Reduced product pricing is one reason MSPs join the ASCII Group, even after ASCII’s acquisition by GTIA. It’s very nearly the only reason they join MSP OneShare.
ASCII is a onetime for-profit community now owned by a nonprofit trade association. MSP OneShare, which parent organization International Business Products Inc. (IBPI) launched in March, is something altogether different, a 100% member-owned and led community dedicated chiefly to securing lower prices on software and hardware.
“It’s a whole different paradigm,” says Lynn Williams (pictured), OneShare’s director of MSP partnerships and programs.
Indeed. For one thing, there are no fees involved in joining the group or renewing membership. MSPs pay $500, one time only, to buy one share in the community, which is all they’re ever permitted to buy and the inspiration for the group’s name. Members receive their share certificate on paper through the U.S. mail.
“If they ever sell or merge with another company, they sign the back like a check and they actually get their money back,” Williams says. By virtue of owning one share in the organization, moreover, members get one vote in the group’s decision-making.
“They are truly in control,” Williams says.
Among the biggest decisions made by members is who sits on OneShare’s board of directors. The board, in turn, decides who qualifies to be among OneShare’s “preferred vendor partners,” of which there are presently 39.
Vendors, which pay a one-time $5,000 fee to attain preferred status, are obligated to match or beat the lowest price they offer any other association and to give members what Williams calls “the little icing on the cake” that comes with being OneShare owners: an annual rebate on all the purchasing they do.
“We always pay in April right after taxes,” Williams says. This year’s checks, calculated against the roughly $7.5 billion members spent with partners in 2025, totaled $1.27 million.
Much of OneShare’s purchasing happens at membership meetings, which occur annually now and will become semi-annual next year. Neither OneShare nor IBPI makes money on them.
“Our vendors pay enough to feed and house the members that come, but we don’t take a profit off of that,” Williams says. The idea is to prevent cost from reducing partner attendance.
“The better we can help them form relationships with our members, the more we engage, the more we buy, and the more buying power we have,” Williams explains.
And with that goal in mind, OneShare gives vendors at its events a kind of speed dating service with members versus a booth in an expo hall.
“We bring eight business owners to their table every 14 minutes,” Williams says.
Members profit from another set of relationships as well, she notes. IBPI’s original mission was serving managed print providers, many of which now wish to provide managed IT services too without investing in new tools and people. Via OneShare, IBPI can help them create go-to-market alliances (backed by signed non-compete agreements) with MSP partners.
“They share their trusted clients,” Williams says, along with their MRR. “It’s on average a 20% profit share between the two.”
One can imagine that and everything else about OneShare sounding a bit mercenary to MSPs who value communities principally for the peer-to-peer support and business growth advice they provide. I regard it as a reminder that there are lots of ways to define and profit from community in the channel, most of which have something to offer.