Message From the President

Message From the President

By Robert J. Schaffer, Nassau Chapter President

We have been busy planning exciting events, including some ambitious goals for the coming year, and we will start to see some of the fruits of our efforts this month. Thanks for everyone’s help who worked on planning these events. I look forward to working closely with the officers, board members and committee chairs on many of our existing programs as well as several new ones.

I would like to thank the outgoing president Rich Zerah for a fantastic year. I hope I can continue with many of his great initiatives. His hard work and dedication to our chapter helped make the past year very successful and enjoyable for all of us.

Our Young CPAs Committee jointly sponsored a cruise with the Manhattan/Bronx and Suffolk chapters last month. Everyone had a great time. Thanks to Ed Behar for helping to make it happen.

Our charity Walk/Run, sponsored by the Community Affairs and Public Relations Committee, is set for Sept. 23 at Eisenhower Park. It benefits Island Harvest, which distributes food to the needy on Long Island. We still need sponsors and runners. Please visit our website for more information.

Our chapter meeting this month, on Sept. 28, is sponsored by the Attorneys and Accountants Joint Committee. Many attorneys will be attending. Again, see our website for more information. Please join us! Also please join our chapter meeting subscription program, which lets you attend all of our chapter meetings at a discount.

Congratulations to Gail Linder and the Cooperation with Educational Institutions Committee for running a very successful mentor program for college students that debuted last year. We are looking for additional mentors to expand the program in the future. If anyone is interested in being a mentor, please contact Gail at 631-462-1213 or Gail.Linder@liu.edu.

Membership will be an important initiative for us this coming year. We have just started a Membership Committee chaired by Lisa Haynie (516-488-1200) and Ellen Gordon (516-747-2000, ext. 303). Please contact them if you are interested in assisting.

We are also creating programs for young CPAs and others so they can learn about topics not normally covered by existing CPE programs. Our Young CPAs Committee will sponsor a seminar on Sept. 30 on why CPAs need to know how to sell, how to build their book of business and how to reduce employee turnover and the costs associated with it. Call Ed Behar at 516-942-7600 for more information.

Please look for more events on our website and participate in as many of them as possible.

If anyone has any suggestions or comments about our existing programs or about programs we can create, please do not hesitate to contact me.

Robert J. Schaffer can be reached at 516-336-2408 or rschaffer@grassicpas.com.