That all sounds like tasks that a committee (and namely the treasurer) should be undertaking as a team with the Sqn OC or their representative. . .
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Nice try @mprentice1 but take a look above! Consider:
- The role of a trustee as guided by the charity commission. Remember the rest is just made up by the Air Cadet organisation. I addressed this in my first post.
- The current state of Trustee numbers (remember, only just over half of squadrons have quorate committees)
- The likelihood that even if you have a quorate committee, someone on it has a) got any experience of the organisation to be useful in those respects or b) is any good as a “treasurer”.
It’s a wonderful and idealistic view, but it doesn’t reflect reality or the changing attitudes to volunteering and who volunteers. Using the facts from 2) and my assumption that just over half of those are good in the traditional sense. That leaves maybe 60% of squadron commanders - lets even be more optimistic than that - 40% of squadron commanders who don’t really have a useful committee, upto and including a treasurer anyway.
There’s a certain amount of made up numbers in there but it all comes from sound experience - experience which it sounds like you don’t have.
Something else that is evident is that there is no pattern to a strong set of Trustees. A thriving squadron which continues to have a thriving cadet population can often quickly lose and fail to recruit a new committee effectively for no obvious reason.
So @mprentice1, bearing in mind that this thread is entitled “What Civilian Committee things just don’t work”, your attitude to steadfastly batter on regardless is already on the list! Without knowing you, my guess is that you’re a CI or a WO and have very little to do with money at the squadron based on the things you’ve said. I’d be interested to know if I’m right (not that there’s a way to verify so don’t bother answering).
You’re not even close 
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Maybe people would engage with you more if you practiced some decorum and engaged respectfully.
You’ve clearly come here with a view that you want to express, and want to ignore anyone who disagrees with you. My suggestion would be that you kindly take some time to reflect on your attitude and approach and then re engage later on.
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I’m confused where that prejudice would even have come from. Our CIs touch more physical money than anyone else in the unit.
…and considering we have more CIs than uniformed, it’s often them providing details of requests for the CivCom, and many times representing their own requests to them instead of steadfastly via OC.
I’m beginning to wonder the purpose of your posts, @ihavelotsofopinions. You’re beginning to verge on antagonistic in some responses. You’re using lots of words to express your position that don’t hold a lot of innate context, directing people to previous comments without direct quotes, leaving them lost, and pointing vaguely at “what the CC say” without specific reference.
…Then it’s our fault for not agreeing with you or misunderstanding you?
If you want people to understand, then please help us understand. If you don’t want to debate or learn opposing views and only wish to make grand statements, then a forum isn’t the right place.
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To be honest @pEp, no one has yet said something that doesn’t work except the only person who posted who was a committee member. Looking at their response and previous posts, they have experienced the same issues as I commented on. Everyone has just argued largely that “things are fine” when the real world says otherwise.
If people focussed on the subject of the post rather than heading off on tangents that I’m easily shooting down, it might be more straightforward to engage.
Having seen your other posts on the forum over some months, you’re quite aggressive when someone has a different opinion to you so I haven’t really bothered looking at your presence here much as a result. There’s a certain irony there.
So I’ve gone to look at The essential trustee: what you need to know, what you need to do - GOV.UK.
So abstracting from that page:
- Assisting with budgets
– This would link in with section 7.5 Managing funds and keeping them safe - looking for good pricing on products
– This would link in with Section 6. Act in your charity’s best interests - tally up some accounts with a staff member.
– This would link in with section 7.5 Managing funds and keeping them safe
Section 7.5. You and your co-trustees are responsible for your charity’s money
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@Giminion an interesting response since here in this very post
and many times representing their own requests to them instead of steadfastly via OC.
This is quite specifically not how it should be done. The most rudimentary training should have shown staff that all requests for funding should go through the OC. The OC has access to privileged information such as staff and cadet movement and not following this can lead to inappropriate spending (such as training for a cadet who ages out in 3 months or is moving to university 7 counties away for example).
The relationship with a treasurer or any Trustee is not one to many [staff]. It’s one OC to many Trustees.
Again, another comment shot down because it’s poor practice, not on the subject of committee things that don’t work (this is a staff thing that isn’t working - you need better training).
If you don’t know how the Charity Commission operate and are trying to make comments relating to how charities operate, I suggest reading their website first as it’s a mine of useful information and much more up to date than any Air Cadet documents.
I don’t want to debate. Look back to the original post which I will highlight for you:
I’m not really looking at “what can I get my civ com to do?/what is their purpose ” but more at “the civ com needs this to operate effectively ”.
Then see if your posts and comments align because I don’t feel they do. In fact, if anyone who has posted is a squadron commander, I’d be pretty worried about how little they know about charity finance.
@mprentice1 Welcome back -
So… to go back to the original question:
I’m not really looking at “what can I get my civ com to do?/what is their purpose ” but more at “the civ com needs this to operate effectively ”.
