Reimagining a 125-Year-Old Organization

The CFCA Board of Directors has been holding several strategic planning sessions over the last several months in order to assess the current organizational structure of our 125-year-old association. We felt it was important to share the purpose and some of the findings from these efforts as we continue to work through this process. 

Goal:
We strive to improve organizational communications and value the input we received from the 2022 Annual Planning Meeting held at Skywalker Ranch in Marin County. As a result of that meeting, the following goals were identified. 

• To become a contemporary organization utilizing current best practices for fire department structures.  
  
• To enhance and move the services provided to our members to be consistent and professionally managed.  
  
• To streamline common practices between the parent body, branches, and sections to ensure that taxes are paid, organization hierarchy is consistent for members and sponsors, that a succession process is implemented, and training occurs annually for all sections, that our legal and fiduciary responsibilities are met, and that the organization becomes cohesive moving forward to better serve our members. 

Major Areas that need to be addressed:
The following areas were identified during our discovery process as areas that need to be improved or streamlined in order to provide the best service to our members and the California State Fire Service. The goal is to look closely at existing structures and practices throughout the association and its sections (Administrative Fire Service, Communications, Emergency Management, Emergency Medical Services, Fire Mechanics, Fire Prevention Officers, Operations, and Training Officers). In order to ensure that all sections align with the CFCA Bylaws and that communications are consistent and clear. To meet these goals the Board has identified the following outline. 

Governance: 

• Common Bylaws: CFCA will provide a common set of bylaws for each section that supports the CFCA bylaws for each section to adopt. A separate policies and procedures document will dictate each section’s business practices.
  
• Each Section will create a role and responsibilities document as it pertains to CFCA and the role they will play in the association. 
  
• CFCA will hold quarterly President Meetings (remote) to serve as a method to share consistent information.
  
• Annual attendance to CFCA Business Meeting at the Annual Conference
  
• Common Membership Drive time period (dues collection, officer rotation July 1-June 30)
  
• Common use of the CFCA Logo- branch and section banners
  
• Section Maps will coincide with the CFCA maps.

Finance:

• CFCA will administrate all dues for the sections.
  
• CFCA will manage through their TPA (SMA) website, and tax management for Sections that do not have their own independent 501C3 or 501C6 tax structure.
  
• The Section will still be required to submit annual budgets per the CFCA bylaws.

Communications:

• Common Reporting Structure from Sections to the Parent Association, such as:
  
  • Annual Report and Presidents’ Quarterly Meetings with Section Presidents
    
• The Section websites will be uniformly linked to the CFCA website.
  
• Shared Membership Lists - All branch and section members must belong to the parent association. This will allow all sections to receive a complete membership directory for all CFCA members.
  
• Shared Master Calendar that will be hosted on the CFCA website.
  
• Sections can fill state appointments and committees with subject matter expertise.
  

Legislation:

• Shared methodology for handling legislation to ensure that we have one voice for California fire service such as:
  
  • How to introduce legislative initiatives to the Joint Legislative Task Force
    
  • Working with our legislative advocates and understanding their scope of work.
    
  • How to testify and/or provide support to the parent association and section regarding legislative initiatives. 
    
  • There will be joint training annually with FDAC for all Legislative Task Force members.
    
  • Sections will be able to appoint Subject matter experts to attend the Legislative Task Force Meetings

Section Training:

• In order to provide common responsibilities CFCA will provide the following:
  
  • Annual training for all Sections Presidents
    
  • Yearly planning meeting
    
  • Yearly annual report format

Timeline:

• The CFCA Board of Directors is planning to fully adopt the outline and changes and new membership fee structure for implementation by the 2024/25 fiscal year.

CFCA has held several meetings with the sections both virtually and in person and to date has come up with the following tentative agreements as of July 6, 2023, with further work still in progress. Those items in red are concerns brought up by the sections which still need to be addressed. 

Tentative Agreements

• Agreed that Sections would align their existing bylaws not to be in conflict with CFCA bylaws.
• Agreed that Section Officers would be sworn in at the CFCA Annual Conference, held in September or October (Concerns about cost alignment with allied agencies and gala events.) The possible solution may be to only swear in Presidents to reduce conflicts.
  
• Agreed that dues payment would occur at the same time each year and that only one invoice from CFCA and Sections would be submitted to the Fire Agency (Fiscal year July 1 to June 30) annually. (Concerns about the cost, how would we invoice, and how sections would access funds.)
  
• Agreed that Section would be each allocated one 50-minute time slot during the educational portion of the CFCA annual conference or eight, 50-minute time frames total which could occur simultaneously. This will not occur in 2023 because the conference agenda has been set prior to this agreement.
  
• Agreed that President orientation would occur at our pre-conference day at the CFCA annual conference beginning October 16, 2023, in Ontario (Unlikely this would occur this year due to cost, did outline section reports both orally and written for the annual report would be due at the Oct 17 business meeting.)
  
• Agreed that each Section would designate one spokesperson to interface with the CFCA Executive Committee and if a section(s) has a north and south organization that the one spokesperson would be determined by those Sub-Sections. (Discussion on title delegated back to sections)
  
• Agreed that CFCA will maintain a database and collect dues for each Section, returning dues to those Sections that maintain separate tax identification status, and hold those dues for Sections that do not (Communications, Emergency Management and Operations) (FPO question how can we trust you to get our dues? How to get access to the database, suggestion is to bring SMA to the next meeting for Website questions and database (YM) questions, discussion on signing a yearly MOU with sections to outline details)
  
• Agreed that Sections that have non-profit status will be responsible for their own money, Federal and State tax payments, insurance, and maintenance of their non-profit status, including an employee identification number (EIN)
  
• Agreed that Sections would link their website or maintain a page at their own expense to the CFCA website (SMA at next meeting to discuss technical issues)
  
• Agreed that Sections would designate a liaison to the CFCA to provide Subject Matter Expertise and the current CFCA liaison’s role would be eliminated currently assigned to Area Directors (Discussion on who that would be and what their title would be?)
  
• Agreed that Sections that currently have members who do not join CFCA would be deemed Associate members within the Sections. (Sections would need to alter their bylaws and address running for office as an Associate member)
  
• Agreed that a CFCA bylaw change would occur to include University Fire Marshals, who do not have Fire Chiefs positions. (FPO’s to provide language on FPO issues, must also consider mechanics, communications for JPA’s and Public Safety)
  
• Agreed that the CFCA President would develop a schedule to communicate with the designated Section spokesperson on a regular and consistent basis. (Quarterly meeting- calendared with Section by CFCA and delegated SMA/Spokesperson and CFCA Executive Board- 8 total section spokespersons- to begin December 2023)