Enterprise Care have just released the 2016/17 Not for Profit Remuneration Report. This Report is the most reliable and professional go-to-resource for all of your queries concerning remuneration across the whole of your organisation. It covers operating budgets, number of employees, locations, types of organisations and more.

2016/17 Not for Profit Remuneration Report

Enterprise Care are now offering AuSAE Members a special price to purchase the 2016/17 Not for Profit Remuneration Report.

To access this special discounted price, click here.

Overview and Purpose

What are you worth? Use Australia's leading and most comprehensive Not for Profit Remuneration Report. This Report offers valuable information on the remuneration of a comprehensive range of position LEVELS within the Australian Not for Profit sector. It covers CEOs, Board members, all senior managers and staff positions. It includes important benchmarking data from the most recent financial year, and tracks critical trends in remuneration levels for CEOs and senior positions over the last decade.

Have the confidence that your remuneration decisions accurately reflect the latest information on Not for Profit sector remuneration in Australia.

The report presents results for each position by:

• total organisation expenditure;
  
• benefits paid;
  
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Functions Covered (each with 3 staff Levels)

• Board;
  
• Executive;
  
• Accreditation / Certification;
  
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• Centre or Facility Operations (New in 2016);
  
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• Conventions / Meetings / Exhibitions;
  
• Education / Training;
  
• Finance;
  
• Fundraising;
  
• Human Resources;
  
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• Membership;
  
• Policy / Government Relations / Advocacy;
  
• Publications;
  
• Specific Program or Service;
  
• Technical / Research; and
  
• Welfare and Community Development / Support (New in 2016).
  

2016/17 Not for Profit Remuneration Report PLUS the Governance Intelligence® Salary and Benefits Snapshot

In addition and separately, Enterprise Care are also providing a special offer to all AuSAE members which includes the 2016/17 Not for Profit Remuneration Report PLUS the Governance Intelligence® Salary and Benefits Snapshot as a package deal.

To access this special package deal, click here.

Salary and Benefits plays an important role in successful recruitment and employee retention strategies. Your ability to attract and retain high achievers is critical to your organisation's ongoing success.

This Value Offer provides you with the sector’s most up-to-date salary information as well as the strategies to improve your recruitment and remuneration practices.

The just released 252 pages 2016/17 Not for Profit Remuneration Report contains the latest salary information; and our Governance Intelligence® Salary and Benefits Snapshot pinpoints those strategies that can improve your recruitment and remuneration practices.

The 2016/17 Not for Profit Remuneration Report covers twenty (20) different Functions, with three (3) Position Levels for each Function (Senior Executives to Lower Operational), covering all levels of staff in one informative report. The Report provides:-

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Our Governance Intelligence® Salary and Benefits Snapshot is a simple online diagnostic tool that enables you to:

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For a limited time only, you receive BOTH the NFP Remuneration Report and the Governance Intelligence® Salary and Benefits Snapshot at the very special price of $726 for a Member and $781 for a Non-member.

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Tomayto, tomahto. Trade association, professional society. How different are the two types of membership organization? A pair of association pros who’ve worked in both share their thoughts.

Outside the world of associations, most people probably couldn’t tell you the difference between a trade association and a professional society. Even some people inside associations might not know the distinction.

But it’s not terribly complicated: Though they’re not hard-and-fast terms, a “trade association” generally has member companies, while a “professional society” has individual members. (“Individual membership organization” is a common term for the latter, as well.)

They’re both, of course, still associations. The difference is material to the workings of either organization and yet doesn’t vastly change what they are. The best analogy I can muster up is that of the choice of transmission in a car: Driving a manual stick shift is a much different experience from driving an automatic, and yet in either case you’re driving an automobile.

While I have driven both types of car, I have only worked at a professional society. So, I’ve always been curious how much the fundamental difference in the type of member an association serves actually changes the nature of the work to be done. And who better to ask than association pros who have worked in both settings?

