The YALSA Board Midwinter Meeting Agenda and related documents are available. When you take a look at the agenda you’ll notice there are a couple of discussions related to fiscal matters of the association. As the YALSA Fiscal Officer I wanted to highlight these two items for members.

  • creative commons licensed image by Brand New Day of piggy bank with a couple of dollarsYALSA Dues Categories and Rates is item 20 on the YALSA Board agenda. It’s an action item which means that the Board has had initial conversations about this topic (at ALA Annual 2015 in this case) and should come to a decision at their Midwinter meetings. As this topic is associated with YALSA dues, any proposals made by the Board related to the document will go on the 2016 YALSA ballot and put to a vote of the membership.

    At Annual Conference 2015 the YALSA Board discussed the pros and cons of revising the methods the association uses for determining dues. At that time the Board approved placing on the 2016 ballot a bylaws change that would ask members to vote for regular dues changes based on the Consumer Price Index (CPI). This would change the current practice of the YALSA Board analyzing dues about every five years and then determining if an increase was warranted. At the same time that the Board voted to move forward with the CPI ballot initiative, they also asked the Capacity Building Standing Committee to determine if YALSA should also revise the dues structure and categories in any way. The Capacity Building Standing Committee reviewed current dues rates and categories in ALA Divisions as well as in other education and/or youth development focused associations. The document the Board will discuss at Midwinter provides an overview of the information gathered by the Capacity Building Standing Committee, and a set of options for Board members to consider in order to determine if other dues related items beyond the CPI alignment should be included on the 2016 YALSA ballot for the members’ consideration.

  • Item 26 in the Discussion section of the Midwinter Board agenda is the Financial Update. At both Midwinter Meeting and Annual Conference the YALSA Board has a discussion – facilitated by the Fiscal Officer and Executive Director – about the fiscal health of the association. As a discussion, it is not expected to lead to any specific action by the Board. This year, the Board will talk about the final figures for YALSA FY15 and the first numbers for FY16. (The YALSA fiscal year runs from September 1 through August 31.) The discussion gives Board members the chance to ask questions about the numbers as well as discuss any concerns or challenges related to the fiscal health of the association.  The goal of these discussions is to ensure that YALSA has the funds it needs to support members through the programs and services it provides.

All YALSA Board meetings are open to Midwinter Meeting attendees. Feel free to drop by for a short or long period of time. The meetings are an excellent way to learn what YALSA is working on and get a sense of how the association’s governance works.  If you’re not in Boston, follow @yalsa for live Tweets from the meetings.

If you have any questions about YALSA’s fiscal matters, feel free to get in touch – lbraun@leonline.com. As YALSA’s Fiscal Officer I’m happy to talk with you about the topic.

About Linda W Braun

Linda W Braun is a YALSA Past President, the YALSA CE Consultant, and a learning consultant/project management coordinator at LEO: Librarians & Educators Online.

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