CERTIFICATION
What we would credential (proposed)
Before proposing a credential, an organisation should say what credentials already exist and why another one is warranted. In residential community governance — TASFGA’s founding area of focus — one already exists, it is accredited, and it is held by tens of thousands of people. Any TASFGA proposal has to start there.
What already exists
The Certified Manager of Community Associations (CMCA) is administered by the Community Association Managers International Certification Board (CAMICB). By CAMICB’s own account it is “the professional accreditation body for over 25,000 community association managers worldwide,” its programme “is accredited by the National Commission for Certifying Agencies (NCCA) through March 2030,” it has been accredited by the ANSI National Accreditation Board under ISO/IEC 17024 since April 2021, and it “remains the only accredited certification for community association management professionals worldwide” (CAMICB, About). Certification requires a prerequisite course or two years’ documented experience, a 120-question proctored examination, agreement to the CMCA Standards of Professional Conduct, and 16 hours of continuing education every two years (CAMICB, Get Certified).
That is a real credential with a real examination behind it. TASFGA does not propose to build a second one. A competing entry-level manager exam would duplicate accredited work, and an organisation that proposes to certify the same people it also reviews has an independence problem it cannot argue its way out of.
What a certification cannot do
The distinction the sector routinely blurs is between a voluntary certification and a licence. They are not weaker and stronger versions of the same instrument; they do different things, and only one of them is a condition of practice.
| Voluntary certification | State licence | |
|---|---|---|
| Required to manage a building | No | Yes, where enacted |
| Held by | The individual who elects to sit the exam | The individual and, in some states, the firm |
| Consequence of withdrawal | The person loses the designation | The person may not lawfully practise |
| Complaint channel for an owner | The certifying body, as to conduct | A state agency, with subpoena and audit power |
| Reaches the uncertified manager | No | Yes |
| Reaches the volunteer board | No | No |
This is the finding in The 50-State Managing-Agent Licensure Gap, stated precisely: New York’s gap is not an absence of certification. Certification is available to any New York manager who wants it. The gap is that nothing conditions the right to hold the management contract, nothing reaches the manager who never sought the credential, and no state body takes an owner’s complaint about either. A credential cannot close that gap, and TASFGA should not claim one would. That is what the model legislation is for.
The gap a credential could close
There is one population no credential currently reaches, in any sector: the volunteer who sits on the board.
The person who signs the management contract, adopts the budget, sets the assessment, and votes on the vendor is, in most cases, uncompensated, untrained, serving a one- or two-year term, and holding fiduciary duties they have usually never had described to them. The manager they supervise may hold an accredited credential. They hold nothing. The same is true of the appointed member of a zoning board, a library trustee, a hospital board member, and a licensing-board appointee — the whole set of bodies in TASFGA’s areas of focus. It is the one credentialing space that is both genuinely empty and consistent across every sector TASFGA covers.
Proposed programme
Two tiers, both aimed at that population, neither competing with an accredited manager credential.
- TASFGA-GP — Governance Practitioner. A foundational credential for the people who sit on a governed body rather than staff it: elected and appointed board members, trustees, commissioners, and owner-advocates. Fiduciary duty, the records a member is entitled to, conflict disclosure and recusal, meeting and election conduct, and how to read the financial statements the body receives. Sector-specific modules; a shared core.
- TASFGA-F — Fellow. A senior designation recognising sustained contribution to governance standards, awarded on a published record rather than an examination.
For managers in residential community governance, TASFGA’s position is that the CMCA is the credential and the missing instrument is statutory. Where TASFGA has something to add for that population it would be a published conduct and disclosure addendum to its Code of Conduct that an employer or a board can adopt by reference — not a rival examination.
What it would take to be worth holding
A credential nobody audits is a certificate. If TASFGA runs one, it commits in advance to the things that distinguish the two: a published examination blueprint, a passing standard set by a documented method rather than a target pass rate, a disciplinary process with published outcomes, a public register of who holds the credential and who has lost it, and independent accreditation sought rather than asserted. A credentialing programme that cannot meet those should not launch, and TASFGA would say so rather than launch a weaker one.
Status: a proposal, not a programme. TASFGA is pre-incorporation. No examination exists, no blueprint has been written, no cohort is enrolling, and nothing on this page is offered for sale or enrolment. This page states a position on what should be built and what should not, so that it can be argued with before anything is built. Comment: contact@tasfga.com.