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BNI & The Power of One
BNI 811: Our Secretary Treasurer Stole Our Money!
00:14:44
We are back with your submitted topics! This week it is a sad story of potential theft!
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Foreign welcome back to BNI and the Power of One podcast. Thank you for joining me again today. We are back with your show. Submissions, questions, topics submitted at bnipower of1.com Very excited to be continuing to get these. Some of them come in and. And the questions are relatively urgent so sometimes I have to move them around and. But I promise to get to them, keep them coming, make it your show. If anything. If we have to do more, we'll do more. Today's seems a little urgent. It was asked to be kept anonymous, so we're going to absolutely do that. And same thing for anybody else. If you got one that you don't want to be identified in or whatever, just tell me to keep it anonymous and that's perfectly fine. I still like seeing names and where you're from, but I will leave it anonymous. This one is from the other side of the world for me. Let's just put it that way and we'll leave it at that. That's a very vague, very big area from the opposite side of the world for me. Okay. Says hey Tim, love the podcast. I have a dilemma and I'm hoping you can help us. Secretary treasurer of our chapter. The last secretary treasurer held the bookkeeping seat and though they have since left the chapter, I recently realized they didn't invoice themselves or therefore pay the monthly meeting fee. A total of 5 times in 12 months. This has completely blown my trust in them. But when I talked to my partner, he said it was actually embezzling, which is very serious. I don't know what to do with this knowledge, especially now this person has left B and I would appreciate your suggestions. Okay, first and foremost, I'm gonna, I'm gonna come back to the answer to your direct question. But for everybody listening, 100% of chapters generally have a chapter checking account. Those chapter checking accounts are for chapter expenses such as room rental mostly and maybe some other ancillary costs the chapter might have or might be saving up a little bit for, whether it's to have a Christmas party or a celebration party or, you know, in our regions we sell lanyards. Some chapters like to save up and buy lanyards for members, especially new members or, you know, generally should have a little bit of a kitty. It should not be thousands and thousands and thousands of dollars. Okay? If you're finding that your kitty, your, your chapter checking account is growing and not kind of maintaining or growing faster than or outpacing a goal you might have for again, such and such an event, strongly consider you look at how much you're charging your members dues, okay? This is not meant to be this big checking account for anybody. And the bigger it gets, the more chances some shady stuff can happen. And it's unfortunate, it's not new. It's definitely happened before and it's really sad to see when it does. One way you can avoid this is each month the top three should be reviewing the bank statements. Okay? The president, the vice president and secretary treasurer, at least monthly, should all be reviewing the bank statements. You should not entirely know we live givers gain. Even though we're close to each other, even though we all love each other, and even though there's no way that our secretary treasurer would do this, be entrusting one person and not verifying the information. That's when the chapters really get in trouble because nobody's checking up on it. And then all of a sudden that person does leave and then we find problems. So this person who has submitted it, you're taking over the secretary treasurer of the world. Instill that. Instill that. The president of VP and Secretary treasurer at minimum should be reviewing bank statements. Any member who requests to see the bank statements shouldn't be met with significant resistance if they have questions about where their money's going. This is not a BNI money thing. This is not going to the corporations, not going to us. This is the chapter's money. Now once the money is given, whether a member leaves or not, there shouldn't be any refunds or anything else like that. Some chapters they prepay quarterly, some are month to month. Whatever somebody says, hey listen, just take the year because it's 20 bucks a month, I'll give you 200. And they leave. Six months in, they're not getting $120 back. Once a member gives it, that's, it's gone. It's in the chapter account, but it is the chapter's money. It's not the secretary treasurer's money, it's not the president's money. So it should be at least reviewed by the top three. And I think that's enough. Unless now, because then to have something going on, you got three people who are involved, which is even rarer. But it does happen. Okay? The question on embezzlement comes to if they were keeping that money. So if the money was coming in and they just simply weren't paying meeting fee, but the money's still in the account, that's not embezzling. It's bad bookkeeping. It's definitely wrong, but it's, it's not embezzling. If you're finding that they were taking that money for personal use, that could be a problem. That could be a very big problem. The question then comes to what do you really want to do with it in terms of legal ramifications, if any. And that goes by where you live, your national laws, your regional laws, state laws in the U.S. all that kind of stuff. How big of a deal do you really want to make it, how much money are we talking about, etc. Obviously, the trust is blown. Obviously. If this person's a book, was a bookkeeper, you would never trust them in their bookkeeping, even if it was simply as they just missed making payments. Because that would talk about lack of organization and everything else that would be important to being a bookkeeper. If it's, if