Red Cross Youth

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