NAPFA's Vision

Turf: We tried it one year, and it really didn’t work well. We reconfigured the governance structure, and that’s when we started the chair-elect and chair positions. It’s a more comfortable progression, a learning year for the chair-elect, and then they step into the chair role.

Do you have specific goals for the growth of NAPFA during your term?

Joyce: On a percentage basis, we’ve had really tremendous growth. And I think we have a lot of traction right now. We’re at a point where we have a lot of people who want to be like us, and we have many people who want to join NAPFA for various reasons, not the least of which is the consumer referral system–which, I believe, in absolute numbers, probably produces more referrals than any other financial planning or financial advisory organization, let alone on a relative basis. We’re going to do our strategic planning in July, so this is not really the board saying this–I think that we could continue on a 10%-20% growth path for adding new members.

In many ways, we are an organization that has the best financial advisors in the industry. If you look at the Worth magazine list [of the top 250 advisors in the nation], it’s really dominated by people in NAPFA, this 950-member organization. And I really want us, from top to bottom, to be the organization of excellence. One of our core values is competency, and a lot of the focus over our first 20 years has been on the compensation piece. But just because you’re fee-only, that doesn’t necessarily mean you’re competent.

What do you see as the challenges ahead for NAPFA during the next year?

Joyce: We are now setting up a strategic plan with the board of directors on a visionary level, instead of setting up a strategic plan as a to-do list, because, frankly, the NAPFA office can handle a lot of those issues. Ellen is the CEO, and she can carry out the tactical decisions. So we’re acting more as an organization should, and more as a board should. It may not be as visible to the consumer press, or even to the press at all, but it is really important in establishing a building block for this organization to grow and face the next 20 years. Over the past 20 years, we have done a great job, for an organization our size, in communicating and getting our message out to the financial consumer.

It’s a legacy of Steve Kanaly’s chairmanship that we’ve done a great job in communicating with our members. There was such a focus on communicating to the financial press that I don’t know if there was a great job done in communicating with our members. We need to clearly communicate our vision, and our strategy, to all our constituencies [the public, the press, and NAPFA members]. That has happened over the past couple of years, and something I certainly hope will continue.