Becker Associates Newsletter -
June 23, 2010

What’s New at Becker Associates?

Welcome to Becker Associates’ first newsletter. You are receiving this newsletter because of your present or past relationship with our company. Our intention is to send out a newsletter periodically to keep you abreast of information that is relevant to your association. We hope that you enjoy it.

As a company, we are undergoing a number changes since Gwenne’s retirement at the end of 2008.  Adam Becker became President in January 2009 and with Christina’s support and assistance, has been running the company. 

With new leadership and direction, we are redefining what we do and how we are doing it.  We have since defined ourselves as an association management company offering an extensive range of services to the not-for-profit sector including publication, consulting, and management services.  And we are launching new services including Open Journal System which is talked about below and strategic planning facilitation. 

In this newsletter, we feature articles on: 
Open Journal Systems
HST Harmonized Sales Tax
Living above the Line

Open Journal Systems

As many companies serving the academic and scholarly journal market know, the advance of new technologies and the shift in focus of SSHRC brought about technological solutions to enhance the administration of journal production and dissemination of scholarly research.

Becker Associates now offers Open Journal Systems hosting, an open source platform. It was developed by the Public Knowledge Project at Simon Fraser University, and helps in the editorial management of journals. This platform is a complete end-to-end system for journal management, taking submissions online and allowing editorial managers, editors, copy-editors and typesetters to all manage peer review, versions, correspondence and tracking in one central place.

As some of our clients already know, this is not the ideal platform for an association presence, but the two systems can be bridged to provide an editorial management back-end, and a published front-end integrated into your web presence in another content management system.
We can also offer your journal an English and French sub domain within our domain www.academicjournals.ca and www.revuessavantes.ca such as intersections.academicjournals.ca.

We are currently developing this for Urban History Review, and the Canadian Journal of Development Studies.

HST Harmonized Sales Tax

July 1st is the big day when the Ontario Government implements the new Harmonized Sales Tax combining the 5% of the GST and 8% PST (provincial sales tax). The new tax will work in the same way as GST. Items that were taxable under the GST are now taxable under the new HST including some membership fees, conference fees and other services.  However, there are a number of services that were not required to charge the old provincial sales tax but that are now required to charge the full amount of the HST including Becker Associates fees.

For most not-for-profit charities, their goods and services have been exempt from charging GST and they can expect that this will continue. However, this is good news and bad news.  The bad news is that most associations and not-for-profits that do not collect this tax for its services, must still pay the HST on the goods and services that it purchases. The costs of doing business will go up without the corresponding ability to have the associated input credit.  Charitable organizations have the ability to apply for an HST rebate like they did with GST rebate. After July 1, 2010, eligible organizations can claim 50% of the GST portion and 82% of the PST portion of the tax.

Please call us if you want to find out how the new HST affects you.

Living Above the Line 

At Becker Associates, we are learning that attitude is everything.  It is surprising how powerful attitude is in determining the outcome /results of our actions.  Whether we are aware of it or not, unconscious attitudes drive our behaviour and responses to life, and will influence the results that we get. Choosing our attitude – how we approach life – is a place to stand that can be about being a victim or creating an empowering context.

Our business coach, Tony from Action Coach, introduced us to the concept of living above the line or below the line.  The line is the demarcation of two prevailing attitudes towards life.   

The question to ask is “am I a whiner or winner?” in the game of life.

When we are responding below the line, we become victims of life and the circumstances.  Making a difference is out of our hands. We blame other people or the situation for things going wrong. It is not our fault. It is the circumstances, bad luck, the weather, bad childhood that have caused the outcome. Or we make excuses coming up with all sorts of reasons why this didn’t or did happen.  Finally, we could go into denial and refuse to acknowledge what is so about a situation.

Living above the line has three components – ownership, accountability and responsibility.  By taking ownership, we acknowledge our part or contribution to how things turn out. We take responsibility for the activities under our control and we demonstrate our “ability to respond”.  We are also accountable for the goals, statements, agreements and contracts that we have made.  

At Becker Associates, we are endeavouring to respond to every question, query, telephone call, meeting and encounter with client and the public from above the line.  This means that we are committed to making a difference with our clients, assuming responsibility for our actions and being held accountable for the results that we set out to achieve.