GSDA Membership Updates

By Veronica Farrar

Hey there! My name is Veronica, and I’m the Membership/Directory Chair for the Greater Seattle Dietetic Association. You might remember me from when you first signed up for your GSDA membership. It’s my job to be the first to welcome you into the organization!

Fall is upon us, which means it’s time to stock up on cinnamon, load up on squash, and enjoy a warm beverage while breathing in the crisp autumn air. Just as the seasons change, you might have also noticed some changes here at GSDA. Over the summer, our board members were busy updating our systems to create a more user-friendly experience. We made some major changes to our website, elevating it to reflect modern times, allowing us to increase the benefits to our members. We are so excited to launch these new features for our members, and I hope by the end of this post, you are too!

GSDA Membership Account

One of the most significant changes is the use of personalized usernames and passwords unique to each member—which you create yourself! These personalized logins increase our security and allow us to expand the number of member-only resources we can add directly on our website. You will soon find an updated member directory, preceptor resources, job & volunteer opportunities, awards and scholarships, continuing education, and other learning resources on our Members-Only page.

Focus on diversity

We are also building a list of diversity-oriented resources for our members. The increased security of our website is allowing us to collect useful demographic information and alert us to accommodations needed by our members. We recognize that, without previously having this information, we may have been unintentionally leaving a portion of our community at a disadvantage. It is crucial to us that every single member is able to fully benefit from all that GSDA has to offer. With that goal in mind, we have updated our Membership Form to include optional questions related to diversity and accessibility. We hope that this will not only enable every single GSDA member to have full access to events and resources, but that it will allow us to keep track of our efforts to promote diversity within our organization. Members’ diversity and accommodation answers will automatically populate in a reordered report that does not include their name or contact information. This will allow GSDA to view important diversity information about our members as a group while respecting individual members’ privacy. The exception to this rule will be if a member identifies an accommodation that we need additional information about in order to provide.

Discount Codes

We are also streamlining our payment processes with the use of discount codes. These discount codes will be used to reduce the price of our regular membership for students, retired members, and board members. If you fall into one of these categories you will be asked to email me, the Membership Chair, for one of these codes. The use of a discount code will reduce the regular GSDA membership price of $35 to your specific tiered amount. Don’t worry regular members, you’ll get your chance to use one of these discount codes too! We will be offering more membership drives this year than we have in previous years, so be on the look-out for those deals in your inbox!

Creating your own GSDA Account

If you’re new to GSDA (welcome!) or are about to renew your membership, I encourage you to head over to the GSDA website to find more information regarding member benefits, and our upcoming events on our calendar. After that, you can set up your personalized login! The process is super easy. You can follow the detailed instructions here.

If you are an existing 2020-2021 Member, you will also need to create a personalized username and password. We have created a special temporary discount code for our current members who have already purchased a membership for the 2020-2021 year so you can create your username and password for free. We will be sending out an email to all current members with this temporary discount code to create a username and password shortly. Once you have your current members code, please find the instructions for creating your account with a username and password here. Although you completed a 2020-2021 Membership Form, I encourage you to fill out the new version. As mentioned earlier, the updated form includes new questions that serve to help the GSDA better understand your needs and interests. We are listening to you loud and clear, and would love your input! We’re here for YOU!

With that, I hope you are looking forward to this fresh and enhanced GSDA!

Connect with us on social media on our Instagram or Facebook Page!