Your Board of Directors has been working diligently for the past couple of years to reduce costs while trying to find ways to increase the value of your membership. In the past we relied heavily on vendor sponsorships to subsidize many of our expenses. In response to these sponsorships cut backs due to their own budget constraints, we have tried to reduce our spending accordingly. For example, we have moved our checking account to a bank that does not charge us a monthly fee and changed the Merchant Service provider that handles our credit card processing to on ethat charges us much lower monthly and per charge fees. Please keep in mind that membership dues have remained the same since about 2002. Yes, last year we had to discontinue the early bird discount. But the simple fact is that our dues alone cannot support the lifestyle to which we’ve become accustomed. Looking at our drafted budget for the upcoming year ahead, we realized that we cannot sustain our current venue space at The Sheraton in Columbia without sacrificing the convention, as we did in 2010, and the rad speaking talent we want to bring you for our meetings.
At the May 2010 board meeting, the Board of Directors voted to move our regular monthly meetings to the Howard County Arts Council building located at 8510 High Ridge Road, Ellicott City, MD 21043. This move also means that we have to change our meeting dates to the 4th Wednesday of the month instead of the 3rd (as it has been for years). This change will take effect for our July 2010 meeting. We realize that many of you make the MDPPA monthly meeting part of your schedule months in advance and we appreciate you incorporating this meeting change into your upcoming schedules. We will let you know as soon as possible when we’ve secured the July meeting space/date.
As President, I personally have been working to try to bring more of a social feel to our meetings. This new venue space will allow us to bring in food and (non-alcoholic) beverages to our meetings. With the dramatic savings (approximately $7,500 annually) this new venue is affording us, the Board of Directors is considering making a discretionary fund to provide snacks for our meetings. However, the most important aspect of this savings will be to provide better educational programs and to restore the 4-day annual convention. I believe this will encourage more of a dynamic social environment whereby we can work on our networking and information sharing amongst membership during pre-meeting sign-in time and during breaks.
Thank you for your continued patronage of our wonderful organization which strives to advance photography as both an art and a profession!
Cheers,
Vanessa Ard, CPP
President, MDPPA
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