I posed a few questions on this subject to Kim Lawyer, QAS, manager of association operations at the North Carolina Nurses Association, and Liz Peuster, director of membership at the National Wood Flooring Association. Each has previous career experience in the opposite type of association, and they offered some interesting insight into how the jobs compare and contrast.

WHAT’S DIFFERENT?

Both Lawyer and Peuster say the focus of the member value proposition is the key factor in how a trade association or professional society operates.

“In the professional society, we prioritized the value to the individual member first and the employing company second,” says Peuster. “Within the trade association, the prioritization of the value proposition is much more focused on benefiting companies. … The challenge is different in that we are working to influence the key decision maker in the company and justify the line item. Our association does offer services to benefit individuals; however, the communication of those services focuses more on improving the company as a whole as a result of enhancing the individual’s skills.”

That difference in appeal influences the level of engagement among individuals within the membership, Lawyer says. At a trade association, “while the company paid the dues and we had more individual members because they were automatically a member, not all were truly engaged. On the other side, for a professional association, when the individual pays their own dues, they have more buy-in and are more invested in what they are paying for,” she says. “Between the two, I would say individuals who choose to be a member of a professional organization have more buy-in from the early stages of their career throughout their entire career.”

For Peuster, making the switch from the Missouri Society of CPAs to the National Wood Flooring Association required a mental shift.

“My mindset had to adjust to the inverse of how I communicated about the association,” she says. “Career development and local networking are not necessarily valuable to a flooring contractor who has been installing wood floors for 20 years. He is not looking to advance his career, like a 30-year-old CPA may be, and he is not necessarily interested in sharing best practices with a like-minded individual in his area because they are competitors. We have to position NWFA as a means to add credibility to the contractor’s business in the eyes of his customers.”

WHAT’S THE SAME?

Lawyer and Peuster noted, though, that many of the core skills of a successful association membership pro apply in both types of association.

“I think in either type of association, the best skill is relationship building. The nature of that relationship makes the members’ decision to join or renew much easier,” Peuster says.

Lawyer, meanwhile, cites attention to detail, effective communication, and strategic thinking, and she says such skills are universal because the goals of any association, trade or professional society, are much the same.

“The association was created to be a resource for the member,” Lawyer says. “Often we provide professional development opportunities, networking opportunities, advocacy support, and often we are the resource to be researching into the future for our members.”

And the membership experience matters in both settings too, Peuster adds: “We strive to promote our benefits and services and insist that engagement in the association will enhance our members’ businesses, but, at the end of the day, we know that we need to leave the member with a positive experience and a good feeling about the association.”

MAKING THE SWITCH

Because many of those skills transfer easily, Lawyer and Peuster say changing jobs from a trade association to a professional society, or vice versa, shouldn’t be a challenge for anyone dedicated to serving members. In offering advice for someone making the switch, their suggestions echoed each other (despite the interviews being conducted separately).

“Remember to take time to get to know the new industry and the key players in your new association. The type of work can be similar, but the way you execute or communicate may change based on an industry or individual’s needs,” says Lawyer.

“Get to know your audience, learn from them, and deliver services in a way that works for them, even if that is different than how you’ve always done it,” Peuster says.

I’m curious about others’ thoughts on this subject as well. What has been your experience with trade associations and professional societies? How does the work, particularly in membership, compare and contrast? Please continue the conversation and share your thoughts in the comments.

This article was originally sourced from Associations Now, and written by Joe Rominiecki. 

We all know the core fundamentals of how membership works in associations—or do we? Take a moment to consider how these bits of conventional wisdom may be off the mark.

On two separate occasions last week, I found myself rethinking the same line of conventional wisdom—namely, that transparency in organizations is a universal good.

First, in Mark Athitakis’ Leadership Blog post here at Associations Now, he highlighted research suggesting that the work of association boards—particularly their in-depth deliberations on strategic matters—can be hampered when put under the microscope in the name of transparency. “When those deliberations are public instead of private, opportunities for stifling critiques and playing to constituencies can take over,” he writes.

