Five Interesting Thoughts from…MJ Shoer
The head of community at the former CompTIA answers widely asked questions about the deal that brought the new Global Technology Industry Association into being.
A former MSP, MJ Shoer is now chief community officer of the Global Technology Industry Association, an organization known until recently by the more familiar name CompTIA. Last November, CompTIA sold its for-profit training and certification business—and brand—to private equity investors so its membership association could focus exclusively under a new name on the non-profit work it’s done on behalf of IT vendors and partners for 42 years.
The news, which took most CompTIA members by surprise, raised a lot of questions. Shoer came on Channel Mastered’s MSP Chat podcast recently to answer them. Here are five especially noteworthy facts worth knowing about the deal that brought the GTIA into being.
1. The sale of CompTIA’s training business came together recently, but it wasn’t a new idea. “Our longtime CEO, Todd Thibodeaux, always had this dream, hope, desire to set the association up to be financially secure in perpetuity in its future,” Shoer says. When the opportunity to act on that aspiration appeared last year, Thibodeaux pounced.
“It made sense,” Shoer says of the transaction.
2. The biggest reason the deal made sense was that it left the organization now known as GTIA with a deep pool of capital. “The income from the sale of those assets accrued entirely to the association,” Shoer says. “We are now very fortunate to be the stewards of a significant endowment that will fund our operations moving forward. So instead of having that revenue engine of the certification and training business, our revenue engine is now the earnings on our endowment. And that’s going to outlive all of us.”
3. Selling the training and certification business gives GTIA more time to invest in the IT community. “Our board of directors now isn’t managing the responsibility of a piece of the business that generates a ton of capital and a piece of the business that’s investing in the industry and education,” Shoer says. “So we expect to have an even bigger impact than we’ve been able to have over the last 42 years on a go forward basis, solely focused on the members of our association.”
4. That expanded impact will benefit more than just GTIA and its members. CompTIA has been responsible for some $5 million of charitable giving annually for years. GTIA’s endowment is big enough to fund more.
“We’ve announced our intention to raise our charitable giving to tens of millions of dollars annually,” Shoer says, adding that it’ll be next year at the earliest before the association realizes that goal.
“It’s going to take us a while to get the infrastructure in place,” Shoer explains. “I don’t know if this comes as a surprise to you, but it was certainly eye-opening for some of us: It’s not easy to give away that much money.”
5. One thing GTIA won’t be raising is its membership dues. They’ve been heavily subsidized in the past and will remain so in the future.
“Dues are $450 a year for an MSP member. It’s hardly anything to even think about,” Shoer says. “If you can’t extract, I’m even going to say 10, 20, 30 times the value of that if not 100 times, then you’re not trying.”
You can learn more about the many benefits of GTIA membership on the organization’s home page. To hear everything Shoer shared about GTIA’s future, tune into the podcast episode featuring his interview.
