RIIA’s Volunteer Organization and the Committee Structure
Francois Gadenne has graciously agreed to cover for me until my return on May 16. He will be contributing a variety of essays addressing contemporary and future retirement income opportunities and challenges.
Committees are at the heart of RIIA’s culture. RIIA is first and foremost a volunteer organization.
The Association started when a few clients and prospects of Retirement Engineering made it clear in 2005 that it was time to start a new trade group for the emerging Retirement Income Industry. The topic was important to the future success of their businesses, they believed the need was urgent and they were prepared to allocate a budget towards it. By the time of RIIA’s kick-off meeting on February 1, 2006 in New York City, the Association had 30 Founding Members. Sixteen months later, the Association is about three times its original size.
I have been involved with start-ups before and after the Internet.
Before the Internet, an important rate-limiting factor to setting up a business was the phone system. Private Branch Exchanges (PBXs) were expensive and necessary. The need to share this expensive equipment led to the creation of “incubators” where start-ups shared office space and, most importantly, a fully functional phone system.
Monthly rents ranged from hundreds to thousands of dollars per office. To start something of a reasonable size, you needed a few million dollars in seed capital.
The Internet gave us cheap communications, including e-mail as well as voice-over-Internet-Protocol (VoIP). Cheap communications changed the economics of start-ups. It was possible to do more and to project greater business presence at a much lower cost.
The incubator business model changed too. Start-ups no longer needed to move all of their employees to a central location to have a business-grade phone system. Many incubators failed to adapt to that changing reality.
Interestingly, REI’s co-founder, Ben Williams, points out that PBXs still exist, but the form has changed to self-service (direct dial of extensions, directory lookup, etc.) similarly to how the phone system itself changed about 70 years ago with the advent of the dial and the crossbar switch. I also suspect that the cost is a fraction of what we paid in the 1980s and 1990s.
Post Internet, managing a start-up feels a lot less about office administration and a lot more about network management.
Networks are built from nodes and links. Some networks can be built around a few highly connected nodes (called “hubs”). If you can provide these hubs with a shared direction, networks are able to accomplish specific business goals, grow indefinitely, function effectively at multiple organizational levels and withstand considerable stress. These are called scale-free directed networks. RIIA is such a network.
Committee Chairs are RIIA’s core organizational building blocks. When a Committee starts at the request of interested and motivated members, the Chair (with Board approval) sets the direction in a written mission statement. Successful Chairs increase their effectiveness as network “hubs” by becoming highly connected with members of their Committee, other RIIA Committees and a full range of outside service providers who help accomplish the mission. The successful chair becomes a band leader rather than a musician. The written mission statement provides consistent direction as the Committee grows.
At this point, RIIA has nine Committees. The Board provides direction to the Committees with four categories of association-level objectives:
- Growing Membership
- Increasing Visibility
- Delivering Value-Added
- Setting Industry Standards
The current Committees and their respective Chairs/co-Chairs include:
Growing Membership
- Membership Committee
o Rick Nersesian
o Elmer Rich
- Employment Survey Committee
o Laura DiFraia
o Garth Bernard
Increasing Visibility
- Communications Committee
o David Macchia, Chair
o Will Prest, co-Chair
- Programs Committee
o Paul Fichera, Chair
o Keith Piken, co-Chair
- Awards Committees
o Sean Hanna, Chair
o Charlie Ruffel, Chair
o Suzanne Siracuse, Chair
o Bob Tyndall, Chair
- Noted Authors Committee
o Jerry Bramlett, Chair
o Greg Cherry, co-Chair
Delivering Value-added
- Education Committee
o Ron DeCicco, Chair
o John Carl, Service Provider
- Research Committee
o Kathleen Beichert, Chair
o Chris McNickle, co-Chair
o Larry Cohen, Service Provider
o Elvin Turner, Service Provider
Setting Industry Standards
- Methodologies Committee
o Richard Fullmer
- Compliance Committee
o Joan Boros
If you want to learn more about RIIA’s Committees, please contact the Chairs directly. Their contact information is available on RIIA’s website at www.riia-usa.org .