Saturday, January 23, 2010
Finance Committee notes: Looking Ahead--Snippets of Discussions
Looking at 5-year outlook. This is just chock full of assumptions and WAGs. The point of looking at this and plugging in various numbers is to see the probable effects of various scenarios. The financial future is neither rosy nor overly gloomy. We can do what we need to do.
Now talking about the difficulty of getting Local Groups to be willing to participate, uncompensated, in generating external revenue.
Discussing AGs and the various levels of LG participation in the running of them.
Reviewing ASIE that might need amending. Do we want to prescribe dues adjustments every X number of years? I think so, yes. Something such as: The AMC will review and adjust dues rates in even numbered years. I mean, costs go up. For everything. All the time. Why try to deny that? If we proscribe a predictable schedule for adjustments, then we remove the political reactionary taint of the decision and enable the AMC to approach reality objectively.
Yeah, it sucks that reality includes inflation. I'm not thrilled that I'm not getting younger, either. But you wouldn't want to see me still wearing what I wore in high school. Trust me.
Considering renaming the category "National Office" to "Administrative & General." (This was Greg's suggestion based on how such line items are listed on 990s.)
Now talking about the difficulty of getting Local Groups to be willing to participate, uncompensated, in generating external revenue.
Discussing AGs and the various levels of LG participation in the running of them.
Reviewing ASIE that might need amending. Do we want to prescribe dues adjustments every X number of years? I think so, yes. Something such as: The AMC will review and adjust dues rates in even numbered years. I mean, costs go up. For everything. All the time. Why try to deny that? If we proscribe a predictable schedule for adjustments, then we remove the political reactionary taint of the decision and enable the AMC to approach reality objectively.
Yeah, it sucks that reality includes inflation. I'm not thrilled that I'm not getting younger, either. But you wouldn't want to see me still wearing what I wore in high school. Trust me.
Considering renaming the category "National Office" to "Administrative & General." (This was Greg's suggestion based on how such line items are listed on 990s.)
Dues influencing Retention
Looking at charts of membership totals, renewal rates, and dues increases. Interesting.
Even the renewal rates do not support it-- you can't say membership is going up because of new members replacing old members.
If I can get it, I'll post that graphic.
Facts do not support the myth
that dues increases lose members.
Even the renewal rates do not support it-- you can't say membership is going up because of new members replacing old members.
If I can get it, I'll post that graphic.
How did we get positive?
I asked: How did we manage this when we didn't for the last 5 years?
Three main reasons:
1) No litigation
2) We're finally feeling the results of the dues increase (which always takes a couple years to really affect us since people tend to buy 3 & 5 year memberships at old rates).
3) No election this year.
Three main reasons:
1) No litigation
2) We're finally feeling the results of the dues increase (which always takes a couple years to really affect us since people tend to buy 3 & 5 year memberships at old rates).
3) No election this year.
Finance Committee notes: Expenses
Three meetings AMC meetings next year. We will also reinstitute the Finance Committee meeting (because this way of doing it sucks).
Bulletin cost goes up because we expect to have more members. Truncating the Directory issue to cut costs. Other than that, not much change.
Web services-- much happier with our new ISP. Legal is cost for the domains we own. We spread that over several years. We will be upgrading the site and attendant services. Most of the services in this area come from staff effort and not from buying more bells and whistles.
Gifted Youth- big cost is background checks and renewing checks every 5 years. Other big cost is attendance at NAGC convention.
Foundation grants are $1 per member allocated to the Foundation... they use for admin (paying us back for the staff time) so they can say that all donations go to charity, not administration.
Hearings- nothing planned, but we have to have something there just in case.
No elections this year beyond the ombudsman election. Phew. Election years are expensive. (This is personal hot button for me-- 57,000 geniuses and we have to pay someone else $37K to count our ballots because we can't trust ourselves).
Leadership Development: For the first time, ever, over a 12-month period, we have a Leadership event in every single region. Peggy is focusing on smaller one or two-group events more than the big formal weekend regional events. She wants to move many of our resources online--podcasts, videos, power points, etc.
Local Group Funding: Down a bit-- due to decrease in awards and gifts, newsletter exchange, postage (because more officers are taking advantage of electronic stuff). Actual money sent to the Local Groups is still at the same rate.
Testing costs are up because this is a year to buy more Wonderlics (we bought a two-year supply in 2008). The price per piece for the Wonderlic has increased a bit, too. We do negotiate with the company to keep the costs down.
Marketing is down $70k, but mainly because we pulled licensing out and into a separate category. Increasing advertising. Increase in awards and gifts (primarily using what we had to buy, per contract, from the left-overs from the Boutique) because of the 50th Anniversary. Dues & subscriptions down by eliminating some software by using staff to figure out some work-arounds for software we are still keeping.
Licensing-- royalties to authors for the calendars. Legal is contract work for new agreements. Licensing fees is the 2% we have to pay MIL based on our licensing income.
