We have sent out two reminder emails about SafeSport refresher training, and have gotten multiple reports from people who have completed their refresher recently but still got the reminder notice. (Our Executive Director is in that group.)
We did find some issues with getting the SafeSport information from CIVI-CRM to the program that sends out the reminder notice and updates MSA, but that doesn’t appear to have fully resolved the problems. We think there is also a problem with the updates to the CIVI-CRM membership system, and are looking into it further.
The next round of reminder emails is currently scheduled to go out next Tuesday (1st and 3rd Tuesday of the month), we may postpone it for a few days.
Please note, it is VERY IMPORTANT that you make sure you provide your US Chess member ID when registering for and taking a SafeSport course.
It appears that there may be 185 records in the SafeSport database for US Chess where no member ID was provided, so the report has US Chess’s group ID in it rather than the member ID. Matching up on the member name or email address currently has to be done by hand.
Yes it is important to include your ID#. It would be great if that were made more clear at the SafeSport site.
But: My ID # is listed in my profile at the SafeSport site. I took the refresher course three weeks ago, just before my certification expired. (After guessing correctly that refresher course 1 had to be the course to take of the three courses listed. Hours after I took the course, that info appeared prominently at the US Chess site.)
I downloaded my certificate and emailed it to Melinda Matthews. By then the first email reminder blast about SafeSport refresher training had gone out and the info had been posted to the website. The information provided said to email your certificate to Melinda but even if you did not, your member record should update within 14 days.
It took 20 days and a followup from Korey to manually update my SafeSport certification on my dashboard. It is still listed as expired at MSA. And as noted, my ID# is in my SafeSport profile and I emailed my certificate to the designated person the day I took the refresher course.
That is not meant to be critical of the people involved in this convoluted process. It is critical of the convoluted process itself. I hope the systems/process issues are worked out in the next week. If not, tournament reports might start to fail validation soon, with TDs flagged for expired SafeSport certification even though they took the refresher weeks earlier.
That will confuse and annoy TDs and players, to say the least. Preventing that from happening should be a high priority this month.
It’s been 4 months, but I seem to recall that the SafeSport site did ask for my ‘organization ID’. But of course, they have no way of checking that it is correct.
We had a Zoom meeting on this issue on Friday, and identified some areas where the CIVI-CRM app needs work as well as some potential improvements in the procedures being used to update from SafeSport reports.
I’m also doing a full review of the SafeSport database to see if I can identify member records that either don’t have the SafeSport information or aren’t up-to-date.
Tuesday’s batch of emails for SafeSport reminder notices will be deferred until we think the issues identified are improved.
If TDs can’t get their reports to validate because of errant SafeSport issues, they should contact the ratings department, provide full details, and request an override of the SafeSport error(s). (Submitting proof of SafeSport status is recommended.)
On Friday the ED sent me copies of the SafeSport reports she downloaded last week, and I used those to update the SafeSport data shown on MSA, which should be an improvement over the data we had on MSA.
I am also using that updated data in the tournament validation module if it shows a SafeSport course completed date more recent than the one in the membership system, so this should help with TDs who have taken a refresher course recently.
It isn’t a permanent fix for the underlying issue, but it should be an improvement over where we were last week for most TDs.
Ranae sent me another set of SafeSport reports, so the data on MSA and used for validation has been updated as of early Monday morning.
However, there are still around 70 entries on the SafeSport reports that cannot be matched up with a member ID (either the name/email address don’t match or they match more than one member record) that were skipped during this process. These are all individuals who did not enter a valid US Chess member ID when taking their SafeSport Core course. (Around 3 dozen of them put in their affiliate ID or club name.)
Bill, it looks like you took refresher 1 on 9/25/24, and that’s what I see on MSA.
I’m not sure I see it in your CIVI-CRM member record, though, so it may not be showing on your member dashboard.
I remember a meeting last year where they said there was something messed up with posting refresher 1 information in CIVI-CRM, perhaps that hasn’t been addressed yet. I’ll check with senior staff on that.
I don’t think we currently have a mechanism for giving TDs a credit on ratings fees other than the waiver code we use for National Chess Day, which has no dollar limits to it.
I can suggest that as a possibility for the new Leago system.