171221 Ruritan Annual Report

Executive Director’s Annual Report

Ruritan did have a good year financially. Your National Board of Directors, Treasurer and staff worked diligently to reduce expenses while experiencing a shortfall in dues revenue. The shortfall in dues revenue could have been much worse if not for our alternative membership types. Nearly 15% of our dues collection comes from Associate Members, Ruritan Forever members, Youth members, Teen members and for the first time this year, Affiliate members. If not for the $153,000 in dues from these member sources the shortfall in revenue would have been much worse. That begs the question why? The answer is simple. The active membership of Ruritan continues to decline. The statistical information

National Treasurer’s Annual Report Ruritan had a good financial year. The income and expense statement shown on page six shows that the Ruritan National operating budget had a positive bottom line of $4,977.16. The graphs that follow the statement show visually how we receive our money and how we spend it by category. Having nearly $5,000 in our bottom line is remarkable when you look closely at the numbers. We budgeted $1.91 million in dues revenue but missed that mark by just over $85,000. Our total income from all sources was budgeted at $1.3 million but we collected only $1.1 million. We were short by nearly $150,000 in income from all sources. On the other side of the equation we budgeted $1.3 million in expenses but spent nearly $150,000 less. The savings in expenses was enough to create a positive bottom line of $4,977.16 The convention income was also short of the budgeted amount and as a result you will see on page ten that the convention lost $5,221.52. Netting the two numbers we had a net income on the balance sheet on page nine of -$244.36. We will continue to be diligent in our responsibility to use your money wisely. Thank you for giving me the opportunity to serve you as your National Treasurer. We have to begin to reverse these trends. Growing clubs is our most important issue whether that is through new clubs in new communities or growing the clubs that exist by recruiting new members and keeping them. We need your help. Continue to keep the growth of Ruritan at the front of your list for 2019. will show that we lost 22 clubs this year and 845 members. Those numbers alone are cause for concern. However, if you look at the annual report from 40 years ago we had 1301 clubs and 38,790 members. That means we have lost 327 clubs and 15,744 members in the last 40 years. That creates two notable problems. 15,744 members would be contributing $692,736 to the annual budget. Sometimes the numbers don’t look too bad when we look a year at a time. But when you look at the cumulative effect the full impact is clear. We talk about money a lot. Perhaps too much. But think about the impact in another way. We have less members and less clubs serving fewer communities. 327 clubs lost in the last 40 years means that 327 communities across the country are not receiving the benefit of a Ruritan club. Again, the numbers are easier to digest a year at a time but when you look at the long term it gets harder. Think about what your club does for its local community. What would the community do if your club was not there to serve its needs?

David Thompson National Treasurer

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Ruritan National 2018 Annual Report