June marks the start of the annual FY22 CFA Society Business Planning & Operating Standards (BPOS) process. This Executive Update provides Society Leaders with important information and resources needed to plan for the upcoming year.

I’d like to take this opportunity to thank each of you in advance for your thoughtful planning for the coming year, especially in what continues to be a challenging environment. Our thoughts are with our colleagues, volunteers, and candidates in India and other hard-hit areas of the world.

Forgive the length of this update—I want to ensure you have the information you need for a successful and smooth reporting process, as we know it can be a time-consuming effort.  Robust reporting is essential to 1) capture the breadth and scale of society efforts; 2) evaluate our collective impact; and 3) ensure that resources—financial and otherwise—are in place to support those efforts.

How the FY22 Reporting Template is Organized

In my last Executive Update, I shared the refined CFA Institute strategies. To reach our organizational goals of increasing our influence, growing the global constituent base we serve, and expanding the scale and diversity of our product offerings, we will:

As you think about FY22 plans for your local society, please note that this year we have organized the reporting template in a manner that aligns with the above CFA Institute strategies, rather than by local society strategic objectives. Because each local society has uniquely phrased objectives, the free-form input we asked you for last year made analysis of common objectives and metrics difficult. (As a group, you reported over 600 different strategic objectives and 1700 KPIs!)

Of course, your local strategic plans remain key guides for your local society and for your Society Relations Manager, but organizing reporting around CFA Institute strategies will help to provide actionable views of our common goals and activities and help establish benchmarks for our future work together.

For each strategy, we have offered sample activities and metrics that represent some of the ways society efforts support our long-term objectives. Do not be concerned if your society expects to execute only a few of the suggested activities or if your plans are not listed. We have left free-form spaces for you to provide that information. Each market and local society is different, and we will use your input to help evaluate those differences across markets. To help us capture all activities, please be thorough in your reporting.

Submission Process

We have simplified the submission process. The reporting template will be posted to Society Center, within the Standards and Funding tile, and instead of submitting through Salesforce, we ask all societies to email their completed report and key requirements as listed below directly to their Society Relations Manager.

To help reduce the burden, we are separating out the annual society governance-related reporting from the business plan and budget template. We will revisit that aspect later in the calendar year. 

FY22 Business Planning & Operating Standards (BPOS) Requirements

Similar to previous planning cycles, this year’s annual process includes four main requirements that every society must meet to qualify for FY22 operational funding:

1. Completing the FY22 Business Plan Workbook and confirming your society’s board approval of the plan (deadline: 31 July 2021)
2. Executing the updated Member Society License Agreement (MSLA) (deadline: 31 August 2021)
3. Submitting a completed FY21 Year-End Report and confirming your society’s board approval (deadline: due within four months of your society’s fiscal-year end)
4. Achieving 100% completion of Society Leader Orientation Course across all Society Board and Staff members (deadline: required before releasing operational funding to the society)

Again, please access more details, including the Business Plan workbook template, on the Society Center (within the Standards and Funding tile). Your Society Relations Manager will deliver your local society’s FY21 Year-End Report Workbook on an individual basis, due to the custom nature of this report. Please raise any questions about this process directly with your Society Relations Manager. 

Be aware that the MSLA is undergoing updates and will be posted to Society Center shortly for a comment period prior to distribution.

Thank you in advance for your timely responses and participation in this important planning process. Again, your efforts will provide critical information needed to inform our society operating model and the key decisions that affect our partnership with the global CFA Society network.  

With kind regards,

Randi