Making Membership Count

By Patricia K. Krout, CPA

The theme of this month’s message is membership. One of CalCPA’s constant goals for each fiscal year is to increase membership. Some may ask you, why join CalCPA? I’d like to share some information about CalCPA, its vision, mission and priorities that you can share.

Vision: CalCPA efforts cause CalCPA members to be viewed as leaders in professional competency and integrity by clients, employers, and public and government officials.

Mission: To increase the value and promote the integrity of the CPA profession, contribute to the success of our members, and strengthen client, employer, public and government trust in CalCPA member advice, work products and opinions.

Core Values: Integrity, Competence, Continuing Education and Lifelong Learning, Independence, Objectivity, Protect the Public, Attuned to Business Issues.

Strategic Priorities supporting CalCPA’s vision and mission:

• Advocate for members on issues that affect the profession.
• Enhance and promote the visibility of the profession and CalCPA.
• Attract, educate and support CPAs in their professional and personal development.

Would you like to expand the value of your local CalCPA membership? If so, we have some exciting events coming up that will help you achieve this goal. I’d like to invite you to participate and invite some new faces to our chapter events in August and September.

Our chapter’s first Attorneys, Bankers and CPAs event is scheduled for Aug. 12 at the Coral Casino Beach and Cabana Club at the Four Seasons Biltmore Resort. This is an opportunity to network with other professionals, as well as to meet new colleagues and friends.

Our chapter’s annual golf tournament, a fund-raiser for student scholarships, will be held Sept. 29 at the championship Sandpiper Golf Club. This is your opportunity to have some fun in the sun. We hope that many people who attend our ABC Night will join us at the golf tournament to strengthen our new and continuing relationships.

I’m pleased to announce that Garry Jones, of Garry Jones & Associates, will be our Grassroots Legislative Committee chair and work with the CalCPA Government Relations Committee to increase CalCPA member participation in the political process. The committee will develop local, regional and state relationships with elected officials and candidates to increase the visibility of the CPA profession in the political arena. You may hear from Garry as he arranges meetings with legislative leaders in our area to promote CalCPA and CPA-PAC. This is another way to get more value from your CalCPA membership while promoting the profession as a whole.

Our chapter event July 23 is a three-hour CPE class with John Valenzuela, who will speak on the newly updated Form 990. This event was very popular last year, and John will advise us on the valuable lessons learned from the preparation of the forms, schedules and required disclosures from the prior year, as well as update us on the numerous corrections and clarifications that have been made to the instructions. In addition, he will present new issues and reporting dilemmas and how to deal with them. Please consider inviting your nonprofit clients to this valuable presentation. You can register online.

Lastly, don’t miss our local discussion group meetings. There is one near you in Conejo Valley, Ventura or Santa Barbara covering a wide range of topics. Please scan the newsletter for more information on the details of these events.

The best way to increase the value of your membership is to be active in the local chapter and participate. Let me know how I can help you achieve your goals.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 29th, 2010 at 5:14 pm and is filed under President's Message. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.