Looking at membership numbers and trends by month since 1989. All up since 1998. Expecting to hit 58,750 by end of March 2010. That would be up 1.58%. We are pretty confident that we will get to 60,000 by end of March 2011--an increase of 2.13% over our estimate for this year (which is lower than what we had budgeted for this year).
Projecting dues income of 2.8 million.
Projecting decent income from the AG since it's a SIG this year.
Fox Imaging's advertising is part of their contracts with us-- they do not pay for ads in the Bulletin. We are projecting display ads in the Bulletin to stay the same or go up.
Testing... sigh.
Home Test sales go up and down, but in general have decreased. We have a good solution to this. I can't leak it until it's really ready. Stay tuned. Supervised testing- still flat and really, too low. Local Groups need to test more. Period. They get money. AML gets money. Mensa gets more members. Prior Evidence is up this year.
Overall projected testing income (and yes, this includes subtracting the costs of various promotions and coupons) $361,000.
Foundation Admin fees are funds from MERF to AML to pay for the staff time they use.
We currently have no international royalty programs (like Sterling Books) happening. Bummer.
Big decrease on royalty from Bank of American credit card. We think it's an economy thing.
Licensing-- up significantly. Got some good irons in the fire. I'm not sure what explanation of those irons I can release to the general membership (per the contracts with the companies). But It's gonna be nice.
Investment income--doing good with current policies, which are very conservative. This has served us well- staying away from equities. We have made a tiny bit of income, whereas many other organizations (and individuals) have continued to lose investment values.
3.59 million projected income. Slightly up from previous years.
5 comments:
I'm quite surprised that Fox Imaging is contractually entitled to x number (I don't know what it is) of pages of advertising in the Bulletin. What is AML getting for such a sizable concession? (Do we get a decent bit of licensing revenue from them? A percentage of their sales?)
Also, testing will continue to be a problem as long as we have as few proctors as we do. We need to come up with good ways to encourage members to become proctors who actively test (not just get the "title"). And it really needs to be more people who aren't doing other/sizable volunteer duties in Mensa already -- we have a habit of over-relying on the same core volunteers.
I'd like to be a proctor, but my schedule is full enough as is. Every last person who can manage the time, though, will certainly help our chapter out. We've got about a 1,000-person backlog on testing, and it's been that way for YEARS. If we can get through that, we can blast ahead of GNYM in number of members.
Re: Fox Imaging.. we absolutely arrange all our licensing agreements to benefit AML. The revenue we get from Fox (yes a percentage of sales) is significantly greater than the cost of their contracted advertising space in the Bulletin.
Re: Testing, I think the number of proctors is a problem yes, but there is something else, too. I am not on the committee that is looking into it, so I have only my personal experience to go on.
I'm a proctor, and I have a free testing site available nearly any time I want it two miles from my home. And yet, I never think on my own to set up a session. When our Testing Coordinator, Cindy, calls me and asks me to, I do run a session... not a big effort. But there is a disconnect in there; I have to be prodded to do it.
Do you get many Mensans visiting? Might there be a way to coordinate proctors as they travel? When I was stuck in South Carolina for a week, bored, I certainly would have popped over to Greenville or some place not too far to give a test if I had thought of it or if the LG had asked me to.
For years, the notion of a traveling team of proctors has been bandied about. But we already have proctors who travel... is there a way too coordinate and use them on their journeys? If there were a centralized testing coordinator, and a place for me to log that I'm going to be in Springfield Feb 28-30....
Just tossing out ideas.
My proctor experience is exactly the opposite of Robin's. In my chapter each proctor is on their own to set up a test whenever they feel like it, and let the testing coordinator know so she can notify the prospects. I'm not sure which method works better, ours or yours.
Marc
Interesting, traveling proctors (beyond the amount many chapters' proctors travel within their own borders to test their "own" prospects, that is). To answer your question, Robin, I don't know how many Mensans we get visiting. It's a rarity that there is a call out to people to assist via SIGHT for an incoming M. I'm not sure how many proctors would be willing to give a test when they're traveling (for business or vacation). There's no reason not to look into it, though - every bit of testing in (dare I say) all chapters helps.
At the moment, I'm not sure if/how much I may have overstated our proctor problem in MWM. I know the backlog of prospects is definitely accurate, but at the moment I don't know the specifics of how many proctors and proctor trainees we have, or the various scheduling for all of that. I'm looking into it.
One problem with travelling proctors is someone local will have to coordinate schedules with the traveller and set up the test. And what happens if the traveller's schedule changes and they can't be there? I think the key is to find ways to "encourage" more local members to become proctors. Interestingly, my favorite local members happen to be people I met while proctoring them.
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