The same problem can happen in government. On The Ezra Klein Show podcast last week, political scientist and author Francis Fukuyama discussed his view that government is bogged down by transparency rules that, while well intentioned, ultimately paralyze the ability of representatives and agencies to deliberate and make decisions. (Listen to the podcast for more, or see “The Limits of Transparency” at The American Interest for a good summary of this perspective.) He connected it to what authors Christopher Achen and Larry Bartels call the “folk theory of democracy” in their book Democracy for Realists.

I hadn’t previously given much thought to this question beyond just a gut feeling that transparency is, in general, good. I still think that’s true, but I’m now persuaded that it is not an absolute.

And that got me wondering about the conventional wisdom of associations and membership organizations. What “folk theories” about membership do we tend to accept as common sense? And which of these might, upon further reflection, be not quite so universal?

Over the past few years of writing and blogging about membership, I’ve spoken to some smart people who weren’t afraid to reframe our common thinking. So, here’s a look at a few membership folk theories worth reconsidering.

More engagement equals more retention. Associations want their members to get engaged for a couple reasons. On its own, every act of engagement is a positive contribution to an association’s pursuit of its strategic goals and mission. But associations also see dollar signs in engagement, noting the positive correlation between engagement and renewal. That effect might not be as direct as we think it is.

In 2014, Sheri Jacobs, FASAE, CAE, president and CEO of Avenue M Group and author of The Art of Membership, pointed out that the desire to engage varies among members. She noted that some are highly satisfied to remain members while being generally uninvolved, as long as they’re receiving the particular benefits they seek. In other words, satisfaction, not engagement, leads to renewal. And so, rather than exerting effort to persuade uninvolved members to get engaged, “the real issue that needs to be solved is identifying ways to deliver more value to unengaged members,” she wrote.

A renewal notice is a bill for membership. In “Turn Off the Churn” in the July/August 2016 issue of Associations Now, Erik Schonher, vice president at Marketing General Incorporated, took issue with the common way association pros refer to their renewal efforts: as a “billing cycle.” What might seem like merely a problem of semantics actually reveals a complacency about the process of renewal itself, he argued.

A bill or an invoice requests payment for services already provided, but “with renewal, you’re reselling,” Schonher said. “If I haven’t delivered it yet, then I’m asking you to pay upfront. I’m asking you to do me a favor, and it’s a different ask, and it’s a different approach.”

Membership is a yearly commitment. Of course, your terminology for renewal notices only matters if members need to renew periodically. In most cases, that’s once a year. But, for the increasing number of associations offering automatic renewal, the need for members to decide to renew every year is decreasing.

Air Conditioning Contractors of America adopted a monthly membership option in 2015, in which members pay automatically via credit card. The membership term is indefinite, which means auto-payment simply continues every month until the member cancels. It’s a model that feels totally familiar in the context of fitness centers, cable TV, streaming music, and the like, but it’s rare (as of now) in associations.

More members is a cure-all. Associations regularly tout their membership totals, because there is “power in numbers.” But it’s also true that growth brings change, which might not always be good. With more members, staff and resources must scale upward; if not managed well, an association may sacrifice the quality of its member service in favor of the quantity of members served.

As Harrison Coerver and Mary Byers, CAE, wrote in 2011’s Race for Relevance, an association may be better off to “focus on the needs of a definable segment.” Growth, however, can often mean targeting new segments, which can diversify an association’s membership base beyond the association’s ability to vary its services.

Membership is the defining quality of associations. This is still perhaps my favorite questioning of the prevailing perspective, an oldie but a goodie. In 2013, Mark Golden, FASAE, CAE, now executive director at the National Society of Professional Engineers, urged us to restore mission to its rightful place atop associations’ collective list of reasons for being. Membership, while of course well suited to the pursuit of such missions, is but a means to an end, he said.

“None of our organization founders ever got together in a room and said: ‘What we need to do is collect a bunch of money so we can hire a staff to sell us stuff,’” Golden wrote in an address to a TED-style association industry symposium [PDF]. “What is needed is to get our heads out of membership models and back into a focus on mission first: What (specifically) does our organization exist to accomplish? Then, and only then, ask: What role (if any) could membership play in achieving the mission?”

