Hi Everyone,
The May Board meeting a face to face meeting held in Wellington
on the 24th May.
From a financial perspective the results for the 10 months to
30th April are a Net Operating Surplus of $1.14 million
some $32,000 ahead of budget. We now head in to the seasonal
revenue 'dry period' which will eat into that surplus over the next
two months. The Year-end Forecast for the 12 month Net Operating
Surplus has only changed minimally from last month to sit at
$583,000. With only the two months results to go to the end
of the financial year the Board are comfortable this is a solid
result, backing up last year's initial surplus. See the
attached normal monthly report for details on the YTD results and
variances.
In terms of other outcomes from the meeting:
- Allan Mundy, SLSNZ Lifesaving Services and Education Manager
joined the meeting for a good discussion on what is going on in the
Lifesaving area, including topics such as the 400m swim time.
There are some significant projects in the court of the National
Lifesaving Committee and it was very useful for the Board to
identify the things it can do to assist and support.
- The Board had deliberately taken a strategic focus for this
meeting, so relatively little time was taken on management reports
to instead spend more time talking about the following topics:
- Where money could be invested in resources & programmes
that will create additional revenue? In the short term this
was identified as in attracting more commercial revenue and direct
mail fundraising.
- What potential 'game changing' revenue ideas might be out
there? Very useful here was some work recently undertaken by
the Institute for Strategic Leadership (ISL) which ran a leadership
course which used Surf Life Saving as a case study. Five
different groups presented their ideas to myself, our CEO, Graham
Crombie and Trevor Taylor. There were some interesting
concepts put forward, and these will get further debate from the
full Board in the coming months. We were very fortunate to be
given the opportunity of being the case study for this prestigious
leadership programme - it is unusual to be given the full focus of
a lot of skilled and experienced leaders from around Australasia
and further afield to put their minds to helping us with our
challenges!
- The SLSNZ Foundation. Getting this off the ground remains
a key personal target for me, and it was good to give this topic a
good airing so there was real clarity on the path forward.
While having been on the agenda for a number of years this has been
down a couple of 'dead-end' paths that have caused some frustrating
delays. Hopefully no longer!!
- Water Safety NZ Sector Plan. The latest draft of the
drowning prevention 'Sector Plan' was reviewed and discussed by the
Board. Feedback was provided and further work will be done to
finalise the document in the next few weeks. The intention is
for WSNZ to release this to its key stakeholders by the end of
June.
- Strategic Plan for the Surf Life Saving Movement. An
update on progress on this was noted. With input from the
members of the 2014 BP Leaders for Life group and ideas from the
ISL Case Study mentioned above this should be released for club
comment in June, allowing time for feedback and consolidation ahead
of the Club Chairs Workshop at the 2015 AGM. There have been
some good ideas coming through and it is good to see this project
heading towards completion.
- Looking ahead to the AGM the Board also made a number of
decisions - firstly that Trevor Taylor would be the Board
representative and Convenor of the Board Appointments Panel (BAP)
as I will be up for re-election and ineligible for the BAP, and
secondly to propose a number of amendments to the Constitution for
Clubs to vote on at the AGM. The intent of those amendments
will be:
- To extend the term of Board members to 3 years (from 2 years)
to ensure better continuity.
- To allow proxy votes to count towards the quorum at the AGM to
reduce the pressure to get 'live bodies' in the room.
- To look to extend the role of the Board Appointments Panel
beyond the current few weeks in order to have more of an ongoing
role in the succession planning for the Board.
More
details on those amendments will come out with the information for
the AGM. There is nothing Clubs need to do now.
- The Board also discussed the NZ Youth Team, which is an athlete
funded programme. There was strong feedback from their Rescue 2014
campaign that some SLSNZ support towards the costs of the four team
management positions would really help reduce the financial burden
on the athletes and their families. For Rescue 2014 programme
the costs of the four roles (Coach, Assistant Coach, Manager and
Physio) were spread over the 12 athletes. It is estimated
over the whole Rescue 2016 campaign this would add up to some
$65,000. In principle the Board is supportive, and committed
additional resources to assist the Youth Team with Fundraising.
The income target for the High Performance area overall will
be increased to include this $65,000. Sponsorship and to a
lesser degree grants will be targeted to fill this gap. Once
obtained, the extra income will be used to reduce athlete
contributions.
- The Board was updated on the proposal from the Honours &
Awards Committee to breathe some life into the Hall of Fame.
Further feedback is being sought from a variety of interested
parties.
- And as usual the Board discussed Health & Safety, including
a review of the YTD Serious Injury Summary for the 2014/15 Season -
there have now been 21 injuries to members where a hospital visit
was required and 48 others needing a visit to the doctor which is
slightly above last year. However, the overall number
of member injuries has fallen 479 to 392 (18%) which is a good
sign. Sport remains the biggest single cause of those
incidents, but there are still plenty of other areas contributing
to the outcomes.
So that's it from me until my next update in a few weeks
time. Our next Board meeting in June is a teleconference so
my report will be quite a bit shorter!
Yours in surf,
Geoff Hamilton
Chairman
Surf Life Saving New Zealand
