] [Thread] [Date] [Author]

[Seaintonln(--nospam--at)aol.com]

In a message dated 6/8/99 4:59:43 PM Pacific Daylight Time, 
73527.1356(--nospam--at)compuserve.com writes:

<<  focu$$ >>
What I forgot to add after my focu$$ enthusium was to reiterate what I stated 
before. Professional organizations need more cash to cover the cost of global 
or national expenses to attend committee meetings for IBC. The problem is 
that I have heard nothing about savings to accomodate greater expenses in 
committee work.

I believe that we, as members, can obtain financial statments of the 
organization to track spending. It isn't that I think I can do any better job 
allocating funds, but I think that a lot of the old philosophies are guiding 
our plan for the future rather than serious consideration of using technical 
tools to help reduce cost.

I'd like to hear from others in major professional organizations and their 
opinions as to how the orginizaton spends money. Do you feel that technology 
is not being used to it's minimal advantage to make organizations more 
productive?

Should we be concerned? Would it be considered an attack on our chapter to 
request a copy of the financial statment so as to review spending? Is it 
appropriate for us to take interest in this issue?

I am a member of a board of directors for a non-profit organization with two 
full time employees. This is new to me and I am having some difficulty 
accepting the rigid proticol for organizational standards.  This last meeting 
I constituted a quorum (?) and one of the issues we had to discuss was the 
increase in pay for our director from $55,000 per year to $67,000.00.  The 
fact is that this guy is dedicated and worth everything I would be willing to 
give him. This is much higher than even my income and I started to think - 
can he survive without the increase? His wife is a full time administrator 
with benifits, I know he is dedicated to the job and would not consider 
leaving (he started the program) - but I was pleased to listen to the other 
comments and decide to vote in favor of his raise. 
My point is that many thoughts came through my mind that asked if we could 
benifit elswhere with the $12,000.00 difference to promote the program or 
hire part time help.

What do some of you think about reviewing the financial statments of your 
professional organizations. Do you think the financial statments should be 
automatically sent to all members so that they know how their dues are being 
spent. It seems that I recall a breakdown in one letter when we were asked to 
pay $25.00 a year more in dues. I don't think this was an established 
protocol and maybe it should be.

Let me know your opinions.

Dennis