Update by the Executive Director
Tim Merriman
June 2008


Advisory Group
We held our first Corporate Advisory Council meeting on May 27. All but one of those invited participated and excellent suggestions and ideas resulted. The next meeting is in late July and should advance the ideas discussed.

Audit, Budget and Cash Flow
Work on the annual audit has begun and will continue through June. The final report will likely be available in July or August.

Bank Service Changes
We are finding Direct Deposit to work well for payroll. The check scanning system for Desktop Deposits is working and speeds deposit of all incoming checks. It saves processing time and advances cash flow.

Business Plan 2007
Membership is up $10,000 over last year when deferred member income is added to earned member revenue. Ad sales are lagging when compared to last year. Certification is doing very well and showing strong growth for the year. Sales of commercial booths for the National Workshop in Portland are at 69 spaces, about double the registrants for this date last year. This will be a much larger trade show with more than 100 booths.

Greening of NAI
All promotion for the National Workshop in Portland has been reduced to one post card to all members and several ads in our existing magazines. In the past we have printed 15,000 registration booklets at great expense in paper and shipping. This year we will rely on the Internet and existing publications with the effects of saving both paper and expense.

Hot Button
This continues to be the best way for NAI leaders to let us know of service failures.

International Conference
The International Conference in Sokcho, Korea, has shown a surplus above expenses of about $17,000, which is better than each previous year. We estimate staff time for the event at about $23,000. Each year we attempt to improve revenue to cover all costs including staff time and we have made steady progress in that direction each year.

Membership
Membership revenue for the first five months was $129,045. The combined numbers of member earned revenue and deferred revenue of $288,000 for this year is $10,000 better than the $278,000 for the same period last year indicating some member growth. We continue to strategize on how to retain more members who join through the CIG program while also building more commercial and institutional members.

Sales
Store and InterpPress sales for the year are lagging. Most of the sales come in the fourth quarter so a good National Workshop will improve performance in this area. We have several new titles in the Association Store, Authenticity by Pine and Gilmore and Parks for Life by Will LaPage.

Staff Changes
Trisha Koppert works for NAI during the school year in fulfillment of sales orders. She continues as a part-time employee this summer in that role and is assisting Jamie with membership data input. She is also doing an internship in accounting with Beth for several weeks.

Training and Speaking
In May I gave a keynote on “Interpretation is Management” at the International Conference in Korea. I co-taught the CIP course and CIHT training course in Wales and Bristol, England, respectively. We also met with Association for Heritage Interpretation Board members while there and had useful discussions about cooperating in various ways on training and certification.

Travel Plans
My upcoming travel may be viewed here.