What do you think? Which of these “folk theories” of association membership have you closely subscribed to? Do any of these arguments change your mind? What other convention wisdom out there ought to be debunked? Share your thoughts in the comments.

This article was originally sourced from Associations Now and written by Joe Rominiecki. 

The Australasian Society of Association Executives (AuSAE) has partnered with Omer Soker to launch The Future of Associations, the first ever book written specifically for the association sector in Australia and New Zealand.

“AuSAE’s role is to be the home for association professionals, and we are delighted to bring them this best practice resource to strengthen their knowledge and share effective and sustainable strategies for the future. A book on the Australian and New Zealand sector is long overdue.” said Brendon Ward, CEO of AuSAE.

The book’s author Omer Soker said “It usually takes a crisis to ignite real change. This book is a wake-up call that the urgency is now. Associations are being disrupted, competition is increasing, member expectations are growing and government policy is changing.”

The book will be available in print format in November at $23.99 plus postage, or $18.99 for AuSAE members. To pre-order your copy for delivery in November, please click here.

“Partnering with AuSAE, we hope to make the book available to every CEO, board director and association employee in Australia and New Zealand,” added Soker.

For more information, contact:

Omer Soker

0401 099 821

omer@ethicsofsuccess.com.au

www.ethicsofsuccess.com.au

Brendon Ward (AuSAE)

1300 764 576

ceo@ausae.org.au

www.ausae.org.au

We just returned from the Annual HR Technology Conference and Expo in Chicago last week, and it was an incredibly rewarding experience.

HR Tech 2016 was a great opportunity to meet teams who use Bonusly face-to-face, to catch up with our friends in the industry, and learn about all the exciting new tools, technology, strategies, and methodologies driving HR forward into the future.

For those of us who weren’t able to make it out to the conference, and for those who are excited to continue the exciting discussions that began there, we gathered a list of the six most powerful trends we identified across the conference.

Convergence

The days of siloed, disparate platforms have already been numbered, but it has never been more apparent than at this year’s HR Tech Conference.

Tools are integrating more seamlessly with one another to provide an entirely new experience, both for the HR practitioners, for senior leadership, and for employees.

Modern HR platforms are talking to one another, sharing resources and working together in concert to provide new and more actionable insights.

Payroll systems are no longer completely separate from performance management, or employee engagement.

“Will it integrate with our current stack?” is becoming almost as common a question as “how much will it cost?”

This trend of convergence isn’t limited to breaking down technological and data silos — departmental silos are breaking down as well.

Sales and marketing organizations are blending into one another, internal communications and PR, Hiring and Marketing — all blurring the lines between previously distinct business functions and embodying a singular cause of moving the organization forward.

Now, more than ever, it’s becoming important for HR professionals to be flexible, and to work cohesively across departmental boundaries, and the tools being offered on the expo floor show it.

People-Centric Design and Strategy

There’s also been a noticeable dialectic shift from ‘talent’ to ‘people’ across leadership in many organizations, large and small.

But what does that really mean?

Talent isn’t a person; talent is a characteristic — and we don’t hire characteristics, we hire people that embody characteristics. We’re not hiring engineering bandwidth, we’re hiring Michelle, a talented engineer. We’re not hiring SEO capabilities, we’re hiring Ken, a talented SEO expert.

This focal shift to ‘people’ realizes and embraces that delineation. It’s a deliberate focus on employees as people — what value a person can provide to an organization, and what value an organization can in turn, provide for a person.

So what does that mean in terms of strategy?

You’re now more accountable for developing, communicating, and making good on your organization’s Employee Value Proposition (EVP).

At HR Tech, we saw a burgeoning compliment of tools relating to improved employee health, wellbeing, and development.

In addition to developing the organization’s value toward the employee, it’s also becoming more and more important to provide an environment and framework that helps employees to realize their maximum potential.

