Strong Finish to IRI’s Year of Change
Ron Clark

We started our financial year last May with a cash balance of nearly $250,000. That sounds like a lot for a small nonprofit, but in an uncertain world the Board believes that maintaining large reserves is important for our security. It’s a world of economic uncertainty, with an ever present threat of economic and social turmoil from terrorism and natural disaster. Our reserves are our guarantee of a future.

So we’re delighted that after a year of great change in our organization, which included hiring an Executive Director, and moving our operations to New York City, we completed the year with an even stronger cash position.

We’ve been very successful this year at keeping expenses in line with our income, although there were some disconcerting moments along the way. We started the year planning to raise $80,000 to match a projected short-fall between operating expenses and income. But as our development committee started work we realized that fundraising on that scale was likely to be a longer-term activity, primarily focused on creating new programs in the communities we serve, and not to address an operating deficit.

That left the problem of addressing the gap in our revenue. Fortunately we were able to take the opportunity of relocating our office to New York City to significantly streamline costs. Even then it looked as if we might struggle, but some unexpectedly high training revenues late in the year brought us to the year end with a small positive cash flow!

We’re excited about our budget for 05/06. Since our staff costs were lowered in the last 6 months, we now have a full-year to run where lower staff costs enable us to allocate more funds to support public awareness and training. We’re also benefiting from a Capacity Building Grant donated by our founders, which is enabling us to hire part-time staff for our fundraising and public relations activities.

Fundraising is included in our 05/06 budget, but it is focused on specific programs we would like to create to reach out to disadvantaged populations. As we bring in the funds, we will be able to make our dreams a reality.

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