Membership-- OMFG! the credit card and banking fees! Over $92K! Printing and that sort of thing up overall because we'll have more members. We did buy extra membership cards last year, so that cost is down this year.
MIL component still at 5%. yay!
"National Office" would be better called overhead and administration. It includes:
Audit and tax prep. Advertising to hire someone. Fees for banking. Staff awards and gifts for anniversaries. Hardware and software. Archival system. Accounting system support. On-going training and professional development for staff. Salaries and benefits. Outside HR administration (so we get better rates on insurance and other benefits). Insurance on building and equipment. Equipment rental/support (copiers, postal machines, etc). Freight & shipping of mailing bills and other little stuff, shipping of supplies for the AG to the AG site (some years we can drive it to the AG, but this year, Detroit is too far to drive). Insurance operations-- D&O, fire, flood, general liability. Janitorial and cleaning. Various printing and postage. Rent on building ($71K). Repairs and maintenance--copiers cost a lot! Supplies--paperclips, paper, pens, toner, etc. Taxes on value of personal property (gak!). Telephone & Internet. Temp contract labor--sometimes. Travel for staff to go to professional development programs, AMC meetings, AG, etc. Milage for when staff has to run to the bank, run to the airport to pick up AMC members at the airport, etc.
Name & Logo protection-- taking the lawsuit out of the mix, this is the cost of using Cliff and his firm when we need to send a C&D letter, advise us on internal situations, etc. Cliff does give us some free hours.
Special Projects- Litigation: nada. All bills have been paid already.
Events: Big expense but it's netted out as income, so there is nothing listed here.
RVCs: $1800 per RVC. In general RVCs have spent far less than budgeted last year. Woot!
Capital: Server upgrade and maintenance; chairs, shredders, graphic software upgrades, laptop replacement. All basic and reasonable stuff. Can't let the building and equipment slide into disrepair.
First round gives us an excess of operating revenue over expenses as more than $45K. We haven't had a positive number in this line since 2006-07. This is the cash-flow number. There is more accounting massaging we have to do.
Non-operating revenue is paper transactions recording unrealized gains and losses on investments.
Life-member non-cash allocation is adjustment internally for every year older a life member gets--and thus we don't have to keep as much cash in their name . We get to recognize on our accounts a certain amount of their pre-paid dues as income.
Depreciation includes depreciation on capital expenses and vacation not yet taken. Again-- we don't have to spend it, but we have to account for it.
Equity restoration-- what the AMC said we have to pay ourselves back for the lawsuit costs.
Bulletin cost goes up because we expect to have more members. Truncating the Directory issue to cut costs. Other than that, not much change.
Web services-- much happier with our new ISP. Legal is cost for the domains we own. We spread that over several years. We will be upgrading the site and attendant services. Most of the services in this area come from staff effort and not from buying more bells and whistles.
Gifted Youth- big cost is background checks and renewing checks every 5 years. Other big cost is attendance at NAGC convention.
Foundation grants are $1 per member allocated to the Foundation... they use for admin (paying us back for the staff time) so they can say that all donations go to charity, not administration.
Hearings- nothing planned, but we have to have something there just in case.
No elections this year beyond the ombudsman election. Phew. Election years are expensive. (This is personal hot button for me-- 57,000 geniuses and we have to pay someone else $37K to count our ballots because we can't trust ourselves).
Leadership Development: For the first time, ever, over a 12-month period, we have a Leadership event in every single region. Peggy is focusing on smaller one or two-group events more than the big formal weekend regional events. She wants to move many of our resources online--podcasts, videos, power points, etc.
Local Group Funding: Down a bit-- due to decrease in awards and gifts, newsletter exchange, postage (because more officers are taking advantage of electronic stuff). Actual money sent to the Local Groups is still at the same rate.
Testing costs are up because this is a year to buy more Wonderlics (we bought a two-year supply in 2008). The price per piece for the Wonderlic has increased a bit, too. We do negotiate with the company to keep the costs down.
Marketing is down $70k, but mainly because we pulled licensing out and into a separate category. Increasing advertising. Increase in awards and gifts (primarily using what we had to buy, per contract, from the left-overs from the Boutique) because of the 50th Anniversary. Dues & subscriptions down by eliminating some software by using staff to figure out some work-arounds for software we are still keeping.
Licensing-- royalties to authors for the calendars. Legal is contract work for new agreements. Licensing fees is the 2% we have to pay MIL based on our licensing income.
Membership-- OMFG! the credit card and banking fees! Over $92K! Printing and that sort of thing up overall because we'll have more members. We did buy extra membership cards last year, so that cost is down this year.
MIL component still at 5%. yay!
