CFO the final update 

Today is my last update for finance and by the time you read this I will likely have switched off and handed back my laptop. So I decided to use this post as an opportunity to reflect on the 3 years that I have been with Playcentre Aotearoa. 

I thought I would do this by going back to my very first “Centre Chat” which you can find here and see if I managed to address everything I set out to do. 

In that chat I started by introducing myself, my husband and my two pre school daughters, since then my family have naturally grown up, both my girls are at school and we now have an additional furry family member Captain Cook the Westie Poodle. I talked about taking my girls on weekly visits to centres, something I did follow through with and more recently have continued without the girls but something I always find brings huge value as most of my best ideas come from our members! 

I set out in that Bulletin to get our first consolidated accounts (at that point 10 months overdue) completed and look at a better way to do this in future. I’m sure any of you who were treasurers for the dreaded finance pack of 2017 will agree that this is one of my greatest improvements and our simple year end process is not only easy to use, but resulted in a pretty significant award for myself last year, along with several accounting articles and now I’m being regularly asked to help other charities with their consolidation process as we are considered first class. 

So I’m pretty pleased to say I covered out that original agenda, and many more along the way. Over the last three years I have also worked with three GMs, changing management, in three different locations and many changes in our volunteers. It’s been a lot of fun, not discounting sometimes frustrating and very hard work, but the changes and how they make day to day life easier have been what got me out of bed each morning. 

So why am I going and where? Well its time, I’m not a Playcentre mum, I’m a career accountant, and there was always going to reach a natural point where I needed to move on to keep stretching myself, and we have reached that point. All the improvements I set out to make have been made and the team is so highly functioning that I really am starting to feel like I have made myself redundant. As such its time to go do it all again, this time with another worthwhile charity Victim Support. 

I do hope we won’t be strangers though, many of you have the ability to add me to your Facebook or LinkedIn, and I will always have a piece of Playcentre in my heart. 

Marina Cook

 

 

Equity funding reporting

I would like to say thank you to the 16 Centres who have completed the Equity Funding reporting to date.

A reminder for the centres who have been asked to complete equity funding this is an MOE requirement before they can pay out further funding of this nature so is really in your centres interest to fill it in – the deadline is the 16th of April and can be accessed here:
https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/J2B527W