Late in May my neighborhood association elected new officers. I had thrown my name in the at for a member at-large position to get more involved in things. Unfortunately, I was unable to attend the election meeting because I was teaching my graduate accounting course that night.
There were 3 of us running for the 2 at-large seats. I lost the election to the 2 persons who were there for the meeting. However, word must have gotten out as to why I wasn’t there. It seems a couple of people thought I’d make a good candidate for the unfilled Treasurer position and wrote my name in. Since there was no one running, my 2 votes was the winning tally and the position was mine to accept or reject (since I was a write-in only). I considered it for a few days and decided I would make the leap and give it a try. It’s a 2-year post and puts me as an official executive member of a not-for-profit organization. In addition to the neighborhood group and newsletter, we also sponsor a local dog park with upwards of 600 members.
I sat and made the transition with the previous treasurer (he’d done the job the last 4 years) recently. He’s made an extensive guide book to how he’s managed and organized everything, so that’s a bit of a help. However, the “accounting” for the organization has been done strictly in Excel, which is not in my best interest to keep that way. Also, with the dog park as well, we have 20-25k in the bank and it’s all in a non-interest bearing checking account. How blah. I’ll be working on changing that over the next few months as well. Our local bank has several options to get us some interest on all that money.
I’ve been checking out some software to let me take care of the accounting. Both Quicken and Microsoft have free versions of their business accounting suites. They are some what limited, but still have all the basics that will work for most small organizations. The trouble I’ve found so far is that only the pay for versions allow the use of classes or divisions so that I can easily keep the money for the association and the dog park separated.
I’m still trying to find my groove and organization style for keeping records and managing the monthly reporting for association. I’ll have another report due next week when we have our next general membership meeting. I suppose the work I’ve done on my personal finances will help me to get more organized with the association as well. It will also prove to be some great experience and resume padding for later. I was already planning on taking the rest of the summer off from teaching, so I guess I’ll have some more time to get things in order.
On another note, I know I missed my monthly progress update last month on here. However, I did get my Net Worth IQ profile updated, so hopefully you saw that change as well. I hope to get my regular update for June put together tonight and start those posts tomorrow. To be honest, it won’t be pretty. Not only did the stock market tank, but we had nearly $3,000 of repairs made to our roof. The good news though, we paid for it with cash! A year ago we never would have been able to do that.
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