Update by the Executive Director
Tim Merriman, Executive Director
January 2008


Audit, Budget and Cash Flow
The December budget report for the National Office suggests a deficit for 2007 of $66,558 for the National Office operations and a deficit of $91,021 for the entire organization. Depreciation has been booked early this year but asset growth in inventory is not on the books, so the numbers will change some with the audit but not dramatically. Reasons for the deficit are likely:

•	Sales Manager not hired in May as planned so ad sales and store sals are lower than expected.
•	Mediation and attorney expenses of about $15,000 not in the budget
•	Fundraising was limited to pledge payments made from previous year.
•	Membership income is lagging and did not get the expected boost from the National Workshop.
•	Ad sales were lagging and lower than recent years.
•	Association store sales were also lower than expected due to lower workshop attendance.

Some areas performed better than expected. Those include the International Workshop in Vancouver, Certification, InterpPress, Investments, and Publications. The National Workshop remains our most important revenue source.

We continue to rely on the line of credit to cover cash flow needs.

Business Plan 2007
Performance on objectives in the 2007 Business Plan Certification, InterpPress and Publications have exceeded income projections for the year substantially. Other categories remain below their projected amounts. Specific performance is available on the Action Plan Indicators page of this staff report.

Grants
A final report is being prepared for submission to National Park Service and U.S. Environmental Protection Agency that demonstrates performance on the last grant with them. Lisa Brochu has completed development of a written document from Sara Melena’s thesis that will be a part of the report.

Greening of NAI
The National Office has just switched from Corporate Express maintenance chemicals to Ecolabs products. All of them are both more earth friendly and much less expensive, often 10% the price of what we used before. We continue to look for these improvements in all areas of business and will soon have a segment of Frequently Asked Questions on the website that explains our “green” initiatives. We will also be reporting in each month’s NAInow on the “green” traits of Portland’s convention facilities that will serve as our host facilities at the 2008 National Workshop.

Hot Button
We have had no reports of service failures through the NAI Hot Button on our Leader Resources page. We have tested it and it seems to be working well. Please report any service failures that you hear about through this and we will both follow up quickly and let you know what we did.

InterpPress
Sales of existing books go well with 144% of projections for the year achieved to date. Amazon sales are now approaching $500 a month after only a year on their program for small publishers. The Association Store sales are at 74% of the annual objective. Those will not likely increase substantially by year-end.

Journal of Interpretation Research
The second issue for 2007 was mailed by Dec. 31, 2007.

Membership
Revenue from memberships remained far below our objective of $350,000 at $309,636. We must improve membership revenue and numerical growth in 2008 to achieve Business Plan objectives. Renewal of those who join through the Certified Interpretive Guide (CIG) program is a good way to do this but our current data bases are a barrier to cross tabulating who gets a CIG but does not renew their memberships. Russ is working on improvements to the databases at this time that will merge certification with the main database making our tracking of member renewal for CIGs easy to do. That should be done by late spring.

Staff Changes
We have just hired a new part-time worker, Lou Anderson, who will work in all departments in a clerical assistance role for 12 hours each week. In recent months we have found fewer students appropriate to our work and we are using those student worker funds for this part-time position.

Training and Speaking
In December I participated in a a very successful CIT course in Volcanoes National Park in Hawaii. In early January Jim Covel and I attended a training event in Sanibel, Florida, for CEOs and Presidents of associations. It was sponsored by American Society of Association Executives.

Travel Plans
My upcoming travel may be viewed here.