AHA Board of Directors Meeting Report
March 9 & 10, 2007

To Region XI members,

I have tried to create this report since I returned from the last Board meeting, but it seems that four days away from home created two weeks of catching up.

We had a very busy agenda for the last Board meeting; in fact President Myron Krause sent a note to all of us several weeks ahead of the meeting to encourage everyone to make his or her travel plans to allow for two full days of meeting. As a general rule there are several officers and directors who have to leave the meeting midway through Saturday’s session for various reasons, but this time only one person left and another had to miss all of Saturday’s session due to illness.

The topic that will and should create the most interest was the report back to the board by the Governance Task Force. We have engaged a consulting firm, Charney Associates, to study our governance situation and return with a report and make recommendations. To begin this activity they created a survey and sent it to all officers and board members in October of 2006. This was an online survey and had some pretty frank questions for us on the order of our likes, dislikes and concerns about the way our association operates. There were 25 of these surveys returned, a very high percentage. At the board meeting we were presented with the summary of these responses, then followed by a proposed structure that Charney Associates felt would make our board more effective and be structured more in line with other not-for-profit organizations.

After this presentation the board and officers broke out into four groups, each group having at least one of the Task Force members to discuss and respond to these reports and proposals. This was an exercise taking in total about two and one-half hours. We then returned to the boardroom and each group presented their list of likes, dislikes and points of concern. These were summarized and sent to all of us to review after the meeting, then will be reviewed by the Task Force and the folks from Charney in April. We will be presented with the next report addressing our issues at the May board meeting.

The goals that we have given the Task Force are these: 1) Define our present governance structure including both its strengths and weaknesses; 2) Define the relationship and interaction of the Executive Committee, Board of Directors, Executive Vice-President and AHA staff, including the responsibilities and authorities of each, definitions of goals for each and the ability to measure progress to attaining these goals; and 3) The most important focus of this whole exercise is to improve our ability to serve our membership, maintain our delegate structure and its inherent strength. A nearly universal theme from all the feedback sessions was that our association is a sport first and a business second, but that said we also must remember that 80% of AHA revenues are generated by competitions.

We were also given the treasurers report which was very encouraging. Revenues are positive year-to-date, about $933,000 against a budget of the same amount. Currently revenues are higher than budget and expenses are nearly an even match with budget, but we must remember that in this last quarter there is very little revenue coming in while expenses are ongoing. Factors for these results include more profit than planned for U.S. and Youth Nationals, a break-even year for Canadian Nationals and a slight loss ($6,000) for Sport Horse Nationals. Registration income was down, the net is -$13,000 compared to expenses. Breaking that down further, Arabian registrations were about a break-even proposition with HA/AA registrations accounting for the losses. The summary of the Treasurers Report is that we are on track for a positive year and should finish in a better position than our budget. In related activity we approved the FY2008 budget, which calls for positive, results again, $519,000 revenue vs. expense results. We also approved the Capital Expenditure forecast for FY 2008 in the amount of $1.1 million, very heavy on IT improvements and also an amount to replace the building’s HVAC system. Both these investments will generate enough savings to pay their own way and therefore will be revenue-neutral.

We were given a report from the Committee Restructure Task Force. We had asked that this group reconvene after the board’s action at convention to postpone implementation of the restructure that we approved at our August, 2006 meeting. The summary of their recommendations are: 1) All committees will remain in place the same as before our 8/06 meeting except Cutting will now be included in the Working Western Committee, and Competitive Trail Committee and Endurance Ride Committee will still be combined to the Distance Ride Committee; 2) The various National Committees of Regional Chairs will no longer exist; 3) National Committee Chairs will now be elected by the entire committee membership with these guidelines – terms will be two years with a two-term limit for service, and BOD members will not be allowed to chair Tier B committees. The election method being developed will be that any members wishing to run for the chairmanship will nominate themselves via e-mail by September 4, 2007. Voting by e-mail will be conducted from 9/17/07 through 10/15/07. The elected chairs will begin their terms at the end of convention, 2007. The details of the nomination and voting procedures are being finalized by the IT and Member Service Departments and will be communicated soon.

Finally we were given a report from the Market Development and Promotion Group. The two highlights of that report were information of the launch of “Modern Arabian Horse” magazine as our new official publication beginning with the April/May issue, and a report of our endeavors to seek out new corporate partners. We had a very impressive presence at the FBR Open Golf Tournament in Phoenix, AZ in late January and early February. As a result of this activity our Marketing Department is pursuing more than a dozen leads for potential corporate partners. It was estimated that our presence there and the related media exposure would equate to something in excess of a $300,000 advertising campaign to improve our “brand recognition”.

If there are any questions please contact me, and I will do my best to answer them.
 
Regards,

Dave Waggoner – Region XI Director

REGION 11 DELEGATE MEETING MINUTES
November 2006
February 2007
July 2007
November 2007
February 2008