What does that kind of framework look like?

Technologically speaking, people have become more and more accustomed to and increasingly expect user-friendly and intuitive Business to Consumer (B2C) design in the tools they use. These tools are there when they’re needed, but stay out of the way when they aren’t.

Seamless and transparent communication and collaboration among colleagues has also become much more of a need-to-have, rather than a nice-to-have trait of the working environment.

The HR tools of the near future will provide more intelligent, personalized, and intuitive interactions between individuals and their organization. It’s exciting to see them taking shape, and considering how these tools will shape the future of work.

Understanding and Challenging Bias

During one of HR Tech Conference’s “Women in HR Tech” panel series, I heard a brilliant quote:

“Diversity fuels innovation — there’s no room for like-mindedness.”

There’s no question that diversity is a crucial element of any top-performing organization. The multiple perspectives diversity provides are a major competitive advantage in any industry — and perspective is only one of the many benefits diversity brings.

Here’s the problem though:

Biases still present themselves in most organizations, whether those biases are conscious or unconscious.

Very few people would be comfortable saying “I run a biased organization,” or “Our hiring process is quite biased,” yet in many cases, it’s true.

The first step in tackling biases is better understanding how they’re formed, and the myriad ways they manifest themselves.

It takes a certain level of fearlessness and a good set of tools to seek out and challenge both conscious and unconscious bias within an organization. But with the courage to accept that biases exist in your workplace, comes the opportunity to challenge them.

Whether it’s reconsidering organizational value alignment, evaluating hiring and onboarding practices, or tackling bias with programmatic interventions, there are more tools available than ever before, and we saw many at the expo.

Now that HR leaders are being presented with an ever-expanding toolkit to help seek out unconscious biases within their organization, they’re in an unprecedented position to be a positive force for change.

Data and Predictive Analytics

Probably one of the biggest, most frequently recurring themes within the conference was data. Over the past few years, more and more tools have come available that are designed to help organizations make more data-driven decisions regarding people ops.

As these data analytics tools evolved and matured, the methodologies for deploying them have begun to evolve alongside them.

In its early stages, HR analytics focused on answering specific, static questions with data. This isn’t without its value, but that value isn’t as clear to a wider group of stakeholders in the organization.

As HR analytics evolved, it has begun to focus more on solving business problems through predictive analytics.

Senior organizational leadership has begun to expect more from HR in terms of the types of business problems it can solve, but these new technologies are making it possible.

As Josh Bersin put it during his talk on the “Datafication of HR” panel:

“It’s not about analyzing HR data for HR’s sake; it’s dangerous not to be business-aligned in this area.”

With these new tools and capabilities available, it’s become more important now than ever for HR to forge strong interdepartmental relationships, and demonstrate the exciting new possibilities for collaborative problem solving.

How do you do that?

Edward Baker-Greene, SVP Chief Human Resources Officer at FactSet offered a really useful strategy. When using these tools and developing initiatives based on them, ask yourself:

“How am I using this data to help inform and drive the organization forward?”

Innovation and Iteration

The influx of startups and startup culture in HR Tech brought an exciting wave of creative problem solving to the industry. Even some of the largest and longest-standing HR tech platforms have begun to adopt a focus on agility and continuous iteration.

This is great for the HR industry as a whole, because it shortens the feedback loop between the people who make the tools, and the people who use them.

The adoption of an agile methodology was viscerally present in the Second Annual HR Hackathon.

Four teams of talented engineers and designers sat down with a group of 60 HR professionals to find creative ways to solve some of the industry’s most challenging issues.

What came from those discussions (and two days’ hard work) was nothing short of amazing.

During the final phase of the hackathon, each team presented proof of concept applications they built in answer to the challenges they were tasked with solving.

A team form IBM designed a tool called SmartLens. The tool was designed to enable a more bias-free resume review app that did an excellent job of communicating only the pertinent job-related information to the reviewer, without surfacing information that might trigger unconscious bias.

