At age 24, Jessica Mueller serves as chairwoman of her local Red Cross chapter board. This post is a new installment in a series that chronicles the challenges and successes of her first year on the job.
These past few weeks have been a learning experience. For example, I filled out our chapter performance plan to set the goals for the next year. I am excited to see them come to life and make our chapter even bigger and better! Along with this came the executive director compensation form (pay raise). I didn’t think about the fact that I had to do this because I thought we had set a 5% increase for all of our employees due to the 6 county expansion… he then informed me that it didn’t include him. Whoops!
Someone send me an accountant! This coming week I will be discussing it with my regional executive to hopefully get it figured out. Last week in an e-mail she thanked me for my leadership and told me that I was being professional and asking the right questions. It made me feel great but I’m honestly learning as I go.
A couple weeks ago we held our Regional Council/State meeting. I was the only representative from our chapter and was new to the council but I felt the meeting went well. We discussed events/activities/materials that we need as a state to better serve the mission of our organization. We created a list addressing multiple areas of Red Cross (about 10 different categories) and brainstormed together. I thought this went great and we are going to implement a lot of our goals statewide. We also discussed the status of the Disaster Relief Fund and how we could support the current national fundraising effort. It seems overwhelming at first; however, when I got home and discussed it with my chapter executive, it seems much more manageable! Good luck to everyone on this effort!
I will let you know how my adventures in budgeting turn out in next month’s entry. Until then, good luck in all of your own adventures.
Jessica Mueller, South Dakota
Filed under: Chapter, Leadership Tagged: | accounting, board of directors, Leadership, South Dakota
