To Our Members 

I went to the annual meeting with a real sense of optimism about the progress we are making and had real facts and figures to share in the meeting to explain why I feel so optimistic.  This UPDATE will give you a brief sketch of what we covered and I will provide you with computer links to my full presentation and other items.

ANNUAL MEETING

I prepared a complete Power Point presentation for the meeting.  You can access that Power Point presentation at http://www.napha.net/joyspowerpoint.pps.  I will give you the highlights here, and I hope you will look at all of it.

 The purpose of the President’s report is to share information about “Where We Have Been and Where We are Going”.  This was the title of my presentation. Here are a few important facts that you might want to have:

·      Our membership in 2006 was 734. We ended 2008 with 840 members; 116 more members.  We are growing the membership!  Thank you for supporting our National Association!  This support is essential for us to continue on a positive path. 

·     New registrations have gone from the all-time low in 2004 of 421 to 840 in 2008. Membership has doubled.

·     Owner Transfer Registrations went from 663 in 2006 to 980 in 2008.  Obviously our members are selling horses.

·     In 2008 we handled 7,752 registration records for changes of many different kinds.  This is a massive amount of work accomplished.

·     The National Show has been fairly steady in the number of horses and has real growth in the number of classes entered.  This is important because the classes entered is where the support from the show can grow.  There were 740 class entries in 2008, up from 684 in 2006.

When I looked at these graphs I got excited all over again about NAPHA.  Our association is growing!  We are reaching the goals we set for this time period. There are a few who would try to tell you that the organization is not moving forward but these numbers tell the tale.  I hope you will share my enthusiasm and spread the word that your National Association has made great strides in meeting its obligations to its members in spite of a negative economy.

LET’S TALK ABOUT OUR WEBSITE

www.napha.net.  Have you looked in the last week?  It is up!  A new website for NAPHA has been in the works for over a year now.  Thank your Executive Director, Donna Bearer, who wears many hats and one of those is as our web designer and webmaster. 

Take a good look and give us your feedback.  We know that most of the links are working and some are not.  But we put this up the morning before the Annual Meeting as a surprise. 

We hope you are pleased with the new look for NAPHA.  Over time it will have even more functionality than it does now.

WHY AN AUDIT  FOR 2008  

For the past few years we have had what is called a “financial review” completed by an accounting firm.  NAPHA is not required to have an “audit” because it does not meet the Federal requirements for an audit.  Audits are conducted for organizations earning more than NAPHA does.   This year we conducted an actual “audit” to satisfy and stop rumors that have been circulating that there is some impropriety on the part of our staff with our funds.

We have completed this audit which found no impropriety of any kind.  So if anyone says to you that things are not handled properly, please know that we have the audit which states that this is not correct.  You are being misinformed and misled by someone who does not have the facts.

At the annual meeting we distributed the 2008 Audit for both NAPHA and the NAPHA Foundation.  You can see the entire audit at  www.napha.net/2008audit.  This audit was performed by a nationally known audit firm, certified to perform such audits. The audit was completed just prior to the annual meeting.  We felt that it was important for the membership to have this document as soon as possible.

The audit was not paid for through funds of NAPHA.  Your Board member, Linda Virgin, raised the $10,000 needed to have this audit completed.  I want to thank the following people for contributing to have this audit done:

Barbara Windom                                 

Linda & Bill Virgin                               

Roberta & Terry Ellis                           

Julia & Gary Meek                              

Shay & Leonard Hoffman                     

Dick Sisson                                         

Carolyn Mittrick                                    

Dr. Marla Wohlman                              

Sophia & Dr. Jorge Galante                   

Terry & Brian Jarchow                           

Dr. Alice Wolf & Dr. Jim Johnson          

D. Joy Gould                                        

Donna Bearer                                      

Jim Alexander                                      

Barbara Alexander                               

Bob & Bonnie Roth                            

George & Susan Henry                    

Gladys Freeman                               

Fran Cottle       

WHAT DID THE AUDIT CONCLUDE?

To date, NAPHA has an operating loss of $30,483.  We did during the year have two situations that arose which required legal assistance.  One cost was because of defending our registrations rules.  The other had to do with an old debt from the American Association which a member claimed was owed to him. If you look at the audit very closely you will see that we paid out $24,757 in legal fees.  We also ended the prior year, 2007, with a debt of $6,721. Added together this is closely the amount of debt we ended with in 2008.

Your Board has taken the following steps to address this financial concern:

(1) We eliminated one staff position

(2)  We balanced the new 2009 budget by including the $30,483 debt, with a goal of retiring that debt at the end of the year.

(3)  We have done a cash flow analysis and have monthly targets for income and expenditures.  We will watch this every month and make adjustments as needed.

IN CONCLUSION  

NAPHA is accomplishing everything we hoped it would do: 

1. It puts forth a professional image in the equine industry for our horse

2. It offers an online studbook never before available

3. It provides continuous running totals for show points that can be accessed on line

4. It has increased the membership

5. It is working to build a strong financial base for operations.

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