A few words about money…
Hi Everyone
I am the CMA Treasurer and thought perhaps I should add a few comments about CMA’s finances.
At the Summer Board retreat and fall and spring convention board meetings, two things dominated the discussion: how can we make the CMA organization better in the things that we do and the things that we offer our membership and how do we trim costs and run a much leaner organization at the same time.
We so appreciate your concerns and suggestions and ideas. We have discussed many of these ideas, while keeping in mind all of our membership, including those who still want print copies and those that are ready to move to digital. We have worked hard on the budget and trimmed and eliminated those things that are not essential. We have considered our limited revenue sources and have seen the decline in convention attendance because of the budget issues at individual schools. Of course, our sponsorships are extremely important and appreciated, and although we have seen some pullback, we continue to be grateful for those we have.
We try to be sensitive to all of the membership and take the ideas, suggestions and criticism into consideration in making our decisions. We struggled at the New York board meeting with increasing the cost of membership, and in the end we felt we had found a modest compromise.
As an organization, we feel we have weathered the storm and now have a firm grasp on our budget. We we have seen better times, but we are still trying to improve our organizations while learning to live with a reduced budget.
The board will have a retreat again in July where we will continue to discuss how we can be a better organization. We are excited about the future of CMA and look forward to more suggestions from our members.
If you have questions about some of the actions we have taking regarding the budget please feel free to contact me.
Annette Forbes
- CMA Treasurer
- Iowa State Daily
- aforbes@iastate.edu
- 515-294-2609