The past few months have flown by. It has been a roller coaster of fun and educative experiences, with memories that I will never forget and friends for life. My year was filled with many new social contacts, learning opportunities and, most of all, fun. In this blog I will tell you more about everything I've done in the past few months and the great things you get to experience as a board member at Asset | Marketing. Curious? Then read on and maybe in a few months I will hand over my baton to you!
Why a board year at Asset | Marketing?
Before my board year, I spent a year as an active member at Asset | Marketing. During that time, I served on the Commercial Night Committee, and I thoroughly enjoyed my experiences while getting to know a lot of people within Asset | Marketing.
Before I joined the board, I talked with Sjors (former external affairs officier) and Cas (former treasurer) about the function and a board year in general. I really liked this because it gave me a good idea of what a board year is all about and I understood better what it means to be a board member! I decided to do a board year to get to know new people, boost my CV and develop myself on a personal and professional level. In the first few months I already took so much steps and developped my self so much on this area. A board year also developes yourself on a whole different level then with doing committee work. In your board year you run the whole assocation and you have a lot of different stakeholders. There is a lot of work going on behind the scenes that you do not know of as an active member. It was very interesting and educational to get to know the association better and manage it with the board.
I applied for the treasurer position and don't regret it! . I am very happy with this choice, because my function fits me very well! I can imagine that your affraid that you are busy with numbers the whole day and that you will not understand anything about accounting. However, this is not the case at all! You have a lot of room to pick up other things next to your function specific tasks. Also, you learn very quickly how to do accounting, and there are plenty of people you can turn to with questions.
What do you do as Treasurer?
Usually people think I work with numbers all day. However, this is not the case! As I already wrote above, you have a lot of room to pick up other things. Your function specific tasks are usually quite flexible (unless it is the end of the quarter). I noticed that I had a lot of time to pick up general board tasks, and I enjoyed the variety in my work. But first, let me tell you more about the function specific tasks.
If you are the treasurer of Asset | Marketing, you are responsible for the financial affairs of the association and its two foundations, Markethings Week and TIME. These financial affairs are very broad and contain many different tasks. You have to do the bookkeeping, check the budget of committees, running of collections en check the budget and expectation of Asset | Marketing. Furthermore, you have to pay, process and send invoices, keep track of declarations, do the tax return en make sure the books are up to date. You also work together with the externals to see if you have the same numbers in your documents. Each quarter your books will be checked by the Audit of Accounts. They will help you to see if you are doing everything correctly and you can always ask them for help!
In addition to the finances of Asset | Marketing, you are also responsible for the financial affairs of the Markethings Week and TIME foundations. No other treasurers of Asset have this, so this is something unique about being a treasurer at Asset | Marketing. This way you will learn even more as treasurer, because the foundations are structured differently than the association. You are involved closely with the foundations, as you are (in the end) responsible for the bookkeeping. You will especially work closely with the treasurers of the foundations. This way you can also improve your management skills. You are also a board member of these foundations as treasurer.
Treasurer Meeting
In addition to your responsibilities with Asset | Marketing, you also have responsibilities with Asset General. Every board function has meetings with all other board members within Asset with the same function. This is called a Faculty Wide Organ. This means I go to the Treasurers Meeting. This is a weekly meeting where you will discuss certain Asset-wide financial issues, share tips and tricks about financial matters and discuss the proposals of other Faculty Wide Organs. If you have a question, you can ask it during TM. We also check the EBT finances and help the treasurer of the EBT if he/she has questions. We do the same thing for the finances of Asset General. Furthermore, everyone is responsible for his or her taskforce within TM. I had the I was the vice-treasurer. This means that you have the largest portfolio and work closely with the treasurer of Asset | General. Additionally, I served as a point of contact for the other treasurers, for example, if they have any questions. Quite a challenge indeed! As a part of this portfolio, you work together with two other treasurers. In this way you can also learn a lot from each other and have fun times.
Coordinating of committees
Another part of my board tasks, that is also very important, is the coordinating of committees. In the beginning of the semester you discuss with the board how you are going to divide the committees. This way you can choose the committees you like and decide, together with the other board members, which committtees you will coordinate. As a treasurer, it is recommended to take the city trip committee, as this committee has the most complex finances. Now I coördinate TIME and the city trip.
Coordinating committees is mainly attending the meetings, possibly guide discussions and voice the opinion of the board. Sometimes you also have to take care of things like finishing an order, capture dates or figure out payments. To me it was important to, where possible, give the committee a lot of freedom and not really interfere with the committee and during the meetings. Coordinating committees is a lot of fun and you learn a lot from it.
Board tasks
In addition to the financial matters, coordinating committees and voluntary projects I was also busy with general board tasks. Each Monday morning we have the board meeting. Our policy sessions are included in BV these days, but you are free to chose together with your board when to plan these meetings. During the week you are also busy with doing the tasks that came up during the meetings. You are free do to these when you like, as long as it is before the deadline. An example is designing new signatures or making a quiz for the kickoff.
With managing an assocation a lot of tasks and responsibility come into play. But there are also a lot of fun things and it has been fun to be a part of it! Your responsibilities as a treasurer are very diverse and the best part of it is that you are involved in both the formal and informal side of the assocation. As a treasurer you are involved in almost everything the association does, as almost everything involved money. So you are very up to date! I have learned to plan well and adapt to different situations. You learn a lot from a board year and you have a lot of fun, I can recommend it to everyone!
Want to know more?
Did I make you enthusiastic about being a treasurer, and are you interested in doing a board year? Or do you want more information? You can send a message to me via Whatsapp (0681708287) or my email (treasurer@asset-marketing.nl) and I would love to tell you more about my function and a board year!