From the President's Desk

By Juanita Soutar
2004-2005 National President
   

Happy New Year, fellow Progressians!  Can you believe it’s already 2005??

As with all of you, your National Board has been keeping itself busy, working to meet the goals we set for ourselves for the year.  We will be holding our next Board Meeting on January 29th and 30th, in Aurora, Ont., just north of Toronto.  As usual, we have a full agenda and I’m looking forward to a productive meeting. Some of our priority items include assessing our options for a new National Office location, reviewing the “wish list” for the next development phase of the national website and the Members Communication System (MCS), discussing the Recognition and Partnership Program for our national sponsors, and national convention protocol and procedures.  I look forward to reporting on this and more for you during the next issue.

In addition, the Blue Book Update Project is progressing along quite well – we’re about 85% complete.  If you haven’t checked out the draft version recently, please do – it’s accessible from the national website homepage, on the right-hand side – and is getting packed full of policies, procedures, guidelines, forms, and templates.  Some of the most recent items that have been added include information about both the Mercury and Diamond Mercury Award programs (in Section 6), along with printable scorecards for each (in Section 7).  I’ve also added template Excel spreadsheets to help your clubs record your budgets, bank reconciliations, income statements, and balance sheets.  They’re easy to use, even for those of us who aren’t CAs!  And there is also some good resource material for membership recruitment and retention.  As always, if you have any suggestions for material you’d like to see added to the Blue Book, or note any changes that should be made to the material provided, please let me know.

For all clubs inducting new members, please remember to have your Club President or Membership Chair forward the names of your inductees, plus the $20 initiation fee, to Carmel in the National Office as soon as possible.  Also, add the new members’ information to the MCS, and advise Sharon Ward, National Communications Director and Editor of The Progression, so that she can properly recognize and welcome them in the newsletter.

A number of clubs are celebrating anniversaries in January and February, including a couple of milestone ones.  Best wishes and congratulations to the following clubs:

• Greater Moncton Women (January 17th—2 years)

• Calgary City Centre (January 31st—7 years)

• Durham Region Women (January 29th—11 years)

• Durham South (January 27th—16 years)

• Regina Centre (February 7th—18 years)

• Calgary North (February 29th—25 years)

• York Region Women (February 23rd—25 years)

• Greater Vancouver (January 20th—26 years)

• Halifax (January 20th—40 years)

• Sherbrooke (February 25th—49 years)

My travel itinerary to clubs and events over the next few months will be busy, and I’m certainly looking forward to seeing you all very soon.  Have a prosperous and healthy 2005!

Yours for Progress,
Juanita Soutar