The Financial Planning Association is revamping the organization in the biggest transition since the association was created in 2000, according to FPA leaders.
The new form for the organization will be more centralized and administrative and technology responsibilities will be removed from the 86 individual chapters. However, chapters will maintain their independence and continue to develop their own leaders, programs and budgets. The new organization format will be known as OneFPA Network.
FPA leaders outlined the changes, which will be in place by the beginning of 2020, for Financial Advisor magazine on Tuesday. The next year will be a time of filling out the details of how the new organization will work, they said.
“Our current organizational form is antiquated. We have made some incremental changes over the years, but that did not accomplish what we wanted. We had to have a transformational change,” said Evelyn M. Zohlen, who will serve as FPA president in 2019.
FPA was formed in 2000 through the merger of the Institute of Certified Financial Planners and the International Association for Financial Planning as a community to promote the financial planning profession. However, the form that emerged at that time was 86 separate chapters with their own legal status affiliated with the national FPA, which is a separate legal entity of its own.
Under the new form, FPA and all of the chapters will be one legal entity. The national FPA will assume the bookkeeping, accounting and administrative functions for the chapters. National FPA will create a centralized technology platform that each chapter will have access to.
The financial resources and reserves from the chapters will be pooled for accounting purposes into a single account, but each chapter will have access to its own reserve funds and will maintain its own budget. Chapter executives will be employed by the national FPA in the future rather than by the individual chapters.
The new system will be based on “participatory governance” with as much input from the chapters as possible and extensive use of volunteers from the chapter level, and on “centralized functionality” with the administrative and back office work being done by the national organization.
To help accomplish these goals, FPA has hired RSM, a consulting firm, to guide the transition to the new association, and DelCor to create the new centralized technology platform.
The OneFPA Council is being created with representation from each chapter to guide the transition that will take place during 2019. A series of meetings will be held around the country so that chapters can have input into the process.