Case Study | Retainer Engagement | Operational Partnership
In October 2016, Celebrants Aotearoa NZ (then the Celebrants Association of New Zealand) came to us (then Your Virtual Assistant) with a simple problem. Its National Executive were volunteers. Talented, generous, and completely underwater. Membership renewals, branch reporting, event admin, and financial reconciliation were all sitting with people who had signed up to serve their profession, not run its back office.
What started as VA relief for a stretched committee has grown alongside CANZ through a decade of change, some of it planned, some of it not. When COVID-19 closed venues and borders, we helped members and branches pivot almost overnight: online events, zoom meetings, a full run of webinars and written guidance to keep the profession moving when nobody knew what the “new normal” would look like. When the pandemic had passed but its isolation lingered, we helped build Connect Local, a new model of smaller, local branch hubs designed to reconnect members who’d lost the easy, in-person contact that used to hold branches together.
We’ve rebuilt the CANZ website more than once since, restructured branch boundaries as membership patterns shifted, most recently splitting a new Thames-Coromandel branch out of Auckland, Waikato, and Bay of Plenty, and supported the organisation through its own rebrand, from the Celebrants Association of New Zealand to Celebrants Aotearoa NZ.
Multiple National Executive teams have come and gone across that time. What has stayed constant is a BOM-led retainer with admin support across the whole organisation, and an executive that leads rather than administrates.
This is how we got there.
