Greetings AGA Atlanta!

It is an exciting time to be part of the AGA Atlanta Family. We just completed our second virtual training event of the year and it was an awesome event, with great speakers and topics. I know our President, Matt Coleman, and his team of Officers have some exciting events planned for members and our CGFMs going forward. Having said that, things are also happening at the national AGA office and I wanted to report on some of the items we talked about at the first meeting of the National Council of Chapters on August 24. While we discussed a variety of topics, three things really stood out and they are as follows:

1. Rebranding – As many of you are aware, the world of government accounting has changed, and the membership of AGA has changed as well. No longer are we just accountants and auditors. Our membership is very diverse in their areas of expertise and organizations they work for. We have consultants, information systems specialists, grant administrators, budget analysts, program managers, academics, and many other professions. So, I’m happy to report that AGA national has hired a consulting group to assist them in rebranding our organization to represent these changes. I believe the AGA acronym will not change but what it means will probably will. Look for more information on this as we move closer to the end of the year.
2. Online CGFM Courses – The pandemic has made it difficult to promote and encourage our members to pursue the Certified Government Financial Manager (CGFM) certification. Given this, I wanted to make our members who are interested in this designation aware of the both the Online, self-paced courses and the live virtual courses from AGA national that they can register for in order to prepare for the CGFM. This is an excellent opportunity that works well with the new reality of virtual work.
3. Everyone Get One! Membership Drive - For the 2021–2022 program year, AGA’s target is to recruit 2,022 new members by April 30, 2022. To accomplish this, all members who recruit new members are eligible to win prizes — like Amazon gift cards or registration for national PDT 2022. Also, all local chapters are eligible to get 100 bonus points for achieving 16% membership growth. So, if you know someone who is interested in becoming a member, please let us know and help us actively recruit and grow our chapter.

Look for more updates from me in the future, but in the interim please join us at our November Virtual Training event and don’t forget to register for the free members-only webinar entitled “Maintaining Professional Ethics in a Culture of Oversharing"— on Thursday, September. 2.

Take care.

Scott Owens
National Council of Chapters Representative
AGA Atlanta