The NYISBA Broker Forum. A Statewide Alliance of Knowledge, Connection, and Support.

Early in 2017, the OPWDD, during one of its quarterly FI-Broker WebEx trainings, casually mentioned “local broker training networks.” Having, at that point, been a  broker for more than three years, this surprised me since I hadn't heard of this. Afterward, when I spoke with a peer, Donna Febo, we both simply didn't know what they were referring to. At that time, some fiscal intermediaries were occasionally offering trainings, but never more than one or two a year.

 

Donna did some research and came up with the idea of building a Google Group. The idea was to simply build a place where independent brokers could ask questions and get answers from peers. Not FIs, not the OPWDD, but peers. The Independent Self-Direction Broker Forum was born. We started with and continue to have very few rules. Be nice, don't bash FIs, no self-promotion, and most importantly, you need to be an independent self- direction broker. From the beginning, we felt that agency brokers, regardless of whether they had independent broker cases on their own, had resources available to them where they could ask questions and get answers because they were agency brokers. Independent brokers get 4.5 days of training from the OPWDD and then are sent out on their own.
 

We grew slowly. Initially, and for many years, we were predominantly populated by brokers in Region 5, but the word's gotten out. Today we have over 500 brokers from all five OPWDD Regions. Brokers, both new and old, and our mission has not changed. We are simply offering a safe place to ask questions and to get informed answers from others who are doing the same job and facing the same challenges... And we did append (All NY State) to the group name; Independent Self-Direction Broker Forum (All NY State).