Back to What's New Page| Local | Officer | Tips |
Our District Local Officers Have A Wealth Of Experience. We'll Use This Page To Share Their Ideas And Tips.
To Access Tips Archive Click Here
Here are some pointers to help your local become more effective and perhaps make your life as a local officer a little easier:
Have a Membership-Approved Budget and Save Hassles
Your local just learned about an important conference coming up. Unfortunately the conference is scheduled to take place before the next meeting of your local. Worse still, the conference expenses will be more than $500.00 which may be spent between meetings, with Executive Board approval and later reporting to your membership. Even though your local really needs to attend, without membership approval of the expenses, you're out of luck!
What can you do to avoid the above scenario? Have an approved yearly budget for your local approved by the membership and allowing specific amounts to be expended for conferences and meeting expenses.
In addition to being a Constitutional requirement, (not having an approved budget is contrary to our union's rules) having an adopted budget in place, allowing for expenditures for proper purposes, keeps your local in "operating condition" between meetings of your membership.
Generally speaking, an approved budget represents membership approval to spend dues money for proper purposes without having to seek approval for each expense, in advance. The ideal budget would be based on the results of an audit of prior year's expenses and planning based on those expenses.
Of course, dues money spent during any given month must be reported to your local's membership at the next meeting.
For a sample budget worksheet CLICK HERE.