Like the National Association of Realtors, the American Society of Association Executives (ASAE) is also having difficulty with the Federal Communications Commission's (FCC) new FAX regulations, which prohibits FAXes that include advertising without prior written permission from the recipient.

The ASAE is composed of 25,000 members of trade organizations and associations representing as many as 207 million people who belong to the associations. ASAE members include many association officers from the NAR, the American Medical Association, the National Restaurant Association and the AARP (formerly known as the American Association of Retired Persons) among many others.

Chris Vest, assistant director of public relations for the ASAE, says the association objects to the FCC proposal which "eliminates the prior “established business relationship” language, no longer making membership in an association sufficient enough to send a FAX that contains advertisements for products or services."

"We are asking for an extension so that we can ask members for their consent," says Vest.

Vendor participation and support is a primary way in which tax-exempt organizations control costs. On a broader note, consumers are fed up with FAX junk mail, solicitation calls and SPAM, the next frontier to be controlled by the FCC and Federal Trade Commission (FTC.) Since June 27th, the first day that consumers could sign up to take advantage of the FTC no-call rules, over 28 million consumers have signed up to keep telemarketers from interrupting dinner and family time.

This is causing the baby to be thrown out with the bathwater, cry some organizations, which view the FCC's and FTC's zeal to stop unsolicited communications as grandstanding heroics before an election year, at best. At worst, they say, the FCC and FTC rules will eliminate jobs for millions of people and substantially increase operating costs for many organizations, two things a floundering economy doesn't need.

Among those objecting to increased costs are the NAR and the ASAE, which can no longer send FAXes subsidized by advertisers to members without their written consent.

"It's not like we're sending these FAXes to the general public," says Vest, "they are being sent to our members who presumably joined our organization to get this information among other benefits."

The ASAE is gearing up to fight the FCC, inspired by the actions of the American Teleservices Association, which filed suit against the Federal Trade Commission in January to stop the no-call lists from being made, and has now filed against the FCC.

The ATA said in a press release that the no-call rules were a case of "regulatory overkill." Noteworthy are the exemptions which include charities, pollsters, calls on behalf of politicians and customers who have bought, leased or rented from the company in the past 18 months or made an inquiry within the past three months.

Vest would like to see reasonable exemptions for the FAX rules, too, and he is looking ahead to what the FCC and FTC will do regarding e-mail.

"E-mail is being addressed in Congress right now," he warns. "We understand the FCC's intent to ride what is a wave of consumer sentiment against junk mail, phone solicitations and Internet Spam, but the unintended consequence has been to create a severe administrative burden that impedes the marketing and communication strategy of associations. In order to communicate by FAX with our own members, we are going to have to go out to thousands of people and seek their signed written consent before we send them a FAX. What the law said before is that as long as there was an established business relationship in the case of associations, (members joining the association established that relationship) that gave us permission to give members a FAX about programs we want them to know about. The new rule gets rid of that."

What the ASAE is now attempting to do is file a petition for stay with the FCC. "Their new regulations have not gone into effect, but they have been posted in the Federal Register, which means we have 30 days until they are effective. We are filing a petition that the FCC stay their implementation and enforcement to reconsider whether association activities that are consistent with their tax-exempt purposes and inherently noncommercial should be covered by these rules," says Vest.

"At the same time, we want Congress to take note of the issue and the fact that this is just bad for business at a time when the nation doesn't need to hamper its economic drivers any further," he says.