CFMA Chapter “Best Practices” Chart
“Best Practice” Item / DetailsBest Communication Vehicles—Electronic or
otherwise, share with us your chapter’s best
accomplishment in communicating with your
members and prospective members. / · E-Mail
· Flyer with personal note from Membership Chair inviting prospective members to attend for free
· Both e-mail and traditional mail
· Use of Evite for invitations and payments. Also setting up our Web site to accept registrations and payments
· Consistent time, date, and location of meetings
· Chapter newsletter
· E-mail members special information on legal, tax, and/or accounting issues
· Chapter Web site
· Multiple approach—fax, e-mail, paper, telephone calls, personal visits—depending upon the situation
· E-Mail for BOD meetings; e-mail and fax for general membership meetings; hard copy mail for seminars and chapter outings
· Personal phone calls follow up after e-mail
· “Limited seating” for meetings
· Member survey for feedback at every chapter event
· Promote the chapter before large/attentive audiences, such as our golf tournament
· Hiring an executive director to handle all the administrative details has worked wonderfully
Membership Growth & Retention—If you
planned and increased membership within
the last year, let us know how you did it. / · Drafted a letter stating the benefits of CFMA signed by the owner of a large and respected GC whose CFO is a member and sent it to other company owners and presidents encouraging them to have their CFO join CFMA. Early results show that the owners have read the letters.
· Conducted a Membership Drive in 2005 in conjunction with National’s Membership Drive with some success. We are up 12-13 people from a year ago.
· “Buddy System”—each member is expected to bring one prospect to each luncheon meeting
· Membership Committee personally called every name on the non-renewal list. Also have challenged the BOD to commit to prospects and worked on getting everyone to bring in two prospects per year
· Mixing up or meeting dates and times to draw different people into the meetings, not necessarily more attendees. If they get involved, it is easier to retain them.
· “Word of Mouth”
· We are re-defining our Membership Committee’s responsibilities for greater growth and retention. We don’t want to “tread water” any more.
· Phone calls to potential members based on leads from the Web site
· We sponsor a breakfast at the statewide AGC convention to provide us with 5-10 minutes to talk about why their CFM needs to join CFMA and the benefits it would bring to their company.
· Selecting area CFOs with successful companies who are not members. A current member with a personal relationship with the prospective member will call to personally invite this prospect to our next meeting.
· First-time guests are free. We are in the process of preparing a target list of companies that we think should be represented and we intend to encourage the owner/CFOs to participate.
· We sent out letters to ABC and AGC membership lists and hosted a table top display at the ABC Crawfish Boil.
Best New Ideas for Partnering—Has your chapter
partnered with another professional organization for a
meeting or other project? / · We partnered with IMA on a “Bowling Night,” and it was well-received. We may do some educational sessions with them as well.
· TUG holds their monthly meeting directly following our CFMA meeting. We use the same room and split the rent. We are also partnering with the Nebraska Building AGC Chapter.
· Held a joint meeting with NAWIC; it was one of our better-attended meetings.
· We have partnered with students in the Construction Management Program at the University of Cincinnati’s College of Applied Sciences. We also have communicated with Allied Construction Industries, which is an umbrella association made up of AGC, ASA, and several other construction trade associations in the area to promote each other’s events.
· We will invite AGC and ABC to our Northwest Regional Conference in 2007. We are also working with the Washington State Society of CPAs.
· We have partnered with the Austin Chapter of AGC.
· We have talked with the Alaska Society of CPAs and AGC.
· We have had joint meetings with ABC and NAWIC. The ABC meeting was our largest attendance of the year.
· We have a joint meeting with ABA, ASA, AGC, and NAWIC every spring. It is usually well-attended.
· Our best attended meeting each year is our annual joint meeting with ASA.
· We held a joint “Lunch and Learn” program with the local chapter of AGC with excellent results.
· Our joint meeting with Keystone ABC usually draws 225-250 people. We always have a CFMA speaker presentation and it is always well received by our respective membership bases.
· We have tried to partner with other construction organizations for our job site tours with mixed results.
· One of the goals of our recent strategic planning retreat is t partner with AGC.
· Partnered with AGC with no appreciable benefit.
· We partner with the Middle Tennessee Chapter of ABC annually for a Christmas mixer. It is well attended.
· It has been a few years, but we have held joint training sessions with the Houston AGC Chapter.
· We advertised our CA 101 class with ABC and NUCA and sold out. We are trying to join forces with other industry groups.
· We have plans on partnering with NAWIC this year for a joint meeting in the fall. We did this three years ago and it was very successful.
· We have worked with ABC to both create awareness of CFMA, promote awareness of CFMA, and for member recruitment.
Cost Control Innovations—How has your chapter
Managed this process in a way that has helped you
“grow the chapter without growing the expense?” / · We ensure our regular meeting costs for the facility and meals are more than covered by the cover charges. We also do the same for our educational sessions. If we have a social event, we attempt to get sponsors to cover the costs.
· BOD members have taken on a lot of the responsibility for chapter operations. We have a part-time person who works at an hourly rate and handles our mailings, etc.
· We have always made sure that all of our events are priced appropriately to at least break even and preferably turn a profit.
· We ask members to solicit a corporate donation to the chapter. Lunch costs are fixed so we have tried to grow attendance at meetings.
· We actually increased expenses with a more costly executive director and some more expensive meeting locations but this had paid for itself with growth of membership, better attendance at meetings, and better energy. All events are now better attended and bring in higher amounts to give us more latitude in what we wish to do.
· We hired an outside administrator and she has saved us countless hours. We are acquiring our own LCD projector and computer for presentations and database.
· We have focused on new revenue streams. Last year, we were able to sell the value of CFMA through sponsorships at the golf outing and monthly meetings that helped us raise an additional $4,000-$5,000 for the year.
· A few programs that we have held, like the “Basics” seminar and our golf tournament have produced good returns for the chapter so we can use those funds to keep the general meeting fee low.
· We have tried to help control our budget by having a chapter dues structure in addition to the National dues. We charge $100 per year to over lunch and other expenses.
· We rarely pay for speakers.
· Our accounting class is being taught by a volunteer and a CFMA member firm is donating their training room, so our cost in putting this program on is minimal.
· Usually our treasurer is from a public accounting firm and his/her administrative assistant also serves as the chapter’s administrative assistant. It is a big job and if we had to pay it would definitely cost some money. But our CPA firms have been great as far as donating that time and effort.
· Members who volunteer their time; pro bono speakers; break-even price structure for general membership meetings.