Paul Servis

At the present time the Budget Committee is hard at work developing next year’s budget. As you may know, we have two organizations for which we are responsible: the Northern Neck of Virginia Chapter of the National Audubon Society and The Northern Neck Audubon Foundation. Our Chapter makes recommendations to the Board of Directors of the Foundation for various grants that are made to organizations during each year.

In 2003 The NNAS Board of Directors had to request $3500 from the Northern Neck Audubon Foundation in order to fund our blue bird box project. The Board feels that such use of Foundation funds should be avoided. Starting this year we plan to pay the operating expenses of NNAS from NNAS funds. The Foundation’s monies should be preserved for appropriate grants in our community
Our NNAS Chapter has an obligation to develop an annual budget that insures that we are responsible to the membership for the purpose of maintaining income and paying our operating expenses. We have several areas of expense such as the newsletter, insurance on our properties and volunteers, the directory and programs.
Our income is from two main sources: the profits from our blue bird box sales and our annual membership dues.

At the present time, we have two classes of membership: Local plus National and Local only. We have 350 members who belong to the NNAS and the National Audubon and about 50 members that belong to NNAS as local members only. Last year the National Audubon provided us with $1210.00 for your part of your National/ Local dues or $3.46 per member. Our 50 Local only members paid $ 750 in dues to NNAS or $ 15 per member. In recent years, National Audubon has been giving less financial support to the Local Audubon Chapters.

In the past year it cost $13.23 per member to provide for the basic expenses of running NNAS. We sold 1000 blue bird boxes at $ 10 per box during the past several years as a means of supplementing our income. This year we are charging $15 per blue bird box with the hope that we can increase our income. Our goal is to sell at least 800 boxes at the new price. We feel that the boxes are still a bargain at $15; compared to comparable commercially produced boxes.

The Budget Committee is looking at our dues situation and will be making recommendations to the Board of Directors. Our hope is that more of our members will renew as Local Members only, but we also understand that some of our members wish to maintain their membership in National Audubon.
Our Budget for this year will be presented at the June meeting.