By Katherine Bethany, FSAVE – President, SAVE International
Happy New Year everyone! As you read this, the SAVE International Board of Directors and the Certification Board are preparing to meet in a joint session early this month. We have started doing the joint session in the last couple of years to make sure that SAVE leadership all are moving in along a consistent path. It does help to have the face-to-face meetings as we get the chance to get all questions/comments/decisions on the table. One of our big tasks at this upcoming meeting is to make sure the budget for the upcoming year is prepared and that we can execute all of the wonderful tasks/ideas to improve your society and continue to market the Value Methodology.
Any of you who have participated in budget preparations understand it is not as easy a task as it sounds. Ideally the budget process would just answer the question how we should spend our enormous income, and how much do we “save” for future unforeseen events. In reality, it is more like we need to spend a lot more funding in multiple ways, but we don’t have enough income to cover even half of the items. So which ones are more critical? It is an eye-opening and often frustrating experience.
It is important to do, of course, and it does help to highlight issues that the Boards need to resolve. For example, past boards and previous budgets assumed that less than 50% of staff time* was devoted to certification issues. The rest of staff time would be membership, conferences, marketing, educational programs, website and social media development, affiliate relations, etc. This is how our fee structures were established. Problem is we have discovered is that significantly more than 50% of staff time is spent on certification issues. This has led to some critical programs not being worked, and an imbalance in who pays for what. Something we are going to work on fixing.
So as your Boards gather to debate these and other similar issues, please send warm thoughts our way. I hope you and your families have enjoyed a great holiday season and that you have a wonderful New Year!
* Refers to several association management company professionals working in various capacities. These are shared SAVE resources equivalent to multiple full-time employees.
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