TMP Worldwide‘s team developed a wiki-based platform to reward organizational knowledge sharing. An employee would simply search for a question. If the question didn’t have an answer, they could post it for others to answer.

If others felt the question was valuable, they’d be able to upvote it. Users could also choose to post an answer for review, and receive points from the community for their answers as well.

Ultimate Software‘s team developed a work life virtual assistant called UltiMatt that promised to utilize human natural language and deep HRIS/HRMS and HMC integrations to help contextualize data and help employees manage their day-to-day operations much more efficiently.

Willis Towers Watson‘s team built an app they called Kompas, to help organizations successfully fill key positions with internal candidates, and to help employees with career pathing.

Using this app, an employee would be able to view internal job postings, and identify which would suit them best, based on their own skills, and the skills required of the new position.

The system would also help them identify skill gaps, and help employees close those gaps by intelligently surfacing internal company contacts to meet with, e-learning courses to attend, and special projects to take on.

All of these were great examples of how quickly and effectively problems can be solved when a platform and its users participate in a tight feedback loop. It was great to see such a visible example of this in action, and on such an exciting scale.

In Conclusion:

We were incredibly fortunate to attend this year’s HR Technology Conference and Exposition. It was a great learning experience, and a fascinating window into the future of HR tech.

Hopefully this list of trends sparks your imagination, and your anticipation for the future of work. From the floor of the HR Tech 2016, it was looking quite bright.

This article was originally sourced from Business2Community. 

The recent move away from text-based content online may be a side effect of the fact that banner ads just don’t work all that well. But a major trade group, along with The New York Times, is trying to rethink the ads in a way that could actually produce a balance between content and commerce. Here’s the scoop.

If you haven’t had a chance yet, go read this piece I wrote last week about a Pew Research study that highlights the way that young adults (a.k.a. millennials) read text online.

It’s OK. I’ll wait. I’ll trust you to return.

… (taps fingers) …

So, yeah, that’s a pretty surprising result, isn’t it? It plays against what we’ve been led to believe is the best way to reach younger audiences. That doesn’t mean Snapchat doesn’t have its place, nor does it mean Instagram doesn’t matter so much, but instead, it means that there’s still plenty of room to reach users of all ages through the written word.

So why is there so much momentum behind getting us to leap toward visuals? I’d argue that the reason has little to do with the tastes of the audience and more to do with the needs of the advertiser.

Simply: Banner ads just can’t compete on an engagement level with mediums where the transition between advertising and content is less distracting and more engrossing. Listen to your average podcast, just as an example, and you’ll often find the ads just as interesting as the stories. But banner ads? They’re wallpaper. They often get in the way of your content and add little or nothing to the mix.

And the effectiveness of the ads is often called into question. Last month, Forbes legal writer Daniel Fisher wrote that fewer and fewer plaintiffs are collecting the payments they are eligible for under class action settlements, largely because attorneys rely too heavily on online banner ads to provide notice to potential claimants.

Considering all that, the rise of native advertising or influencer marketing makes sense. But what if the solution to this problem is a more thoughtful banner ad?

That’s the tactic The New York Times is trying out. Last week, its crosstown rival The Wall Street Journal revealed that the Gray Lady was effectively abandoning the cross-device ad distribution tools offered by companies such as Google and Facebook, and replacing them with its own offering.

As if to underline the point, the Times plans to ditch the standard 300-pixel-wide ads that you’ve seen on just about every website that serves advertising (including this one). In its place will be ads that automatically resize and reshape themselves based on the layout of the page. (An example from the Times‘ front page is shown above.) If a text ad makes more sense for a specific use case, that’s what the software will throw out.

This gives the Times a level of control over the experience that has previously proven difficult with banner advertising because those modular shapes limited how well the ads merged into the overall experience. Sebastian Tomich, the newspaper’s senior vice president of advertising, noted that publishers haven’t leveraged their market power in a way that maximizes the advertising.

“The way advertisers are using Facebook is very native, for example, but you haven’t really seen many publishers using that model,” Tomich told the Journal. “There’s a good amount of negativity around the display business in the market now, but it’s a staple for us.”

