Year-end Committee Reports - Summer 2023

Article from Volume 10, Issue Number 3, 2023

Year-end Committee Reports - Summer 2023

By Committee Chairs | Other articles by Committee Chairs | Regular Column

With our fiscal year end of June 30th followed by our AGM in September, the summer edition of our newsletter is the time to publish the year-end reports from our Committee. At CCI Manitoba, most of the detailed work is done at the Committee level, the Board setting the direction and making the decisions for proposals brought forward.

The following reports summarize the accomplishments of CCI Manitoba’s Committees from the past year. Note that you need not be a CCI Board Member to join one of our committees. If you are interested in volunteering for one of our committees, please email us at ccimanitoba@cci.ca.

Sponsorship & AGM Committee

The AGM/Sponsorship Committee is responsible for arranging the AGM and campaigning for sponsorships. Sponsorship is an extremely important part for any organization, it is the financial support for events such as AGM’s, Webinars and Lunch & Learns. We could not have offered all the CCI events to our members at a low cost or even free without the help of our sponsors. In addition, it also increases awareness for our Professional and Business partners by promoting their company at events including the CCI website, Eblasts, social media as well as AGM’s. Their sponsorship also allows them to successfully network at any particular in person event.

We have exciting news! We have added a Platinum level to our sponsorship form and more benefits to each level for the sponsors and members to benefit from. In other exciting news, our Annual General Meeting will take place September 19th, 2023, at Assiniboia Downs. Our theme this year is a Kentucky Derby, do not forget to wear your Derby Hat or Bow Tie. There will be drinks, appies, games, draws, prizes for the best Hat & Bow Tie and do not forget you will also get a chance to bet on your favorite horse.

At the last AGM at Fort Gibraltar in 2022 we had so much fun dressing up for our Halloween Theme, let’s make this one even better. By donning our fancy Hats & Bow Ties we are sure to outshine last year’s attire! Let’s have fun and enjoy each other’s company!

Please remember if you know someone that deserves recognition for their outstanding contribution to the condominium community, their dedication, commitment and perseverance as a volunteer you can nominate them to be a recipient of the CCI, Manitoba Chapter Jane Lecours Volunteer Award that will be presented at the AGM. This award was developed to honour Jane’s memory and in recognition of her outstanding contributions to the condominium community.

We are always looking for volunteers for our committee, if you are interested in volunteering, please contact CCI Manitoba Chapter to learn more.

I would like to thank the Committee Members: Kathleen Vandale and Seth Henoch for their hard work, dedication and contributions.

We would like to express our sincere gratitude to all our sponsors, it means the world to CCI and our Members.

WE HOPE TO SEE YOU ALL AT THE CCI MANITOBA DERBY AGM ON SEPTEMBER 19TH, 2023!

Connie Dame
Committee Chair

Membership Committee

The role of this committee is to expand membership and improve engagement for members in coordination with other committees.

Thanks and recognition is due to all volunteer members of this committee, Doug Forbes, Mara Doctoroff, Audrey Harder and Patricia Salam.

This year, one of our goals was to establish the Management Advisory Committee (MAC). Our first MAC meeting occurred in March of 2023. Our next meeting will be in September of 2023. This sub-committee was established to improve communication and collaboration with Property Managers. The committee is a work in progress which is going well. We acknowledge and appreciate the contribution of property managers as we see them as an integral part to the success of condominium corporations and CCI.

During the 2023 fiscal year we began to see signs of membership numbers rebounding, a hopeful sign that numbers are beginning to improve. We continue with our initiatives to recruit new members through referrals and early renewals. Committee members have started reaching out to condo corporations that have expressed an interest in membership with in person or virtual meetings to discuss the benefits of CCI membership to all parties involved, i.e. condo owners, board members and property managers.

We are happy to report that the condominium guide book which is a useful tool to condo owners, can now be downloaded from the website.

Membership renewals for 2023/24 are due now. We encourage everyone that has not yet renewed to contact our Chapter Administrator to ensure your continued membership and access to our wide selection of useful tools.

OUR GOAL IS TO HAVE EVERY CONDO CORPORATION BE A CCI MEMBER!!!

Duane Rohne
Committee Chair

Education Committee

The Education Committee is responsible for providing condominium education that meets the needs of CCI-Manitoba’s members. We organize Lunch & Learns, webinars, and educational events in order to improve our members’ knowledge and understanding of condo living.

