The president's perspective - fall 2010

Ann MacKenzie, OFNC president

Rich club, poor club

You may have heard references to the Club not having enough revenue to cover its expenses. Conversely, you may have heard that the Club recently made generous donations to the Nature Conservancy to help purchase critical parcels of land in Eastern Ontario. How can these seemingly contradictory situations both be true?

While most members tend to yawn at the mention of Club finances, it is important to understand the major dynamics in order to comprehend some changes that are, or may be, in the works. An analogy with an individual might be the easiest way to paint this picture. For those of you more conversant with financial statements, please just bear with me.

Assume a person, let's call her Heather Birch, is earning a salary of $50,000. She has received an inheritance from Uncle Clay and another from Aunt Fern giving her a total investment portfolio of about $200,000. Every year she also gets about $3,000 in monetary gifts for birthdays and Christmas.

The challenge for Heather Birch is that she spends about $60,000 each year. Furthermore, she is uncertain about future expenses related to her house and her job might be cut in the next round of budget cuts. She would also like to continue supporting the environmental projects that her Uncle Clay and Aunt Fern had supported in their lifetime.

Heather is looking at ways to cut her expenses so that they are covered by the combination of her salary and monetary gifts so she would no longer have to eat into her investment funds. Instead, she could keep these funds as a cushion in case of future needs and possibly also make environmental donations.

Is Heather Birch rich or is she poor? Some of her friends think she is crazy to be worrying about her budget when she has "all that money." Others think she is on a slippery slope because she is not living within her means.

You can easily see the connection between Heather Birch and the OFNC. On average, over the last six years, expenses have exceeded revenues by $20,000 per year. Some losses have been covered by the annual donations that are received with membership dues (Heather's birthday and Christmas presents). Beyond that the Club has had to dip into its investments or at least the interest earned on them. Fortunately we have received several sizeable bequests over the years (our Aunt Ferns and Uncle Clays). However, it would be folly to continue with a financial plan that relied on a steady supply of bequests. Like Heather, we need to make modifications so that annual revenues will cover annual expenses. Then we can treat the bequests as the gifts they are.

In keeping with the mission of the Club, and the spirit of the bequests, we have made a couple of major donations to the Nature Conservancy of Canada over the last couple of years. One donation helped with the purchase of property just north of Kingston in the Frontenac Arch (connecting Algonquin Park and the Adirondacks). The most recent donation assisted with the purchase of property off Wolf Grove Road in Almonte. Some members might be familiar with this property that was owned by Martha Webber. We agreed that it was important to keep this land for conservation and study purposes.

What are some of the uncertainties that might lie ahead for the Club? We are not likely to lose our job, like Heather, but membership numbers are declining. Each year there are more members not renewing than there are new members joining. Declining interest rates have impacted interest earnings. Some tasks might require contracting out in the future as it is more difficult to find volunteers.

We are in the process of putting the Canadian Field-Naturalist online in keeping with the current practice of other scientific journals. Money must be kept aside until we are more certain about the cash flows related to this transition. A couple of years ago we started sending CFN to only those members who requested it, thereby reducing our printing and mailing costs. Now, with the switch to electronic publishing, the journal will only be available electronically unless a member chooses to pay extra for a hard copy.

Some other naturalist clubs have already changed their member publication to an electronic version, eliminating hard copy. We are considering what we should do with Trail and Landscape. No changes are in the works at the moment.

One thing that is important to the Club is that it be accessible to as many people as possible. For this reason we are not trying to balance the books by charging for the monthly meetings or walks and we even encourage non-members to attend. While we had a small increase in the membership fees a few years ago we prefer to get more members than to raise the cost to existing members. However, changes in administrative and committee budgets will be needed.

So, are we a rich club or a poor club? It all depends on what part of the financial picture you are looking at. If you would like to get involved in discussions of how we should manage the Club's financial situation, please come to one of the monthly meetings and raise the issue. You may also send me an email at annmackenzie@rogers.com. I can not always respond to emails in a timely fashion since we travel a lot. I also encourage everyone to come to our January meeting when we discuss the business aspects of the Club.

Ann MacKenzie