Go! Because how are you going to get your treasurer to do that…
I tend to be quite aggressive when users start trying to throw their weight around and insult other people.
If you keep going I’m going just going to silence you for trolling…
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do what?
Going back to your rambling original post . . . Each and every civilian committee will find there own way of operating, whether that’s guided by “existing practice” (not necessarily best practice). The committee as an entity are completely within their rights to setup “commercial book keeping software” if they can justify it as being in the charities best interest.
Every other point of your original post is about poor communication between committee’s and up the hierarchy.
Actually, since there’s a lot of ignorance here, @mprentice1 lets go further with your last post.
- setting a budget
Who sets a budget? Who chooses how money is spent at the squadron? It’s the OC.
Who knows how much money is likely to come in based on recruitment plans for the year?
Trustees do not decide that there will be 3 archery sessions over the course of the year. Nor do they decide that there will be a camp in spring. Trustees do not run the squadron. They do not read ACPs. They do not know what new activities are being introduced or what is being deprecated.
The trustees get the information from the OC. The trustees then take the information based on the number of cadets attending and the amount of subscription revenue coming in and decide if the expenditure for that activity relates to the activities relates sustainably to the income.
No civilian committee is able to do a financial plan of the year without the input from the OC - it is actually the OC and their staff who work out their budget for the year as they are the only people who can.
To come to your last point:
Every other point of your original post is about poor communication between committee’s[sic] and up the hierarchy.
There’s much more than that there - communication, absence of resource, lack of leadership structure, repeating things unnecessarily across the country increasing the effort and widening the gap in an organisation where everyone does largely the same thing.
Not at all and this is you not understanding the CFAV side of the organisation. “Through the OC” requires that the the request goes to the OC. If that OC then decides that the request is valid, it is not beyond their remit to delegate to a more knowledgeable advocate.
You suggested that CIs and WOs wouldn’t understand the financial aspect of squadron operations; you also suggest that CFAV don’t understand their CivCom. Yet you don’t seem to understand CFAV.
Even if this were wholly true, I refer you back to the request going to the OC first. We’re not talking about circumventing them.
You’re spending a lot of time talking about what doesn’t work (fair, that was your initial intention) and are taking exception at people responding with things that DO work or suggesting that aspects of your objections are things that do or can work.
My unit has a collaborative approach with boundaries, because trust should run top to bottom and across both pillars of our unit. No member of our committee or CFAV cohorts should be unknown to the other. Primary and executive communication occurs via the OC, but if I have a watersports SME on the unit, or someone not the OC is acting as planning officer for a complex event, then those people are better placed to explain those aspects of our operation - otherwise we risk the trustees not being suitably informed to conduct their duties adequately and correctly follow the 7 principles of decision making.
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You appear to be making things up.
The OC doesn’t set the budget. You are correct in the “No CC is able to do a financuial plan of the year without input from the OC”. But that input is limited.
As an OC, (I’m not) I could say to my CWC that I want to do X, Y and Z. It’s up to them what to fund. They might decide to go along with that. But they could equally say we are only going to pay of X and Y.
What doesn’t work is an OC that completely dictates to the CWC what they want. It’s not up to them. They are not a trustee and have no voting rights on such matters. They can advise and protest to the CWC what they’d like to do, but it’s fundamentally not up to them.
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Well this isn’t strictly true. The OC may set out to the trustees what they want to spend, but it is within the power of the trustees to object on certain grounds.
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A lot of the initial posts appear focused on issues internal to the CivCom structure, which is not something CFAV can tackle or comment on and should be challenged within that structure.
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As an OC, (I’m not) I could say to my CWC that I want to do X, Y and Z. It’s up to them what to fund. They might decide to go along with that. But they could equally say we are only going to pay of X and Y.
^^^ This is the OC setting a budget and the Trustees agreeing that there is money to fund it. You have quoted the model perfectly. If the OC wants to spend more money than they have, they then upsell the idea or suggest funding methods they’re happy with. Notice how the Trustees aren’t really involved (except providing the bank balance perhaps). The OC doesn’t (shouldn’t) need help multiplying their average number of cadets by the amount of subs they retain. That’s really the only sum involved.
What doesn’t work is an OC that completely dictates to the CWC what they want.
This is just a bad OC. That’s a staff training problem and nothing to do with Trustees even though it makes them suffer. Though this will probably cause issues with retention too!
@Giminion - yes! That’s exactly what I was looking for (see post title)! But again, another missed point is that that structure doesn’t exist (or doesn’t work at least) as per the original points. This is the Civ Com section of the forum!
The honest truth is that anyone who takes the time to read this forum, post in it and respond is probably in that 30-40% of fully working squadrons or close to it in most ways so it’s not really the best place to ask. However skilled volunteers may have been involved in salvage operations elsewhere and that input could be useful too.
[citation needed]
See above for where this figure came from.
You mean this assumption . . .