"National Office" would be better called overhead and administration. It includes:
Audit and tax prep. Advertising to hire someone. Fees for banking. Staff awards and gifts for anniversaries. Hardware and software. Archival system. Accounting system support. On-going training and professional development for staff. Salaries and benefits. Outside HR administration (so we get better rates on insurance and other benefits). Insurance on building and equipment. Equipment rental/support (copiers, postal machines, etc). Freight & shipping of mailing bills and other little stuff, shipping of supplies for the AG to the AG site (some years we can drive it to the AG, but this year, Detroit is too far to drive). Insurance operations-- D&O, fire, flood, general liability. Janitorial and cleaning. Various printing and postage. Rent on building ($71K). Repairs and maintenance--copiers cost a lot! Supplies--paperclips, paper, pens, toner, etc. Taxes on value of personal property (gak!). Telephone & Internet. Temp contract labor--sometimes. Travel for staff to go to professional development programs, AMC meetings, AG, etc. Milage for when staff has to run to the bank, run to the airport to pick up AMC members at the airport, etc.
Name & Logo protection-- taking the lawsuit out of the mix, this is the cost of using Cliff and his firm when we need to send a C&D letter, advise us on internal situations, etc. Cliff does give us some free hours.
Special Projects- Litigation: nada. All bills have been paid already.
Events: Big expense but it's netted out as income, so there is nothing listed here.
RVCs: $1800 per RVC. In general RVCs have spent far less than budgeted last year. Woot!
Capital: Server upgrade and maintenance; chairs, shredders, graphic software upgrades, laptop replacement. All basic and reasonable stuff. Can't let the building and equipment slide into disrepair.
First round gives us an excess of operating revenue over expenses as more than $45K. We haven't had a positive number in this line since 2006-07. This is the cash-flow number. There is more accounting massaging we have to do.
Non-operating revenue is paper transactions recording unrealized gains and losses on investments.
Life-member non-cash allocation is adjustment internally for every year older a life member gets--and thus we don't have to keep as much cash in their name . We get to recognize on our accounts a certain amount of their pre-paid dues as income.
Depreciation includes depreciation on capital expenses and vacation not yet taken. Again-- we don't have to spend it, but we have to account for it.
Equity restoration-- what the AMC said we have to pay ourselves back for the lawsuit costs.
Bottom Line: POSITIVE $295.00
(The last positive bottom line was 2006-07)
Readers, please remember, this is a
FIRST DRAFT
Finance Committee notes: Income
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.
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.
Before the Meeting
Here I am, waking up and sipping coffee, gathering brain cells in order to go over the budget draft, line by painful line.
Our goal is a non-negative bottom line. And that has to include the $150,000 that the AMC mandated for revenue restoration (or whatever that pretty phrase was).
This is gonna be hard.
- Posted using my iPhone
Our goal is a non-negative bottom line. And that has to include the $150,000 that the AMC mandated for revenue restoration (or whatever that pretty phrase was).
This is gonna be hard.
- Posted using my iPhone
Friday, January 22, 2010
Heading to Texas
I'm on my way to the National Office today for the Finance Committee meeting. Whooo-hoo! I'll take notes and post what I can, when I can. At least this is not an election year. Non-election years are always easier to work with, since we don't have that huge expense.
Monday, January 18, 2010
One Chore done
I finished the February ChiMe and got it sent off to the printer.
Next up: going over the first draft of the budget with a fine toothed comb. First glance over coffee this morning was interesting-- nearly every line of predicted 09-10 actual year-end expense was below the budged amount. Yes, Virginia, we are cutting the costs of doing business in Mensa.
Next up: going over the first draft of the budget with a fine toothed comb. First glance over coffee this morning was interesting-- nearly every line of predicted 09-10 actual year-end expense was below the budged amount. Yes, Virginia, we are cutting the costs of doing business in Mensa.
Wednesday, January 13, 2010
Just something I heard recently
People reflexively think things
are worth the price they pay.
I wonder what that means for Mensa volunteers.
Monday, January 4, 2010
Oh Frak!
Looks like I'm going to be doing ChiMe for a few months.
Now I have to wonder: will I be allowed to enter Dave Gudjonis' fabulous issues in the PRP, or does he--and Chicago-- get penalized because I'm in the group and I'm stepping in to help out?
And I thought I was going to have a calm, get-caught-up month, at last.
Now I have to wonder: will I be allowed to enter Dave Gudjonis' fabulous issues in the PRP, or does he--and Chicago-- get penalized because I'm in the group and I'm stepping in to help out?
And I thought I was going to have a calm, get-caught-up month, at last.
Friday, January 1, 2010
Year of the Tiger
2010 is the year of the tiger according to the Chinese zodiac—a year for bravery and risk-taking. Also the sign I was born under, if one considers such things portentious.I don't particularly like taking risks, but I'm generally willing to dig up the courage to do and try things I believe are necessary, even when I am pretty sure I'll have to weather a shitstorm later.
Like any zodiac description, some of the tiger traits fit me well and some do not seem "me" at all. I see that there seems to be some modification of the traits based on being a fire, water, wood, metal, or earth tiger.
No real point to this post.. I just found it something interesting to look up.
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