ASAE
MEMBERSHIP DEVELOPMENT COUNCIL
CONFERENCE
CALL
May 14,
2003
Minutes
Present:Nolan
Clark, Gary Anderson, Billy Lawson, Wayne Coates, David Jones, Paul Heinemann,
Bill Barfield, Qin Zhang, John Miles, Kasiviswanathan Muthukumarappan, Don
Erbach, Gary Riskowski, John Hummel, Kelly Detra, Melissa Moore and Mark
Crossley
The meeting was called to order at 2:05 p.m.
Agenda
1. Member Statistics
-Invoicing & Retention
-General Member Statistics
2. Budget Report
-2003 Budget Projection
-2004 Budget Plans
-Initiative Funding for 2004
-Special Funding Needs
3. MDC Bylaws Revision Review by Board of
Trustees (BOT)
4. Update on FTC and Ethics Issue
5. Agreement with National Council of Examiners
for Engineering and Surveying
6. Cooperative Agreement with the Indian Society
of Agricultural Engineers Update
7. BOT Appointed Dues Committee
8. Petition from P-210 to Change Name of the
Society
9. Other
10. 2003 Meeting Dates
Annual
International Meeting - Las Vegas
-Sunday, 7/27, 1:30 - 3:30
Reports from District Directors, CSAE, P-414,
P-204, and Section Steering Committee
-Thursday, 7/31, 8:00 - 10:00
Reports From Awards, Preprofessionals,
International Commission and Division Reps
November Conference Call - TBA
================================================
After welcoming everyone present, Nolan Clark gave a brief
overview of the agenda. He stated that he would do his best to keep the call to
one hour.
Member Statistics
Member statistics through 4/30/03 were presented. Retention
is currently at 87% for full members and 57% for preprofessional/student
members for an overall retention of 81%. These figures are very similar to the
same period from last year. Final retention figures will be determined on
12/31/03.
Exit surveys along with a final invoice were mailed on
5/12/03 to 779 full members. Preprofessional/student members are not mailed
exit surveys. We hope to obtain better feedback as to why members have dropped
their memberships from the surveys. Of the members that were dropped for
non-payment of dues, a large number were members who had 20 or more years of
membership.
Total membership figures as of 4/30/03 are as follows:
7,915 total members, which is comprised of 6,349 full members and 1,566
preprofessional/student members. Of this total number 159 represent members
from developing countries that are taking advantage of reduced dues. For the
first third of 2003, we have attracted 270 new full members and 243 new
preprofessional/student members.
It was pointed out that with the conclusion of 2002, ASAE
membership was back over the 9,000 mark. We were also able to break a number of
new member records including most new full members (824) and
preprofessional/student members (803) in a single year. The Board of Trustees
recognized the efforts of the MDC and staff in achieving these numbers for 2002
at their April meeting.
Budget Report
It was reported that the 2003 budget
is on target to be balanced by year’s end. We’ll know more as the year
progresses.
The first cut at the 2004 budget
shows a deficit of nearly $175,000. The Finance Committee, at their meeting in
April, requested that each Council make changes to their portion of the budget
to equal an 8% positive change to the net. This can either be in revenue
generation or the cutting of expenses. As the MDC portion of the budget is
pretty tight already, it will be quite difficult to cut expenses without
impacting programs. We may be able to pick up some additional dues revenue from
the cooperative agreement with the Indian Society of Agricultural Engineers
(ISAE) as their members become members of ASAE, but there is no telling when
this may happen. It was pointed out that the reasons for the increased deficit
in 2004 are coming from other council programming changes and not from the MDC.
Nolan then urged that any committee
under the MDC that foresees needing funding over the next 3-4 years for a
special project should indicate this now to the MDC so that plans may be made
accordingly. Funding requests should come before the MDC at their July meeting
in Las Vegas.
