ASAE MEMBERSHIP DEVELOPMENT COUNCIL

Present: Gary Anderson, Billy Lawson, David Jones, Paul Heinemann, Don Erbach, Lal Kushwaha, Vince Stout, John Worley, Otto Loewer, Ken Giles, Czarena Crofcheck, Paul Walker, Bill Koenig, Peter Ling, Joey Norikane and Mark Crossley

4. Cooperative Agreement with the Indian Society of Agricultural Engineers Update

Gary Anderson began the call by welcoming everyone. A list of those MDC members present was confirmed.

Member statistics through 10/31/03 were presented. Retention is currently at 89% for full members and 59% for preprofessional/student members for an overall retention of 84%. These figures are very similar to the same period from last year with the preprofessional/student retention dropping a bit. It was pointed out that 89% retention for full members is higher than most other engineering societies. Final retention figures will be determined on 12/31/03.

Total membership figures as of 10/31/03 are as follows: 8,615 total members, which is comprised of 6,881 full members and 1,734 preprofessional/student members. This is only one member off of what the total was at the same time last year. To date, we have attracted 679 new full members and 477 new preprofessional/student members and we expect to meet or break new member goals by year’s end.

There was a decrease in the deficit projection from $100,000 in July to the current figure of $16,500 primarily due to the addition of a specialty conference; increased corporate sponsorship for annual international meeting and specialty conferences; an increase in CSP contributions; and an increase in site license revenue. These changes were enough so that none of the ideas the MDC came up with in July would need to be implemented and therefore, no programs and services to members would be affected. There was still question as to whether or not we still needed to be members of JETS (Junior Engineering Technical Society) and whether membership is worth the $3,000 in dues we pay. This issue will be looked into further and reported back to the MDC Budget subcommittee.

We are anticipating an increase in surplus to $44,000 by year's end primarily due to lower than expected annual international meeting expenses and increase in site license revenue.

BOT Appointed Dues Committee

This committee was appointed by President Stephens in December 2002 to recommend a process to periodically review the ASAE dues structure; use that process to review the current dues structure, and provide a report at the December 2003 BOT meeting. The committee consists of Nolan Clark, Chair; Kelly Detra; Ron McAllister; Gary Bubenzer; Chad Yagow; Carroll Goering; and Mark Crossley as staff liaison.

The committee met at the annual meeting and has been doing business by e-mail and an ASAE forum. They are currently working on a draft report to present to the BOT in December, which would set up a process for the dues structure and categories to be reviewed every five years. If a dues increase were needed, the following variables would be taken into account in setting new dues pricing:

The accumulated Consumer Price Index since the last dues adjustment.
Whether there have been any changes in member services provided by ASAE since the last dues adjustment that would justify a dues change.
For each of the past five years, calculate the percentage of society expenses covered by dues and project what that percentage would be five years ahead if past trends continued;
For each of the last five years, in consultation with the Finance Committee, calculate the restricted reserve balance as a percentage of the previous year’s society expenses, then project what that percentage would be five years ahead if past trends continued. If the percentage is projected to be below the desired 50% level, a dues increase may be needed to rebuild the restricted reserve.
Review the size of the society budget surplus or deficit for each of the last five years, then project the trend ahead five years to estimate future surpluses or deficits. Estimate the dues increase needed to cover the projected future deficits, if any.

The committee is also looking at the possibly of creating new Graduate Student ($30) and retiree (75+ $10) categories and eliminating the Sustaining member category. Final report will be sent to the MDC for review before the December 12 BOT meeting.

The cooperative agreement with ISAE has been signed by both parties and we are now waiting for ISAE members to join ASAE. Apparently, it is difficult to transfer large sums of money out of India. Lal Kushwaha reported that due to a change in ISAE leadership, he feels that the new leaders have dropped the ball on the agreement. He has tried continually to reach them, but to no avail. Ramesh Kanwar has agreed to look into the situation when he travels to India to attend a conference in January. Lal will contact him to discuss the situation further. They will continue to work on the situation and hopefully we will have between 1,500 – 2,000 new ISAE/ASAE members sometime in 2004. They will each pay the reduced-dues rate of $15.00 for members from developing countries.

President Stephens appointed this task force at the business meeting in Las Vegas. The task force is chaired by Bob Gustafson and consists of members Lalit Verma, Doug Bosworth, Louise Lawson, Wayne Coates and Mark Crossley. They have met by telephone four times and are currently reviewing the best methods by which to get all of the information out to the membership about the ramifications of going through with a name change or not. The task force is currently drafting a number of surveys to send to the membership to gauge feedback and level of interest. A final report will be given to the BOT and membership at the Ottawa meeting.

A question was raised as to whether or not the Name Change forum is open to the public. While it is available to non-members, they do not have the login and password (login: namechange; password: discuss) to access it. Mark agreed to bring this up at the next meeting of the task force as it was noted that having non-member opinion is important in this matter.

There are currently two open positions on the MDC Nominating Subcommittee and Gary asked for volunteers to fill the slots. This subcommittee is important because it will come up potential names for MDC Vice Chair, which takes affect at the end of the Ottawa meeting. There were no volunteers. Gary will make some calls to see if he can persuade some MDC members into these positions.

Gary gave the MDC a heads up that input on the 2004 ASAE strategic goals is due to the BOT by their December meeting. He is going to summarize the current information on this and it will be sent to the MDC next week for review and input.

Otto Loewer stated that he’d like to see ASAE develop a database of continuing education professionals who may be used as a resource for sections looking to host local meetings with a continuing education focus. We will look into the feasibility of creating such a database. Otto said that he’d be willing a to assist and that he suspected Bill Barfield would too. Mark will also look into what other engineering societies have done in this regard.