
Sections, Regional Chapters and Special Interest Groups.
20) If something in the printed SOT Membership Directory
needs to be added or corrected, for example on the regional
chapter
officer page, who should be contacted and when must this
be done? Who is responsible for producing the printed SOT
Directory that comes out annually? Is it handled at headquarters
or commercially? SOT produces the Directory
in-house, and has it printed using a vendor.
An e-mail goes out to the officers of the prior year requesting
a listing of the new officers. The Directory information
comes from the officer response. If the officers have not
completed the new election on time, the Directory will
show a "TBD" (to be decided), next to the officer,
and no name will be in the Directory. As the deadline approaches
for printing the Directory, if headquarters has not received
your officer listing, then Rosibel Alvarenga will send
an e-mail request and make phone calls (if needed) starting
with the President until she tracks
down
the information.
Work on the directory gets started right after the SOT
Annual Meeting and is in production for approximately 2
months. Contact information for other SOT members is taken
from the Directory that all members are expected to keep
current through the SOT Web site.
21) Can
we take advantage of the SOT directory process to produce
a chapter directory, assuming we pay for it? Yes,
SOT can produce hard copy directories for chapters. The chapter
would be billed for the cost of printing and distribution.
Regional chapters are strongly advised to verify accuracy
of the member list before undertaking this.
22) Does
SOT have the capability to administer an Internet survey?
We would like to poll our membership. If you do have this
ability, then can we make use of it and how much would it
cost? Yes, SOT headquarters has the capability.
Cost depends on the survey. SOT headquarters can do a short
survey via e-mail
and the cost will be minimal. If they do the survey through
the vendor that SOT uses, then cost will be higher and depends
on the size of the survey. Please contact Rosibel Alvarenga
with specifics and she will be able to get prices for comparison.
23) We
hear there's some funding for regional chapter activities.
How do we find out more about that? How are requests handled? There
are several categories of funding. Assistance with travel
costs to invite speakers to regional chapter scientific meetings
and support for other chapter activities aligned with the
SOT's Long-Range Plan (LRP) are described in the response
to this question. Support for student travel to Regional
Chapter Meetings and for teleseminars is described below.
Details of all these programs, including which speakers may
be supported, allowable expenses, and information needed
on applications, can be found on the SOT Web site in the
members-only section, Leadership Reference Guide, Regional
Chapters, RC Funding. Currently the requests for funding
are processed as follows. Requests from the chapter President
go to Shawn Lamb at SOT headquarters. Shawn will send the
request to the Council Liaison on behalf of Regional Chapters.
SOT Council members on the Regional Chapter Subcommittee
of Council will review the request and then a decision will
be made. Once the decision is made, Shawn will receive notification
from the subcommittee and she will send the chapter the decision.
If funds are approved, then the funds are generally transferred
into the chapter's account within 48 hours. After the meeting
or other event is completed, the chapter can send in a travel
reimbursement form for the speaker, who will be paid from
the chapter account. Applications are considered as they
arrive and most of the communication tends to be through
e-mail. Please be advised that although the process is relatively
straightforward and efficient, notification of the funding
decision sometimes takes several weeks when the application
lacks critical information, or when Council members or SOT
staff are out of town or otherwise unavailable for consultation
when your application arrives.
24) How do chapter officers
check on financial accounts? Who has access? On-line
read-only financial records are posted within the regional
chapter section
of the Leadership Reference Guide. The list of officers provided each
year by the chapter is used to program the system so that
only the officers
of each chapter and SOT headquarters staff can see that chapter's financial
status on-line.
25) Is funding available for student travel to Regional
Chapter meetings? Yes, to increase attendance of
graduate and undergraduate students at RC meetings in large regions,
there is funding available. Several of the Regional Chapters
are very large geographically and it is very difficult and expensive
for students to travel to RC annual meetings. These students
would be eligible for this travel support if they are at a distance
of over a 4-hour drive from the venue of the meeting. Up to $2,000
per Chapter can be requested annually. Requests with justification
will be submitted by the Regional Chapters (and not from individual
students or institutions) to the Subcommittee for Regional Chapter
Funding who will make a decision on whether a RC should receive
the funding. Requests will most likely be honored if the funds
will support multiple trainees (such as for travel in a single
vehicle and/or for sharing hotel rooms) and if these trainees
come from multiple laboratories within the Chapter. Funds are
not to be used for used for meeting registration costs, food,
or incidentals for graduate students. However, undergraduates
who are likely recruits to toxicology may have their registration
costs and food paid for by these funds. The Executive Committee
of the RC (and not the Subcommittee for Funding) would set the
procedure and policy for soliciting and approving requests for
funds. The payment would be made by the RC, and the RC would
submit a request for reimbursement with justification for the
expenses after the RC meeting. For more information, visit the
Leadership
Reference Guide, Regional Chapter Funding.
26) Is there funding available for Regional Chapter
teleseminars, which are a popular and successful method of
distance learning? Yes, there is
funding available for teleseminars; the current level is
up to $2,000 per teleseminar, and no honoraria may be paid.
Regional Chapters are encouraged to work with prominent toxicologists
and related
scientists who
can present virtual seminars accessible to participants via telephone
and computers. Recent teleseminars have been available to the SOT
membership and have attracted participants from across the nation.
