Strategic Objective 3

Continually refresh the profession:
‘To enhance the profession by identifying initiatives that develop the attributes of members and broaden the reach of the profession’

Branch network

The Institute has five regions, divided into 20 branches and sub-branches or service centres throughout New Zealand and the world. Branches offer a wide range of opportunities to their local members, including professional development, special interest groups and networking.

Special interest groups

As the Institute has members in a wide range of professions with a diverse range of interests, many of our members form special interest groups (SIGs) to provide social networking and professional development for members interested in particular areas or fields. SIGs all over the country held 290 events throughout the course of the year.

Branch SIG actual v budgeted attendance

Planned total number of attendees	Branch activity type	Actual total number of events	Actual total number of attendees
15,204	Special interest groups	290	15,169

National professional development programme and products

The National Professional Development (NPD) unit delivers an annual programme of courses and conferences, contributing to the professionalism and competence of Institute members who reside in New Zealand.

Achieving breakeven with the current model for NPD delivery relies on the ability to present courses that have strong appeal to members, a planning and budgeting process that accurately predicts the numbers likely to attend, and on skilful marketing that successfully promotes each event to members. Regardless of the success of these activities, attendance can also be affected by factors outside the control of NPD, such as changes to IFRS deadlines. In 2008 such factors did impact on attendance at some NPD events.

NPD aimed to increase attendance in the 2008 year and while course attendance was typical of previous years, conference attendance was down with the exception of the annual tax conference.

The effectiveness of the programme has been measured over the years through attendance figures and satisfaction ratings that are gathered from the feedback members provide about the courses and conference they attend.

To build on the success of the programme, in 2009 NPD will focus on improving the quality of professional development and reaching a larger number of members by:

gathering and using information about members’ needs and interests
increasing the practicality and relevance of courses
introducing more effective marketing strategies.

Over the 2009 year, new measures will be introduced to monitor the success of NPD. In addition to attendance figures and satisfaction ratings, these will focus on outcomes for members, e g what did they learn and what will they change as the result of attending a particular course.

PD measures

		2007	2008
Professional development	Actual v budgeted attendance	94%	80%
	Exceeded or met expectations	92%	89%

The Journal

The Chartered Accountants Journal has continued to publish features and stories designed to inform, challenge and entertain members and the external readership.

Highlights of the reporting period have included articles around the Institute's centenary (including the running story of the history of accounting); an increased focus on coverage of Institute news, such as conferences, and the magazine's first tax feature in August.

The launch of the online magazine GAA Accounting (www.gaaaccounting.com) in June was an exciting development: each of the member Institutes' editors is country editor for their jurisdiction, and files their best few articles every two months for the new Journal. New Zealand's contributions have been amongst the best-read to date.

It is often and rightly said that any magazine is only as good as its last issue and that such publications rest on their laurels at their peril. The Journal's editing and design team take pains to ensure that they do not fall into this trap and that we are on the front foot at all times.

Journal distribution by location

Location	Number published
Auckland	9321
Canterbury	2376
Central Bay of Plenty	277
Coastal Bay of Plenty	631
Gisborne/East Coast	124
Hawke's Bay	536
Manawatu	519
Marlborough	90
Nelson	322
Northland	333
Otago	749
Southland	433
Taranaki	325
Waikato/Bay of Plenty	1329
Wairarapa	115
Wanganui	149
Wellington	3784
Westland	50
Asia/North America/Canada/Phillipines	1285
Australia/South Pacific/Papua New Guinea	505
Melbourne Branch	364
N Ireland/Europe/Rest of the World	238
Sydney Branch	622
UK Branch	1679
TOTAL	26,156

Library & Information Systems

The Library provides a valuable service which enables members to access an extensive range of authoritative information resources in both print and electronic formats and to utilise the skills of experienced information specialists.

In directly responding to members' needs:

all document supply, reference enquiries and other requests were actioned
6466 electronic and print resources were supplied, up 17% on the last financial year; electronic documents now comprise 64% of the total
4150 enquiries were actioned – up 27% on the last financial year
direct member access to Business Source Corporate (BSC) and five other full-text databases was maintained - total usage levels of BSC: 36,166 logins; 62,523 full-text articles downloaded. Usage in the first three quarters of the year was well up on the last financial year. This dropped back considerably in the final quarter due to changes in the programming of PCE II, whose candidates are heavy users of this member only resource
11 Latest Articles and Publications bulletins were published - the subscription list stood at 955 at the end of the financial year, up 33% on last year
Eight new Hot topic resource guides were developed and published to the Library section of the website.

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