By Angela Anderson, President, IABC/Calgary

At the first IABC/Calgary board meeting of this year, I am pleased to report that our board of directors approved the 2017/2018 chapter budget. Within this budget, I wanted to highlight one particular item that will be of interest to you, our members.

Each year during the budgeting process, the board together takes a long look at our financial situation, and takes many steps to ensuring fiscal responsibility, including evaluating all of our current programs and services, and ensuring we are providing the best member value we can using the resources available to us, including revenue from the chapter portion of membership dues, sponsorship, and our hard working volunteer base.

Approximately two years ago, the board began to look and compare membership dues across the globe to see how Calgary compares to other chapters. After an audit of these dues, it was determined that Calgary has maintained the lowest chapter dues of any chapter large or small. This is a great thing, given we are one of the largest chapters in the world and have award winning programming and services as formally recognized by the international IABC board. On that, I’d like to sincerely thank all of our dedicated volunteers and each and every one of our members who contribute to making us such a robust and engaged chapter.

While we would love to remain operating with the current high level of service and low dues, we were starting to see small deficits each year. We believe we owe it to our members to be fiscally responsible and ensure the revenue is sustainable for future years of operation. Thus, at our September 2017 board meeting, the board of directors voted unanimously to increase the chapter portion of membership dues by $15 for the 2017/2018 fiscal year and beyond, beginning October 1, 2017.

 This means our current chapter dues of $25 per year per member will increase to $40 per year per member, significantly increasing our revenues. The increase brings total annual professional member dues from $299 to $314, bringing our dues in alignment with all other chapters across Canada, except for Regina ($309) and Toronto ($339).  Please see the breakdown of fees internationally here for more information.

What this increase allows us to do is ensure fiscal responsibility, and continue to enhance member services at the same time. This update will essentially bring our chapter very close to surplus in 2017/2018 and will allow us to plan for a surplus year in 2018/2019 and beyond.

I also want to assure you that our board of directors has worked incredibly hard to ensure IABC/Calgary remains one of the largest and most robust chapters delivering incredible value for money. New programs adding value in the past five years include: Mentorship program, Gift of Communications, Bidline, Consultants’ listing, IABC/Calgary blog, certification launch and support, Special Interest Groups/Meetups and more. And your participation in all of these programs and services, whether you are a volunteer or a member who uses one or more of the services, is what makes these so successful.

So a huge thank you, and please reach out to our executive team with any questions, concerns or comments on this matter at Calgary-executive@iabc.com