Due to the state of the restricted
reserve, there will be no Initiative Fund monies available for 2004. It was
urged that special funding proposals be sent to the ASAE Foundation for
consideration.
MDC
Bylaws Revision Review by Board of Trustees
The revisions to the MDC bylaws that
were approved by the Council back in September have been reviewed by the Board
of Trustees at their meeting in April and met with their approval.
Update on FTC and Ethics Issue
Melissa Moore began with a quick
overview of the situation. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is conducting a
non-public investigation of ASAE. Their complaint centers on parts of the
suggested guidelines in the Code of Ethics (mainly in section 5). They claim
that ASAE has been restraining competition among agricultural engineers. ASAE
has responded to the complaint and the FTC has asked us to sign a consent
decree, which if done, might jeopardize our tax status with the IRS. The FTC
feels that we are not a wholly charitable organization and we should within
their jurisdiction, as are trade associations.
The suggested guidelines have been
removed from the bylaws. They were removed because they were irrelevant. There
was no reason to keep them, as they were never enforced by ASAE.
As of the conference call, the FTC is
expected to move forward with their complaint. Melissa met with the director of
the Bureau of Competition to try to dissuade them from going forward, but they
seem to have already made up their minds that we are a trade association that
exists to provide economic benefit to ASAE members and are restraining
competition among agricultural engineers by having advertising and other things
in our past suggested guidelines. To date no formal complaint has been issued,
but it is likely to happen.
Agreement with the National Council
of Examiners for Engineering and Surveying (NCEES)
ASAE has signed an agreement with
NCEES, which is the body that manages the agricultural engineering PE exam and
its contents. There has never been an agreement like this before and all
engineering societies are signing it. This formal agreement states that at
least 50 people in agricultural engineering must sit for the PE exam over any
two-year period.
Cooperative Agreement with Indian
Society of Agricultural Engineers (ISAE)
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 ofIndia. They are working on the situation and
hopefully we will have between 1,500 – 2,000 new ISAE/ASAE members by year’s
end. They each pay the reduced-dues rate of $15 for members from developing
countries.
BOT Appointed Dues Committee
ASAE President Lyle Stephens has
appointed a Dues Committee to develop a method of adjusting dues periodically.
He has asked Nolan to serve as chair. The Dues Committee will also be looking
at all dues categories and how they relate to the overall dues structure.
Special attention will be paid to retiree dues. Lyle has asked that the Dues
Committee report to the BOT in December of this year with their findings and
recommendations.
Petition from P-210 to Change the
Name of the Society
P-210 Academic Program Administrators
Committee has put forth a petition to change the name of the Society to the
Society for Biological and Agricultural Engineers. Fifty members must sign the
petition and then it will be presented for discussion at the ASAE business
meeting in Las Vegas. Once discussed it will be put to a vote on whether or not
to put a name change ballot out to the entire membership in January 2004.
There will be an open forum for all
members to discuss the proposed name change from 12:00 – 2:00 p.m. on Monday,
July 28 at the Las Vegas meeting. There will be an article on the proposed name
change in the June issue of Resource and an electronic forum will be available
for feedback from all members.
P-126 ¼ Scale Tractor Student Design
Competition Bylaws
P-126 has developed bylaws for their
committee which have been approved by P-120 Student Organizations. They were
brought before the MDC for information only.
2003 Meeting Dates
The MDC will meet at the following
times in Las Vegas. Nolan stressed the importance of attendance at these
meetings and asked for written reports from the following representatives.
There will be time reserved for oral reports as well.
-Sunday, 7/27, 1:30 - 3:30
Reports from District Directors, CSAE, P-414,
P-204, and Section Steering Committee
-Thursday, 7/31, 8:00 - 10:00
Reports From Awards, Preprofessionals,
International Commission and Division Reps
The November conference call date has yet to be
determined.
Reminder, the early Annual International Meeting
registration deadline is 5/15/03.
With no more business before the MDC,
the meeting adjourned at 3:00 p.m.