Yesterday’s AGM closed off another year for the ANA committee. Here is a quick snapshot for our community to highlight the year that was and, of course, the year to come!
2019
When I decided to put my hand up as President for 2019 it was my goal to take a different approach to previous years. With Belinda stepping up to be my Vice President we both agreed that 2019 would be a year where we would step back from some larger projects like the Convention and stakeholder engagement to instead ‘tidy up’ the back end, logistics, systems and communication portals. After 7 years of operation, the ANA has seen many committee members come and go into various positions and we decided to spend some time establishing better handover tools and admin management to help the committee work smarter and not harder. We are proud of the efforts made by the 2019 committee in implementing these changes and new ideas:
- File clean up
- Better password and access management
- Communication restructure – moving over to SLACK
- Task management – built and managed on TRELLO
- The creation of a Committee manual to ensure smoother handovers
- Testing and implementing virtual attendance for our events
- Automating nanny membership renewals to save time and improve member experience
- Investment into growing WILD APRICOT to move towards a member portal
- Testing of a Business membership restructure to explore new offerings
- Introduction of the Agency Peer Support group to better support our agency members as they navigate the constant changes to the industry
After 7 years, the ANA obviously grew and with the industry moving forward at a fast pace, the volunteer model has found it hard to keep up. The 2019 committee has been invaluable to discussions and decisions on how we can make sure committee time is spent effectively and wisely. I’m really proud of the changes and feel as though we’ve built a really strong foundation of work in 2019 to launch towards better community and industry solutions in 2020.
2020
With most of the tidy up, projects complete the new committee is looking forward to bringing some of the larger projects back! With some fresh faces to new roles, we can test out the new tools for committee members to make the most of their volunteer time to bring amazing opportunities to our community. Members can look forward to:
- The ANA Convention 2020 – hosted in Brisbane on September 19th! Elle is taking the reigns as the main Convention planner and she has some very exciting ideas!
- Launch of the Member Portal – I know we’ve been talking about this for years but we have decided this project is too big for a volunteer so we are going to outsource it.
- Evolving the Agency Member Support group – To provide more information that’s important for our agency members.
- Establishing most stake-holder engagement – 2019 started off with conversations with the ATO until they put a stall on the project. We are looking forward to connecting again with the ATO, FWO, IHC and other organisations that can help us evolve our industry.
- Extending our Virtual and online PD opportunities – We have been testing virtual tickets to help bring our PD events to the entire Australian community. This year we are exploring collaborations to create a great library of learning for members that can be accessed for years to come.
A huge thank you to the incredible committee for all of their work this year. Annie, Elle, Victoria, Annemarie, Daria, Becky, Naarah, Susan, Sam, Belinda and Deb for all of their work on various projects throughout the year. We couldn’t have an ANA without these incredible volunteers and their hard work.
In particular, I would like to thank both Belinda and Deb who are stepping down from the Committee after years of volunteer support. Deb, thank you for your hard work in bringing the community together and providing the ANA with some great feedback from our members. Belinda, your attention to detail and hard work in setting up some incredible solutions has been invaluable to the future of the ANA. We hope you both enjoy a well deserved year off and hope to see you return on the committee one day.
Welcome to the new and thank you to the returning committee! We have a big year ahead and we can’t wait to get started!
We will send the AGM minutes out to our members shortly!
Lauren Brown
ANA President
