Message from National Office - July 2021
Written by the National Office team
Published 15 July 2021
Hi Everyone,
The financial year has just finished, the membership year has just started and, after a long quiet period, Covid has just inflicted lockdowns on all of us over the past month, with all this happening we thought a message from the National Office would be icing on the cake. Firstly we would like to commiserate with our NSW contingent currently suffering lock down. Speaking from the Victorian experience - don’t worry it will end!.
So what’s happened in the RACI over the last year?
The financial year 20/21 has ended and we did a lot better than we thought producing a financial surplus of around $50K when budgeting for a loss of over $60K. We have the Government and Job Keeper to thank for this, where the 6 month extension of this support made all the difference, without it we would have faced an ocean of red ink. We only managed to have one moderately sized physical event over the year but our various groups, divisions and branches put on 180 virtual events between them attracting over 4500 participants - a magnificent job in providing benefits for fellow members. It’s member renewal time now and as of the renewal date of 30 June we had a record of 2000 members paying the highest % of the membership we’ve seen. If you are part of the remaining cohort yet to pay – don’t get left behind.
What’s being planned for the future?
A number of initiatives are in the works:-
On the membership front we are looking to start an Ambassador Program where we are looking for willing advocates to promote the RACI to university students. We are looking for 2 per university, one student and one staff member – If you are interested email us here!!
Another area we are looking at is to partner with providers to make needed professional development training available to our members. The first task in this process is to find out what you want, and to this end there will be a survey emailed out shortly to gather your input. Please give us 5 minutes of your time and fill this in.
The Congress 2022 planning is progressing well, it’s only a year away now, it looks like there will not be a problem for Australasian participation but there may be an issue with some international areas however the plan is to beam these in if necessary. The most important thing is that this will be the first major chemistry conference you will have been able to attend for almost 30 months and, if you are suffering from conference withdrawal symptoms this will be the perfect antidote. Check out https://www.raci2022.com
OK that’s enough for now – you have the rest of the periodical to read. In closing we would just like to thank you for being a member of the RACI, our job is to improve service levels for you, so if you have any suggestions to improve our benefits let us know.
Take care,
The National Office Team
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