SDFM Annual Achievement Awards (Updated for 2027)
It’s time to nominate outstanding individuals and teams for the Society of Defense Financial Management’s (SDFM) Aviation Chapter Achievement Awards! Please see the attached forms and submit all award nominations to Sheena Fast (email in the GAL) by the deadlines list below. She will respond to all submissions to verify receipt, so if you don’t hear back within 1-2 business days, please follow-up.
Due 26 October 2026 – Small Team, Resource Management, Acq/Cost Analysis, and Intern/Trainee nominations
Due 18 December 2026 – Comptroller, Accounting, Audit, Budget, Contractor Support, Finance, Digital Transformation, Large Team, Digital Transformation Team nominations
Please encourage your leadership teams to prepare and submit deserving individuals for one or more of the award categories (see “Awards – Info” attachment). Nominees do NOT need to be SDFM members. All nominees will be reviewed by a panel for our local awards and will also be submitted for the SDFM National Achievement Awards competition.
Here are the forms and documents:
- More information about this year’s SDFM Achievement Awards (Awards – Info) (PDF)
- The CY2026 Team Award Nomination Form, due Fall 2026 (both small and large teams, fillable PDF)
- The CY2026 Intern/Trainee Nomination Form, due Oct 2026 (individual only, fillable PDF)
- The CY2026 Financial Systems/Digital Transformation Nomination Form, due Dec 2026 (teams and individuals, fillable PDF)
- The CY2026 Individual Award Nomination Form, due Dec 2026 (all other categories of individuals, fillable PDF)
- Tips for writing winning nominations (PDF)
- National’s SDFM Achievement Awards web page
Development Opportunities: Coaching
March is Coaching month on the Supervisors and Leaders We Need site. The site is run by the Civilian Leadership Development School, and the school’s coaching team is hosting this month’s activities and info. Each of the four weeks of the month, the site will have a different reading or live event covering the month’s topic.
The Supervisors and Leaders We Need site contains the weekly readings and the ZoomGov meeting links (CAC required for both). The planned webinars are:
- Thursday, 10 March @ 11:00am EST
Coaching Skills and Principles for the Non-Coach - Thursday, 24 March @ 11:00am EDT
Live Demo: Coaching in Real Time
FERS Retirement Planning Tool Template
This is a tool built in Excel that is designed to help FERS employees determine the best age at which to retire. The 2nd tab of the workbook contains an embedded Word document that describes the purpose of the tool and some basic instructions on how to use it. The 3rd tab of the workbook (titled Inputs) is where ALL of the data is input into the tool. The 4th tab (titled Income Stream) is self-explanatory. The tabs labeled by age portray the details that are fed into the Income Stream tab. Once you gather the necessary information you’ll need to input your data into the template, it shouldn’t take more than a few minutes to actually enter the data.
Note: This is an updated version of the tool from what was previously posted here. This is the version that contains all of the latest factors and bells and whistles from the recommendations of everyone who beta tested it. If you copy and paste your inputs from a previous version into the attachment, please use the Paste Values option. Also note that you must enable the Printer Friendly LES in myPay if you enter your latest LES inputs into the tool directly from the myPay website.
FERS Retirement Planning Tool (Master blank template) v20200717.xlsx
Dashboarding Basics
Are you interested in learning about creating dashboards in Excel? In this free virtual training, Mr. Ed Fritts of TekSouth presented some basic dashboarding tools in June 2020’s Tips & Tricks. Mr. Fritts covered:
- Intro Pivot Enhancements
- Format Data & Creating Pivot Table
- Adding Fields Names
- Creating Customized Design Subtotals
- Creating Customize Design & Value Columns
- Creating Slicers Timeline
- Generate Reports
- Slicers Multiple View
If you would like to view the presentation and download the materials, please click the following link. Thanks to Mr. Fritts and TekSouth for providing this training!
https://www.teksouth.com/2020/06/25/june-tips-and-tricks-dashboards/
Managing Job Stress
Wouldn’t it be nice to have some tips for managing your job stress? It’s something we all have, to varying degrees. Our local Employee Assistance Program (EAP) office provided this article, which will be printed in part in the March 2020 edition of the Wright Flyer newsletter. The full text of the article is in the file linked below.
About CDFM
The Society of Defense Financial Management offers the Certified Defense Financial Manager (CDFM) program to those persons desiring to demonstrate proficiency in the core aspects of defense financial management.
More on the CDFM and CDFM Training
Professional Development Institute (PDI)
SDFM offers annual training events which provide attendees opportunities to earn continuous education points and further their professional development. These events are called PDIs.
At the national level, SDFM hosts a National PDI each year, usually the week of Memorial Day. At the local/regional level, many local SDFM chapters host Mini-PDIs, which take different forms across the country. For the Aviation Chapter, the Mini-PDI is usually a one-day conference event held in the spring.
For those who would like to participate in training at their leisure, the National SDFM provides a Virtual PDI. This consists of online access to recorded material (workshops and mini-courses) from the year’s National PDI.
Many PDI events, including the Virtual PDI and the Aviation Chapter Mini-PDI, provide continuing professional education (CPE) or continuing education and training (CET) credits.
DOD FM Certification