People did not want to get receipts for the sums they paid, but we insisted, and recorded every cent. Almost certainly, the accounting books for the year 1894 are still intact in the archives of the Natal Indian Congress. For any kind of organisation, to accurately keep the accounting books is a sine qua non, otherwise you get a bad reputation: if the accounting books are not kept properly, it is impossible to believe the truth in all its primitive purity (from “My life for freedom” Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, known as the Mahatma)
When I first read these words by Gandhi, I was really surprised. I did not expect a man of such a high ethical and political profile to be interested in “accounting” and to give it a meaning so different from the one we normally affix to it, i.e. that of a simple bureaucratic act. Perhaps it surprised me because I have always liked accounting.
Cape Town is approaching and I’m starting to be increasingly worried. Will I be able, using numbers, to open a window on ASSITEJ, the way it works, its potential and limits?
How do we use the resources that are mainly represented by your annual fees?
Did you know that 75% of ASSITEJ’s budget is supported by fees?
And that thanks to these fees we can, in turn, support Next Generation, the Regional Workshops, the Magazine…
It is crucial that we receive them on a timely and regular basis, to avoid “driving with the handbrake on” for three years and without programming because we are no sure there will be actual earnings. At the end, there will be a small profit, created by resources that were not spent because they were carefully administered.
But our goal is not to create profits. Cape Town is approaching and there are activities that have yet to be planned, if the resources come in on time. We will be waiting.
Thank you so much to every one of you!
Roberto Frabetti
ASSITEJ Treasurer
