"There shall be no local accounts that exist without the authorization of the Director of Finance and without the signatures as designated by the International Office."
- P.1 under "Accounting and Finance"
"All checks must have either two regional signatures- one of the professional and the other of a lay leader or the signature of a field services supervisor"
- P.1 under "Banking and Contracting"
If this policy is to go into effect, your chapter could not hold any sort of banking or checking account without the authorization of International and the signatures designated by the International Office. What does this mean for your chapter? All bank accounts, even if they already exist, are considered void for chapter use until the Director of Finance authorizes them and signatures of various people are collected. Assuming that processing the hundreds of bank accounts that already exist and collecting signatures won't exactly be a cakewalk, chapter accounts could take months in order to be used.
This one is a doozie. Under this policy, every single check must have two regional signatures. If you bought supplies for a program and want to get reimbersed from the chapter, you have to meet up with your regional staff so they could validate and verify the checks. Even the smallest financial transactions all have to go through your regional staff. It is obvious, especially in spread out regions, that chapter cannot drive to the regional office every time they have to get a check verified. To sum it all up, your chapter is not allowed to spend money at all without the approval of the region.
Your Friend,
Brutus
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3 comments:
Some chapters have run into trouble with advisors leaving and them no longer having access to their bank accounts. Especially nowdays where minors are rarely allowed to be signatories on association accounts.
Here's my question:
How would you change policy so that chapters retain full control of their money, but at the same time protect them from unreliable advisors?
Also, let's say that tax and legal reasons change at some point so BBYO has no choice but to consolidate accounts.
How would you design a policy/system that would work for chapters and that they could trust when it came to finances?
The proposed policy is, indeed, pretty bad as it reads. How would you fix it?
I think that more parent involvement would be a possible answer (in my opinion, one of the best) to the current banking woes. While advisors may come and go every six months, a parent of an Aleph or BBG in the chapter will be there for a much longer period of time. The parents (obviously) live within a close distance of the center of the chapter, which would make it way easier to get checks signed and deposited. The parents are (obviously) old enough to be signatories.
Perhaps BBYO could make some kind of a form that authorizes these parents to be signatories so that International could feel more secure about who is handling their money.
To conclude, there are always parents to fall back when the chapter is in danger of losing access to its finances all together.
Interesting idea. I hadn't thought of that, but you're right - in fact it wouldn't surprise me if parents would be willing to help in that way long after their own sons and daughters graduate from BBYO.
Of course, this would be a 180 shift from the current proposal, that restricts parental involvement further by not allowing them to front money to the chapter. Given that many things require credit cards these days, I wonder how they expect chapters to deal with this issue. Perhaps BBYO will issue credit cards to members? :-)
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