In order to receive this funding, a teleseminar proposal must be
sent to the Regional Chapter Funding Subcommittee for review. For
more information, go to the SOT Web site in the Members Only Section,
Leadership Reference Guide, Regional Chapter Funding.
27) How
do chapters get checks and how much can we write them for? The
chapter President or Treasurer needs to send an e-mail to
Rosibel Alvarenga at SOT
headquarters to make a request for checks. Ten (10) checks
are sent after the request is made. Make sure you ask in
advance about any upcoming meetings so there is time to get
the checks in hand in time for any function for which you
may need to write many checks. Normally, once the request
is made, the checks are mailed within 24 hours. Checks can
be written for up to $500 by the chapter officers who are
listed on the signature card. If you have a check that is
going to be for more than $500, the request must go to headquarters
first and the check will be cut from SOT.
28) Can SOT headquarters process credit card payments
for registrations for our regional chapter meetings and dues
payments paid
at these meetings? Please provide details of what you need to process
these. SOT staff are happy to work with credit
card payments for registrations and also member dues if members
are paying at meetings.
Collect the credit card information: name, amount, card type and number
with expiration date. When you send it all in to SOT, staff
will make
the charges and the deposit, normally within 48 hours.
29) How long should it normally take to see transactions
show up in the on-line version of our chapter balance sheet
after SOT receives
the payments and invoices? The easiest way to answer this
is to describe the process. SOT's policy is that payments must be logged
in and turned over to SOT's accounting department within 24 hours after
receipt by staff at SOT headquarters. Once checks and credit card payments
reach accounting, the deposit will normally be made within 48 hours.
Payments against chapter funds that SOT needs to make at the request
of the chapter
are also processed as soon as possible. Regional
chapter statements are updated for posting monthly after bank statement
reconciliation, so expect a one-month lag time in the posted version.
For example, expect transactions that are completed in January to show
up in the version posted during the first week of March.
30) Why is it that occasionally only a portion of the
checks and/or credit card payments I send to SOT appear in
the next web
balance
sheet, and then after awhile the rest shows up? How long should we wait
before contacting SOT if the on-line records do not seem to match
our
expectations based on our chapter records? There could be
many, many logical reasons for temporary discrepancies and short delays.
The main message to convey here is that if you begin to have any concern
about this, then please contact Rosibel Alvarenga immediately and provide
all of the specifics to help everyone understand what may be happening.
Also,
it is a good practice to send Rosibel an e-mail message alerting her
to important
financial documents being sent to SOT. This helps her track
the mail. Just a few types of normal delays that may be experienced
are mentioned
here to help chapters better understand some of the complexities of the
financial functions SOT now handles for the chapters. Let's say you
mail
SOT an envelope containing 10 checks, 40 credit card payments, and 5
invoices to pay. SOT staff must first verify credit card information
before passing
to accounting, and, for efficiency's sake, normally would verify all
40 on the list before passing all 40 along. Sometimes information for
several
of the credit cards is not 100% correct. That could delay all of the
credit card payments for a short time while trying to straighten these
few out,
but then the verified payments would likely proceed and the unverified
ones would lag behind until resolved. The same goes for checks. Bad
checks
may be held back until the payee can be contacted. And finally, transactions
received and processed by staff at the very end of a month—especially
right before a weekend—may not get to accounting until the following
week (i.e., the next month), and then the one-month lag in posting
time
clock starts for these transactions.
31) Can't the chapter fill out deposit slips and make
direct deposits to local branches of the bank holding our
chapter account? This
is not a good practice. SOT headquarters has assumed financial responsibility
for all regional chapter accounts and keeping the deposit
process centralized
works a whole lot better (speaking from experience!). When chapter officers
have deposited locally, possibly thinking this might be helpful
and save
time, unfortunately this has ultimately created more work. Again, we
must discourage this practice.
32) There is a charge (or a credit) to our chapter
account that none of our officers can explain. Who can spend
money
and make deposits
in regional chapter accounts? Only those chapter officers
designated on bank signature cards provided for the chapters can sign
checks against chapter accounts and authorize deposits. A few staff members
at SOT (the Executive Director and the Deputy Executive Director) are
also authorized to handle regional chapter funds on occasion when necessary.
If you ever have a question about a specific transaction, then please
do not hesitate to ask! Keep in mind that an unusual number for a deposit
or payment might also be explainable by some of the circumstances explained
in #6 above or a chapter dues payment received at SOT
headquarters.
33) What
types of expenses are allowed? The SOT policy
on this is that in order to maintain SOT's 501-C-3 nonprofit
status, no expenditure of any of the funds
of any regional chapter or specialty section can be made
for a purpose, which would not be a proper expenditure for
an organization with this nonprofit status. Reasonable expenses
associated with offering scientific meetings benefiting chapter
members are allowed, and there are many expenses that would
obviously be disallowed. Occasionally there may be a 'grey
area' expense that you are unsure of. If you ever have any
questions about whether an expense is allowed to be charged
against chapter funds, it is always very important to contact
SOT headquarters before incurring the expense or submitting
invoices to be paid.
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