you're trying, if you're seeing that that person was actually embezzling or stealing the money for personal use. What we recommend you do first is as a leadership team, call and email. Not one or the other. I would do both, highlighting what you think you have found, the evidence that you have for what you think you have found, and request a repayment of those monies with a deadline. So if you were to do that today, in my recording, it's a Thursday afternoon, and I would put in, hey, based on the review of our books, we see this money going in, we see the money going out to you when it was supposed to go to somewhere else. The total of these transactions is X number of dollars. We're requesting a full repayment of these dollars within 48 hours, something like that. If we do not receive said repayment, we will be bringing these to the necessary authorities. And I would report it because it is a big deal, even though the dollars might not be very big. If somebody's willing and able to do that to your chapter, it speaks volumes about what they might be willing to do outside. I mean, again, it doesn't have to be big dollar amounts to really highlight somebody being extremely sleazily untrustworthy, unprofessional, and again, not sure if they need to carry licenses in your country and stuff to do what they do, but I would be reporting it if it's not immediately paid back. And I would, I think at that point the reputation damage is going to be pretty significant. Right. So I again, would be bringing in the president and vice president of the chapter along with you. It shouldn't just be you trying to deal with it. And that's how I would move on with it. If they just ignore you and they don't pay it or they whatever, throw fit. Then. Then I would go to the proper authorities that you need to go to because it's stealing. It just straight is. And again, super sad to see when that happens. We've seen some pretty crazy stories around this. I mean, to the tune of thousands of dollars. And just I remember one person who wouldn't give up the Secretary treasury seat for three years. And then we found out that this is why the chapters kept going. Oh, no, it's so easy. We can. We don't have to train them. We don't have to train them. It's such an easy role. We don't have to train them. We don't have to train them. We kept saying, you should be replacing, you should be replacing. And they would fight us and we would always give in for. Which was our own fault because it was an easy role and the person's had it for three or four years and they've got the system down. And then when that person dropped and we found out, we didn't find out. The chapter found out, oh, he was holding this seat because he's been stealing all along and he didn't want somebody to find out and it allowed him to keep doing it. So, yeah, crazy stuff. You. Things you just wouldn't imagine. I mean, right down to. I can tell you stories of executive directors doing it. Just wild stuff. Those are some stories I won't share on the podcast, but. But it just shows you everywhere you go, there's an a hole somewhere doing something. So sorry you had to go through it. That's how I would approach it first. If it truly is stolen, that's how I would do it. If it's more of they just didn't pay it, but still in there, I would just. They're gone. And I would, I would let it go. I would probably. Yeah, I would probably let that go. If they stole it, then I might be sharing to the chapter what happened and what you guys are doing about it. Because again, that's the chapter money. So hopefully that's helpful and hopefully the last time you guys are going to have to deal with it. I'm guessing they're never gonna have to deal with you. You're submitting the question, so I appreciate that. And for you listening, I'm super excited because we did get permission from our member who did this amazing song. Steve White, who's out of our Central Florida region, wrote, produced, created this together We Rise BNI song. He's been grateful, gracious enough to allow us to use this on our podcast each week as our closing. So for all those who complain about my music, well, at least at the end you're going to have a much better one. I love it. So I'm just going to play it each and every week and we'll find other ways that maybe we can share and we can promote him so that he gets the proper recognition and everything else. I know he's looking for ways to make it available for members to download and stuff. Maybe so Once again Together We Rise by Steve White.
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We rise with the sun Ready for the day with hard work and passion we pave the way Every little task it builds and it grows in this world of business it's the heart that shows dedication Shines in everything we do Together we climb it's me and it's you we all work hard to make our dreams align with strength of spirit we leave the average behind the power of giving lifts us high and wide that's why we are proud to be a part of BE&I from from early mornings to late at night we hustle and we strive Keep our vision bright through every challenge we stand tall and strong Together as a family we can't go wrong the bonds we're building they take us far in the game of business we're shining like a star we all work hard to make our dreams come true with strength of spirit we all pull through the power of giving lifts us high and wide that's why we are proud to stand side by side Being as the place where connections thrive Uniting our hopes keeping dreams alive Together we network inspire and share with every referral we show that we can we all work hard to make our dreams align with strength of spirit we're truly on the grind the power of giving lifts us high and wide that's why we are proud to stand side by side so here we are Lifting each other high with dedication and pride we're ready to fly Together we'll grow through every stormy night in this journey of ours we're shining bright.