By Leslie Carpenter, CFP, CIM

Not everyone understands what the role of Treasurer for our Advocis Vancouver Chapter entails, so I thought I would share from my experience. I will also explain the money trail between Advocis National and Advocis Vancouver, because this is sometimes misunderstood.

I am now in my fourth year as Treasurer and the title sounds more important than it really is. The Vancouver Chapter has a support company called SSU that does the day-to-day bookkeeping and bill paying (along with countless other tasks). SSU does the real work of the Vancouver Chapter. This means my job is mainly the overseeing of our financial strategies and budgets. It is up to me to keep our various Committees (Programs, Membership, Planning School, etc) within their budget and mindful of their expenses. This sounds easy but it has come with some struggles, because many committees do not have the budgets that they once had. And this leads me to the money trail between Advocis National and the Vancouver Chapter.

When you pay your dues, the money goes to the National Chapter of Advocis, which is located in Toronto. Every local chapter receives $50 per member to run their chapter….not the full membership cost. Most of the money that we pay as annual dues goes to the real work of Advocis, which is advocacy.

The local chapters also pay a fee to the Advocis National Chapter for every member who takes one of the programs that the national chapter has produced (eg. Update, etc). This means that every chapter must depend heavily on sponsorship to help with their programs. And sponsorship has been going down over the last few years.

Our financial statements are open to our membership and I welcome questions and discussion.