FPRA – 1, PRSA – 0: PRSA's “APR” Accreditation Web Begins Unraveling

It’s long been said that the guilty always return to the scene of the crime.

So it’s therefore no surprise that the Public Relations Society of America (PRSA) would deflect recent urgent concerns voiced by the Florida Public Relations Association (FPRA) about PRSA’s highly improper commandeering of the Universal Accreditation (so-called) “Board” (UAB) and its presumed oversight of the Accreditation in Public Relations (APR) credential, by dispatching one of its primary culprits in helping PRSA weaponize threats of losing one’s APR against PRSA members who dare ask where the members’ money is… while ignoring FPRA’s valid concerns.

For background, the UAB has existed for decades as the presumed oversight board of the APR credential and is composed of numerous organizations, including PRSA but others as well, like FPRA.

The UAB always positioned itself as a fully independent body. Or at least… that’s what the participating organizations thought was the case – until recently.

FPRA sent correspondence to its full membership last week, documenting “details on the current situation we find ourselves in with the Public Relations Society of America (PRSA) regarding the Universal Accreditation Board (UAB),” wrote FPRA State President Devon Chestnut, APR, CPRC, and FPRA Immediate Past President Alyson Sologaistoa, APR, CPRC.

These FPRA leaders wrote in an open letter to its members dated March 4, 2022:

“In recent years, we have watched PRSA tighten its control over the (APR) program, overlook the need for equitable marketing tools for all POs (participating organizations), deny representatives from other POs the ability to chair the UAB, and now move its partners to an advisory council status – not providing equitable governance of a credentialing program that benefits our profession overall.

“In 2019, PRSA presented all the POs with a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU), asking for our signature. After reviewing this document, FPRA had several concerns over language that would alter the governance structure of the UAB, turning the group into an advisory council to PRSA rather than the governing board and leaving the POs vulnerable – putting final control of all policy and decision making in the hands of one sole group, PRSA. We have worked for the past few years to discuss these concerns directly with PRSA to find resolution but instead find ourselves at an impasse.”

?FPRA further cited in a distributed one-sheet on the APR issue:

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“FPRA has raised concerns around the governance, marketing and strategic future of the UAB and PRSA’s dominance over what was intended to be an equitable partnership between all Participating Organizations. We are currently working to find equitable resolution to these concerns with all members of the UAB.”

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I was copied in recent days on a correspondence dating back to July 2021, that shows Del Galloway of Wells Fargo was dispatched by PRSA to broker peace with FPRA.

Galloway – a past National Chair of PRSA and also a past officer of FPRA some decades ago – signed his name to a “complaint” against me in January 2021 via PRSA’s kangaroo court, seeking to have me expelled and my own APR and College of Fellows status stripped from me, after I openly criticized Galloway and his employer (Wells Fargo) for PRSA-related conflicts of interest, given his former paid status in brokering Wells Fargo’s contracted servicing of the PRSA investment portfolio, without disclosure.

PRSA’s 2021 Exec Comm gladly delivered Galloway’s requested expulsion of me, no doubt due to their own disenchantment with my asking too many questions publicly about PRSA’s millions of dollars in financial discrepancies and now-millions (plural) in multi-year net losses of member dollars.

In addition, the explicit matter of “how it is legally written/outlined that PRSA can revoke anyone’s APR credential” was raised by FPRA, in addition to this comment:

“While these elements individually may seem minor, when looked at collectively and with the knowledge that these changes or interactions have happened since FPRA sent our response to the MOU without ever hearing back from PRSA after numerous attempts…this continues to erode our trust and mutual understanding between our organization.”

I can only say to FPRA in its noble pursuit of anything even resembling an honest answer from PRSA or the likes of Galloway:?

Good luck and God bless.

The PRSA National Board ramrodded in March 2021 – the very month PRSA’s National Board Exec Comm gladly capitulated with Galloway’s et al’s expulsion petition against me – what Board minutes cited as a “new Universal Accreditation Board charter,” essentially demoting the UAB to a mere “standing advisory committee of PRSA” and “not a separate legal entity.”

It doesn't appear that any other UAB member organizations had a voice in PRSA acting so unilaterally. The PRSA Board minutes certainly don't document that PRSA even bothered to consult other UAB Participating Organizations.

As for PRSA National's retaliatory behaviors in stripping someone's APR without the UAB so-called oversight board even being allowed notification -- much less a voice -- in that matter, PRSA has been caught red-handed.

Incidentally, it’s illegal for any New York chartered not-for-profit like PRSA to engage in whistleblower retaliation.

Stripping a dues-paying member in good standing of her membership, accreditation and other earned credentials more than qualifies as illegal retaliation when that member’s only “infraction” has been to ask questions, tell the documented truth and demand truth from an obviously compromised organization.

This matter of PRSA's documented misconduct itself is now before the Office of New York Attorney General Letitia James – a detail that I’m sure Galloway didn’t bother to mention in his apparent chit-chat last year with the FPRA folks.

From appearances, it seems he was dispatched by PRSA to talk FPRA off the ledge from their own valid concerns about PRSA’s blatantly unethical conduct of unilaterally declaring the UAB as nothing more than a “committee” of PRSA – with PRSA running the entire APR show and, lest we overlook the obvious, with PRSA collecting ALL THE APR MONEY, vis-à-vis all Accreditation application and renewal revenues.

The UAB website instructs APR applicants – regardless of organizational affiliation – to make their APR application checks payable to PRSA.

On that account, PRSA’s 2020 audited financials reveal a serious slide in its “Examinations & Fees” revenue line item on the P&L (2021 audited financials have not been released yet), amid PRSA’s overall deficit bloodbath.

In the spirit of full self-interest – of which PRSA National’s reputation is well-known – it would only make sense that the APR’s diminished cash-cow status would prompt PRSA HQ to double-down to codify any possible new-fangled way to keep those declining APR dollars fully in-house on the PRSA balance sheet and in service to PRSA Inc’s own cash-management, which no doubt is abundantly challenged (desperate?) these days.

Kudos to FPRA for boldly asking questions – and taking a public stand, even as PRSA ducks, covers, obfuscates and stonewalls.

I’ve stated the obvious many times, but here it goes again:

PRSA National and the PRSA Foundation must be investigated via a fully independent forensic accounting audit.

And PRSA should no longer be allowed to claim status as the self-asserted “voice of the public relations profession,” when it’s clear that the national organization couldn’t hit the broad-side of a barn with its diversionary lip-service buckshot that is intended to frustrate, confuse and confound stakeholders, to the extent that they just throw up their hands, give up, and go away, so that PRSA can maintain its nauseating status-quo.

In my view, informed by my voluminous personal experience, PRSA National is deeply harming the PR industry with its hijinks.

I hope PRSA’s dwindling membership – especially the APR credential-holders – will hold their PRSA National Board and executive staff accountable.

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Mary Beth West can be followed on Twitter -- @marybethwest.

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