Over the past year, the Education Committee’s focus has been on improving accessibility for our members. Firstly, after shaking off the COVID-19 pandemic, we returned to in-person Lunch & Learns this year. At those in-person Lunch & Learns, we were testing live streaming over Zoom. We have worked out a number of the technical challenges and, in the coming months, we should be able to offer fully hybrid Lunch & Learns where we can have in-person participation as well as online participation over Zoom.

Secondly, for those who cannot attend our events live in any medium, we have been uploading recordings of our Lunch & Learns on our website. On our website, check out our “Past Education Session Recordings” under the “Members Only” tab.

Thirdly, starting this Fall, we have eliminated registration fees for Lunch & Learns for our members.

Lastly, we have been laying the groundwork for digitizing our CCI 200 course. We are reviewing and updating our materials before we start recording. This is a significant project and we hope to launch the CCI 200 course in the upcoming year.

I would like to thank the Committee members: Connie Dame, Audrey Harder, Eric Hrycyk, Alan Reiss, Seth Henoch, Kathleen Vandale and our non-Board member volunteers: Tanya Wawrykow and Nat Kleinschmit for their contributions this year.

On behalf of the Education Committee, thank you for your ongoing support and enthusiasm at our events. We look forward to seeing you at our next (free!) Lunch & Learn on October 19, 2023. Wishing you a fantastic and safe summer.

Carl Dalton
Committee Chair

Communications Committee

I’d like to start by thanking our Chapter Administrator, Aesia Desrosiers, for her support and actions to get the newsletter published, and for her involvement answering member inquiries, sending out E-blasts and helping feed our social media channels. As well, thank you to our Committee members Duane Rohne, Alan Reiss, Seth Henoch for their contribution of articles, Maureen Hancharyk for her advice and support, to John Popowich for his President’s report and updates on activities at CCI National Council, to Kathleen Vandale for her expertise on insurance matters and to our proof reader extraordinaire, Pam Pyke. Bravo to all.

It was a challenging year for our newsletter committee with economic reasons forcing us to stop printing paper copies of the newsletter and switching to a digital-only delivery of news. We had been thinking for several years of going to digital-only format because of environmental reasons and because we were one of the last CCI Chapters to still publish printed editions. The pandemic and related reduction in membership and supply chain cost increases left us with no option but to eliminate the print edition. Now we are trying to make the best use possible for the digital-only newsletter. One thing we have started is making more use of hyperlinks, both for articles and advertising. On tap or click will take you to additional content.

Traditionally, our print edition was 24 pages and if we wanted to vary the page count, we’d have to do so by adding four pages at a time, which would also increase the cost. One advantage of the digital-only format is that we are not limited to a 24 pages, and in fact have increased the amount of content for our members with 34 pages in our winter edition and 37 pages in our spring edition.

In the past year we’ve expended more effort on posting content to our social media channels but with little to no visible benefit and with considerable expenditure of volunteer time and commitment. At the recent CCI National Leaders Forum in Saskatoon, Chapters that had success with social media indicated that you had to ‘pay to play’ - spending money to appear at the top of searches and/or paying a social media professional to manage the channels. These are things that we are going to have to look into.

One other area of responsibility for the Committee is to answer member inquiries. We attempt to provide as much support and information as possible to our Chapter Administrator so that she had handle as many inquiries as possible. For the questions that she can’t handle, she gets me involved as Committee Chair, or our President John Popowich or our Past President Maureen Hancharyk. Collectively we strive to do our best to answer our members' questions or empathize with them for their problems. When possible, we do connect via phone calls, via Zoom and on occasion with in-person meetings over a coffee.

Alan Forbes
Committee Chair

Finance Committee

It has been a great year being on the CCI Board! We have met in person and have continued doing hybrid meetings as well. A great group to be a part of!

This year has come with some challenges. On the expense side we made the tough decision to go digital-only for our newsletter to save money, but we worked hard to increase our revenue by growing our membership and sponsorship numbers (THANK YOU, SPONSORS!) To improve membership value, we are offering Lunch &’ Learns free of charge in the new year to all members and we are currently working on the online version of the CCI 200 course.

The CCI board of directors continues to work hard to provide value to all their members!

Audrey Harder
Committee Chair