If you live in Europe, you surely have heard of the Single Euro Payments Area, also known as SEPA. As treasurer of the BDÜ LV Bayern, I have the “honor” of collecting the membership fees twice a year. As an association, we are required to use the SEPA process to do this from tomorrow on, meaning our wonderful office person, Ms. O., and I have been working these last months to get everything set up in time for the next collection, which is happening in two weeks.
I can understand that people are somewhat irritated with the whole thing, since they’ve been getting notices from everywhere about SEPA and what needs to be done, and the BDÜ is no exception. Unfortunately, there are always some members who seem to forget that all the people holding positions at the BDÜ are serving in an honorary capacity, and that includes me as well. Usually I don’t mind the work, but having to remind people over and over to please get their bank data changed and checked and send in all required paperwork, and then having to justify this extra work, sometimes having to respond to less than friendly e-mails or calls…. well. Let’s just say: with over 1400 members, we’ve had our hands full (and without Ms. O., this would have been an insurmountable task for me, so thank you!!!), even with all the reliable and cooperative members helping us.
Today, I spent several hours getting things ready for the collection – and I hope it works without problems! And there are still a few members, who have either chosen to ignore the change (and all it entails) or have dropped off the face of the earth… in any case, they cause extra work for Ms. O. and myself, so we’ll have to spend more time and effort on them in order to make sure that everything regarding the membership fees is in order. More hours of work that could be reduced to look forward to….