Actions Taken by the Board of Directors

The Board of Directors met recently in Orlando in conjunction with the Air Warfare Symposium and Central Florida’s Air Force Gala which was the 25th year for these events. Several information briefings were presented, most notably an “off the record” with USAF Chief of Staff Gen Norton Schwartz. Without violating that, he did offer thoughts on how AFA and the Air Force can work more closely and that the nation will be facing some tough choices as we head into the budget cycle.

In addition to the CSAF, the morning focused on a number of committee reports, several of which resulted in BOD actions:

Transformation Review Team (TRT). The TRT was appointed last year to provide an assessment of the progress of the implementation of the afa21 Tax Status and Governance changes approved by the delegates. John Politi provided a summary of the team's review which included seven new recommendations, each of which have been assigned to the EXCOM or the Vice COBs to work, with staff assistance, over the next few months.

Constitution Committee. Ed Garland provided recommended changes to the Constitution and OPM necessary to (1) implement the delegates' decision to retain a separate secretary, including appropriate term limits and expanded duties of the secretary; (2) implement the BOD-approved TRT recommendation to allow appointment of up to two BOD members to serve on the EXCOM; (3) Incorporate a new, President Evaluation and Compensation Committee (PECC) and eliminate afa21 transition procedures no longer necessary in the documents. The BOD approved these changes.

President's Report: Mike Dunn provided a written report and significant input to the afternoon dialogue on the AFA focus areas. See below.

VCOB Reports: Both VCOB, Field Operations Jim Lauducci and VCOB, Aerospace Education Sandy Schlitt provided written reports on the activities of the Field Council and AE Council, respectively. In addition, Sandy introduced the members of the CyberPatriot I Team and thanked them for a very successful concept demonstration. The BOD approved in concept the plans for a Phase II cyber competition, to expand to a national competition with regional sub-competitions next year.

Budget Report. Treasurer and Finance Committee Chair Steve Lundgren discussed the 2008 Budget results. Not surprisingly, investment income was far below budget which resulted in a reduction of net assets by 15 % (mostly unrealized capital losses). Accordingly, the 2009 budget projects sharply reduced investment income, and we made some additional reductions in travel and other expenses already this year that I reported to you earlier. Performance to budget will require close scrutiny in 2009, and the Finance Committee has this at the top of their agenda.

Strategic Planning Committee: Scott VanCleef provided an update on the SPC actions for 2009 and a set of performance measures to help the BOD assess how well we are meeting our goals and objectives. Thanks to the work of Ray Turczynski, we have a first cut at measures in four areas: Educate, Advocate, Support, and AFA Operational Performance (membership, development, finances, etc). The BOD endorsed this approach, and we will see if the measures provide useful, actionable information to the BOD.

Membership Committee. Justin Faiferlick summarized the MC activities, highlighting those actions that are part of the membership strategy. There is a pilot program in work with the ROTC Detachment at the University of Central Florida to target parents of ROTC cadets.

Development Committee. Co-chairs Jerry White and Buster Horlen outlined the 2009 Development Strategy and Lois O'Conner provided all BOD members training on contacting AFA donors. Each BOD member will be given a short list of donors who are near them, and are asked to contact each and thank them for their support of AFA. Feedback on the contact will be provided to Lois.

As has become a tradition at the February BOD meeting, we had the distinct pleasure at lunch to be joined by five outstanding ROTC cadets from Embry Riddle Aeronautical University in Daytona Beach. Thanks to the generosity of an "unnamed donor", each cadet was awarded a $1,000 scholarship.

The BOD conference call in late January took care of a number of routine business items and allowed the Board to focus the entire afternoon on discussion and dialogue on our four focus areas:

1) Increase efforts to educate the public and key policy makers of the criticality and uniqueness of aerospace power -- now and in the future

• Mike Dunn described the 2009 plans for the Mitchell Institute, including publishing at least six studies, executing a fundraising program, attracting new authors for studies and reports, building a stand-alone web site, and conducting a number of small meetings, seminars, and working dinners.
• Other efforts by a group of AFA-led airpower experts are beginning to gain traction, as "AFA" is more frequently quoted in the press and on radio. Mike Dunn has done at least a dozen radio shows over the past three weeks. The AFA web site has a growing number of op-eds, briefings, etc.

• The initial Airpower Advocates group of 20 is expanding, and now includes several BOD members, and a number of AFA state presidents have provided names to join the effort per Mike Dunn’s request.

• Mike Dunn and Jim Simpson provided an update on the membership strategy. The "every member get a member" campaign last year resulted in approximately 330 new members, but many of those likely would have been recruited by chapters in any event.
• We are gaining members as a result of the LA Symposium and the Air Warfare Symposium registrations, and from donors to the AF Memorial who are not already AFA members.
• Joe Sutter challenged each director to recruit five new members before the September Convention. Similar challenges were issued between the two VCOBs and their councils, and to each committee chair for their committees. VCOB, FO Jim Lauducci is planning something as well with the RPs.
• There was considerable discussion concerning AFA's "value proposition" as it relates to membership. This is an element of the overall strategy, and we agreed we need a small group to address this. Joe Sutter will work with Pete Hennessey and others to better define the task and some timelines soon.
• The Corporate Member Program (see below) has great promise to produce not only additional revenue, but new members as well.

• A considerable amount of time was spent on this area. The prospects for significant investment income do not look good, and we will need to grow existing business line profitability and develop new revenue sources. Mike Dunn described several efforts to reduce expenses, including a new vendor and conference registration process, eliminating the formal transcripts for BOD meetings, etc.
• In December, the Executive Committee approved transitioning the Industrial Associate (IA) program into a Corporate Member program, modeled after the very successful one used by the Association of the US Army (AUSA). The program is rolling out now, and we will begin to see results later this year and into 2010. It should generate additional profitability over the IA program. Each Corporate Member will receive 50 individual memberships as part of the package, which will add new members we would not otherwise reach. The clear consensus of the BOD was support for this effort.
• Several new and existing revenue opportunities were discussed, including the AFA building, Cyber Patriot, expanded development efforts, and others. Buck Buckwalter provided a short history of the AFA dues structure. Chairman Sutter asked Steve Lundgren to form a small team to look at the data from a financial viewpoint and report by mid-summer on dues revenue in relation to overall income, expenses, the consumer price index, etc.

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