Update by the Executive Director
Tim Merriman, Executive Director
August 2007

Audit, Budget and Cash Flow
The audit is near completion but additional requests from the auditor to staff have delayed the report. We hope to have it by early September. All CDs and mutual funds established by regions and sections have been sold and we have created a spreadsheet to compute interest for regions and sections that will be used at the end of September. The line of credit has been paid down to $100,000 from a high of $265,000 and should be paid off by mid-September due to National Workshop registration income.

Grants
We continue to work with NPS with the Phase II grant with USEPA on projects related to the nature center study with CSU.

InterpPress
Sales of existing books go well with 86% of projections for the year achieved to date. It is expected we will greatly surpass our objective of $30,000.

Investments
Sale of stocks from the Randall Fund and Taylor Charitable Gift Annuity yielded a return greater than 27% for VGENX and virtually no growth in the other two funds. This amounts to a 13.5% return for the $100,000 in Randall Funds and a 27% return for the Taylor CGA. Dick Taylor receives a contractual percentage of the earnings from invested funds in the CGA.

Journal of Interpretation Research
The first issue for 2007 went out earlier this month in August. The second issue is being reviewed at this time according to the editor, Dr. Carolyn Ward.

Leases
Both leases downstairs at 230 Cherry St. have expired on July 15. Both plan to renew but require procedural approval. We raised the rent from $14 a square foot to $15 a square foot for the new contract. This is the first raise in three years. We hope to have the renewed leases in place by early September.

Parking Area
We now have six parking spaces behind the building and a dumpster site for storing trash and recyclables from our building and Mason Street North properties.

Sales
We have added James Loewen’s books to our Association Store titles and will have them for sale when he speaks at the National Workshop in Wichita.

Staff Changes
We have not hired on the Sales Manager position at this time. Sam Smith, our maintenance and shipping clerk, has graduated from CSU and returned to Oklahoma. Jascha Propp has replaced him as our maintenance worker and Trisha Koppert is working as a shipping clerk.

Training and Speaking
Lisa and I taught an interpretive planning course while doing an interpretive plan in July in Guaymas, Mexico, for World Wildlife Fund and the Mexico Commission for Parks and Protected Areas. We also delivered the CIT course at the National Conservation Training Center in Shepherdstown, WV in July. We taught a CIT course in Fort Collins in early August and a one-day interpretive planning course in Hyde Park area at University of Chicago for Frank Lloyd Wright Museum.

Travel Plans
My upcoming travel may be viewed here.