At the helm of the BCA-USA Treasury; An Opinion

PROFILES IN SERVICE: BCA-USA AT THE HELM OF THE BCA-USA TREASURY: AN OPINION

By Ni Kenneth Gwanmesia, BCA-USA National Treasurer, 2014 - 2018

Looking at issues from the sidelines typically always presents the viewer with one to a myriad of possible options. How that individual chooses to proceed is entirely up to them, barring some court order or legal proceeding in place. In my opinion, the choices though numerous in most cases including continuing to play victim and observe perceived human shortcomings perpetuated ad infinitum, are often very simple and the less resistant channel to default to. Well, the fact that I chose to confront the issues head on as an option is history. This one move from an individual often thought to be more garrulous than attentive to details, proved to be quite a journey. This piece should hopefully enlighten future candidates for any role within the association overall and the Treasurer position in particular on what lies ahead. Read on

For four years, being at the helm of the BCA-USA financial operations, with little prior accounting background, I would be lying if I didn't ponder what I had just gotten myself into. Nonetheless, I am of the school that believes that with simplistic principles, any task regardless of its complexity could ultimately be decomposed into manageable chunks. I set forth with the goal of accomplishing my pledges to the members with this simple but very practical approach. In this time, we have presided over the immense growth in multiple areas of our association that simply make the task of being BCAUSA Treasurer today, as close to a full time position as it gets. Membership has doubled in this period and will continue to grow. We have slowly gotten

Ni Kenneth Gwanmesia our Nkap Ntod operations to a steady state where enrollment has also seen a steady growth and even more importantly, reenrollment has equally stayed constant. We expect these trends to continue and speaking from an individual point of view here, I see us with over 1000 members in the not so distant future. That we have successfully handled our financial commitments to four of our departed members already with not a single glitch, should be testimony of how solid our financial apparatus is in this regard.

Our event management on the financial side has gotten more and more complex dealing with hotels that host us for our various annual events as well as third party vendors in several realms. These external vendors both in Cameroon at the MPC site and here in the US all brought in their share of hurdles to navigate through. Worth mentioning also is the fact that working with the different chapter representatives have been quite a

learning experience. Added to that is having to deal with financial institutions and federal regulatory bodies constantly interested in our form of business. Keeping these in mind, you see why the task of being Treasurer is a little more than counting and keep the associations funds.

Now that I am at the end of my term, how have I done so far? I take this moment of privilege to do a public assessment of how I think I have fared, knowing fully well the biases associated with such self-evaluations. Before doing that, I take extreme comfort in knowing that I did not seek this position for any personal gains other than the simple reasons presented then: Serving. The few who know me well will attest to this. › Transparency: my pledge was to provide access to all financial transactions to any member of BCA-USA, voluntarily and on demand. That I was able to generate a financial report for each quarter of my tenure and have placed all available financial statements of the association’s finances on locations accessible to all members, means that goal has been met. The arduous task of reading it to members is still work in progress. › Collaboration with chapter treasurers: this turned out to be quite challenging. One ongoing challenge is that some chapters don't have dedicated or elected treasurers. Though I was able to operate smoothly with all the chapters, I believe having a consistent chapter structure across the board for all chapters will make the task of collaborating with the different chapters more seamless. Therefore on this aspect, I'll say there is more work to be done with some dependency on the aforementioned chapter structure alignment. › Efficiency: anyone who has witnessed the number of transactions that happen within BCAUSA will attest to the challenges that we face. My goal of being efficient entailed ensuring that our financial transactions were always going to be open to all members for complete scrutiny. Such a feat is achievable when approached, not with the goal of gaining or earning gratuitous profits for the association, but by ensuring that all who deal with the association always get a fair shake. I am glad to state that I humanly as much as possible not only avoided any slip-ups that would have costed

the association unduly, but also tried to meet the satisfaction of the majority of the members that I was privileged to serve. › Effectiveness: this in my opinion will remain a work in progress. While I think a lot of dependency on point # 2 shall always contribute to the outcome of this aspect of our growth, I also think that our collective efforts moved the needle in the right direction. Total effectiveness will mean that we don't have any flaws which means cracking the utopian dream of a perfect society. On that, I’ll say we did our part, but continue to work on it. › Lastly, Teamwork was my last pledge. Four years ago, this pledge was to work mostly with the FRC in developing and implementing innovative fundraising initiatives. However, I was the first to realize that this aspect was not only to be limited to the FRC. That is why in my time, I tried hard to forge the spirit of collaboration with both internal and external stakeholders of the association. That as will be expected had its usual challenges as well, but again, we moved the needle in the right direction.

So there you have it! We came a long way and there is still a lot to be done. Claiming to have solved even half of the challenges that confront any organization in only 4 years not only sounds cavalier, but is a clear indication of the shortsightedness of the complexities of our society by whoever lays such a claim. It has been an interesting ride and I am not naïve to the fact that my term as treasurer drew admirers as well as detractors along the way. In both cases, I appeal to you to see the servant in me who always put the interests of this organization first. As I drop my mic, I say thank you again for affording me the opportunity to serve.