"That ICPA QLD liaises with ICPA Australia to develop constitutional changes necessary for financial members to be able to join additional ICPA branches as affiliate members by paying the required additional branch membership portion only.”
For example, a financial member of the Cloncurry ICPA branch would only have to pay our Mt Isa BOTA $3 to be an affiliate member of our branch, not purchase two full memberships which is currently the only available option. We are noticing that some branch events require compulsory membership of ICPA QLD in order to participate such as sports camps, and that this is leading to a prevalence of members holding two ICPA memberships.
Our branch has members who have paid full membership (that is branch, state and federal fees) twice over, so State has received $60 and Federal $44 from the same member.
State-wide there are some instances where one spouse is a member of one branch and the other spouse a different branch. There are also travelling families who have membership with their local branch and additional membership (sometimes interstate) with another branch when they are contracting in that area. Our branch also has difficulties in that we conduct an annual Sports For Bush Kids (SFBK) event for families from over 10 different ICPA branches from Mt Isa School of The Air (MISOTA). The SFBK Committee is open to any MISOTA family but unless they are a member of our branch, they can’t put forward motions for our branch to approve such as budgets, expenditure, grants and sponsorships.
We appreciate that multiple branch memberships cause issues for the current online membership system and significant changes would have to be made to the database to accept affiliate memberships. We feel that members who wish to become active in more than one ICPA branch is beneficial for the organisation and should be encouraged and facilitated if possible. It would be up to the discretion of ICPA QLD and ICPA Australia as to whether a branch affiliate member has the same rights at that branch compared to the branch they are fully financial with. For e.g. can they hold Executive Positions, vote at AGM’s or be delegates for their affiliate branch/es at Conference?
