We have now fully completed the transition of our Administration management and financial operations. All pieces are now in place and operating as intended.
18 months ago, starting June of 2021, the WDCR Region began the process of developing a new Administration Team and refreshing the Region’s business management processes. Through this process refresh we conducted a holistic financial review and overhauled our accounting processes.
Step-by-step, each piece of WDCR’s processes were reviewed and reconsidered: Our decisions included changing our business banking, moved our accounting process to a professional service, and established business with a CPA (Graber and Associates; Baltimore) experienced in our servicing our Region’s needs. At this we began the process of restructuring our budgeting planning processes to a more traditional time-driven income/expense plan to account for our event-driven income. Additionally, we established a new electronic bill tracking and payment process. With these new accounting procedures, and the transition to a traditional budget format on a month-by-month base, we have streamlined our accounting processes to more realistically reflect actual income.
In that year and a half, we also interviewed and hired an experienced member of our Region to step-in as our new Region Administrator. Our intent was to also bring on a second individual to train into the Administrator's job and provide assistance and relief when needed and be in place to take over administrative duties, if and when needed. Unfortunately, the second staff member resigned in mid-2022. We then brought on a replacement in the Fall months of 2022. We now have two part-time staff administrators servicing the needs of our Membership. With Vincent Mandile and Liv Willis on board as our Region Administration staff, we have a strong, well-functioning team in place as we head into the 2023 season.
We also made the decision to move our business to a new banking account servicer more closely aligned with our needs. This was a successful 12 month transition and all ongoing expenses have been resolved to our new servicer. As of December 28th, 2022 our legacy accounts have been closed with all balances moved to these new accounts.
The last piece of our financial reformation was bringing the Region’s investment accounts under manageable control of the Board of Directors. With the approval of the Board, Russ Gardner (Chairman of the Investment Account Committee) has spearheaded the integration of a new investment management process in conjunction with our investment account management team.
In the overall view, the Washington D.C. Region SCCA is now sitting in much better financial posture heading into 2023. The exhaustive work of those involved, primarily volunteers serving our region, have ensured that our new administrative structures, accounting practices, and investment posture are in alignment with our organization’s size, scope, and cash flow needs. The overall result of this hard work, blood, sweat, and tears is the Region administrative expenses will be lower than previous years.
To all those involved, the Region extends a sincere thank you and appreciation of your guidance, patience, and foresight. We are on a great footing, and can’t wait to see you at the track this coming year.
C.W. Armbrust
Chairman & Region Executive
WDCR - SCCA