IAB OVERHAULS ITS AD FORMATS

The association world is abreast of this kind of change, too. Last month, I reported on an industry effort to ensure online video ads work properly in a variety of contexts, but it goes deeper than that.

The Interactive Advertising Bureau has been taking steps to revamp its thinking on banner ads. For years, IAB promoted a series of “rising stars”—standardized ad formats with interactive elements that were intended to expand on the ad’s message. But as AdExchanger reported last month, IAB is moving away from promoting those ads.

Now, the bureau is moving toward advertising that works in different ratio sizes, meaning that they allow much more layout flexibility. In other words, instead of a standard-ratio 300×250 ad, a 1:1 ratio ad would fit the width of the given space, whether it’s 400 pixels wide or 230 pixels wide. (Above is a sample of a 1×2 ad.)

Additionally, heavy interactive elements like auto-play video and formats that pop up on your screen will be discouraged.

(By no means is IAB moving away from interactivity, however; the organization included virtual reality formats as part of the new ad portfolio.)

In a news release, IAB’s Randall Rothenberg also noted that the strategy leans on the bureau’s “L.E.A.N.” ad principles, a noninvasive advertising strategy that the group introduced about a year ago.

“It is imperative that we create new de facto standards that put user experience, control, and cross-device behaviors first—and this new portfolio delivers,” Rothenberg said last month. “Its flexible ad units will allow for creative to scale to different sizes without losing any of its original messaging and impact.”

The formats are up for public comment until November 28.

MEETING USERS HALFWAY

The problem with banner ads has long been one of expectations. They don’t work as well as they could, and because of that, they’ve often been stretched in ways that discourage users from wanting to view them. (Hence, the rise in ad blockers.)

Advertising is clearly an important part of the association revenue pie, but it has to mesh with what you’re already doing. Native ads and influencer marketing, some might argue, can take things too far without firm boundaries in place.

Banner ads have the opposite problem. They’re too confined by their boundaries. That’s why these two efforts are so important—they could eventually get us closer to an elusive ideal.

That ideal? Someday, the banner ad might not actually stink.

This article was originally sourced from Associations Now and written by Ernie Smith. 

Financial Services Council announces new board, CEO appointment and solid 2016 financial position

The Financial Services Council (FSC) has announced a strong financial position for the year ahead following the release of its annual report; (http://fsc.org.nz/site/fsc/Reports/FSC_AnnualReport_2016.pdf) along with a number of key organisational changes including the election of a new board and the appointment of a new Chief Executive Officer.

The new board which will serve for two years sees the addition of two new members who were elected at the annual general meeting on 4 October. The new members include Matthew Hanley, a tax expert, representing EY, and Charlie Trotter, Managing Director, representing FNZ, one of the biggest platformproviders in financial services in New Zealand.

The new Chief Executive Officer, Richard Klipin, will begin from midNovember. With an impressive career spanning 26 years, Klipin has held prominent executive roles within Australian and New Zealand financial services in both commercial and non-profit sectors.

Over the past 11 years Richard has served in a number of key industry roles leading transformation at a time of rapid regulatory change. In Australia, as CEO of the Association of Financial Advisers; and as CEO of Millennium 3. Most recently, in New Zealand, Richard was Chief Distribution Officer for Sovereign.

Klipin replaces Owen Gill, who ran the FSC on an acting basis since April 2016. During his time in this position Mr Gill reviewed memberships and finances, helping to establish a stable basis for the future success of the organisation. Mr Gill did not seek the role permanently.

The Independent Chairman, Rob Flannagan, says the FSC is committed to steppingup its work in the areas of regulation, tax policy, and professional standards, among other things. This includes work on a professional code of conduct that will apply to members.

“The FSC is renewing its role, in representing the personal insurance and wealth sector, to the Government and to consumers, in a constructive way. The demands of the proposed regulatory regime, digital products and digital distribution, and rising consumer expectations, require a strong organisation to represent financial services firms in New Zealand.

“Richard is an ideal CEO to lead the FSC and its members through this time of potential change, given his extensive experience in this area.”

Fourteen firms, covering the vast majority of the New Zealand wealth sector measured by market share, are members of the FSC (wealth sector includes personal insurance, funds management and investments, and KiwiSaver).

A further 14 associate members include several of the large law firms, professional services firms, and consultants that specialise in providing legal, audit, and compliance advice in the sector.

Board members elected at the AGM, and the firms they represent, are:

• Matthew Hanley (EY)
  
• Charlie Trotter (FNZ)
  
• Nadine Tereora (Fidelity Life)
  
• Lance Walker (Cigna)
  
• Cris Knell (Asteron / Suncorp)
  
• Simon Hoole (AMP)
  
• Chris Lamers (Sovereign)
  
• AnaMarie Lockyer (ANZ)
  
• Susan Basile (BNZ)
  
• Suzanne Wolton (Westpac)
  
• Rob Flannagan (Independent Chairman)
  

This Media Release was originally sourced from Scoop. 

The Police Association’s 81st Annual Conference has today elected Chris Cahill as President for a three-year term.

In a contested election, Mr Cahill secured the position after receiving the support of delegates to the conference in Wellington.

Mr Cahill is a Detective Inspector in Auckland City. With a police career encompassing Invercargill to Auckland and many places in between, across a variety of work groups, from one-man stations to specialist national squads, he will bring a broad perspective and understanding of policing to the role.

Mr Cahill has a long history of involvement within the Police Association. He has held every committee position, including serving as a core negotiator on three salary negotiations, as well as regional director and Vice-President for three years.

“I believe Chris will bring a high level of commitment and experience to the role,” departing President Greg O’Connor said.

“He has shown himself to be a strong advocate for police as an Association member and representative, and I am confident he will ensure that the voice of police officers will continue to be heard in the law and order environment.”

Mr Cahill will take over the position of President from Mr O’Connor, who announced at last year’s conference that he would not seek re-election after serving 21 years in the role.

This Media Release was originally sourced from Scoop. 

Today eleven organisations in New Zealand called for the New Zealand Super Fund to fully divest from fossil fuels. The organisations signed an open letter after the NZSF announced its climate change-focused investment policies last week. It urges the New Zealand Super Fund to make their climate change response unequivocal and withdraw all their investments from the coal, oil and gas projects that are driving climate change.

"While the NZSF have made a step in the right direction, with the knowledge we have today, it is no longer possible to claim to be a responsible investor without also fully divesting from fossil fuels," said Niamh O’Flynn, Executive Director of 350 Aotearoa.

The organisations involved represent a range of organisations championing different issues that are affected by climate change, including unions, faith groups, environmental, social justice, and development organisations.

Last week the NZ Super Fund stated that they would not exclude the fossil fuel industry from their portfolio because "blanket exclusions rule out the possibility of engaging with firms in the sector that may be able to transition, and may have a role to play in transitioning to a low-carbon economy."

The letter focuses on the inadequacy of shareholder engagement as a tactic, stating "engagement does not work with a company whose primary source of profit is fossil fuels since they rely on that industry to continue existing."

"It’s a moral issue. Climate change is the greatest challenge of our times. New Zealanders wouldn’t be satisfied for our Super Fund to be invested in, and engaging with, some nuclear weapon manufacturers. So why would we settle for only a partial divestment from fossil fuels?"

The letter can be viewed at http://350.org.nz/organisations-challenge-nz-super-fund-open-letter/ The signing organisations are: 

• 350 Aotearoa
  
• Oxfam New Zealand
  
• The New Zealand Public Service Association
  
• Greenpeace New Zealand
  
• World Wildlife Fund NZ
  
• 1222 members of Action Station
  
• Health Sector Workers Network
  
• Unite Union
  
• Coal Action Network Aotearoa
  
• Auckland Diocesan Climate Change Action Group
  
• Anglican Diocese of Wellington
  

This Media Release was originally sourced from Voxy.