1. My greatest strength is the ability to combine my professional skills and credentials as a financial executive and to apply this knowledge and experience to CFA. This has already been demonstrated with my work as CFA Accountant. I have been able to reformat financial statements to clarify and simplify financial reporting. This has been accomplished with such issues as sponsorship income and commissions, International Show reporting and Meet the Breeds reporting. In addition, I have instituted monthly executive commentaries to provide Board members with a clear, concise summary of financial results.
2. Three issues that face CFA are 1) a lack of long range financial planning, 2) declining revenues and 3) restrictive legislation. 1) CFA needs to develop a 5 year plan in addition to our yearly budgets analyzing our strengths, weaknesses opportunities and threats (SWOT analysis). A long range plan will give the organization a clearer path to follow when it is developed with sound guidelines and principles. As an example, the CFA International show needs to have a definite purpose, is it going to be a CFA exhibitor celebration and show or a media event for our sponsors and the public. Once this is determined we need to ask some hard questions about geographic location of the event, venue and advertising dollars to be spent. If this purpose is clearly defined, the International Show should not loose money. 2) CFA has had continuously declining revenues over the past 10 years. It is necessary to expand registrations and develop other streams of revenue. My ongoing concern, as related in my executive commentaries to the Board, is that it is not sufficient to break even on an ever declining revenue base. This is not a sound business plan. 3) CFA needs to be vigilant and continue to fight against restrictive legislation throughout the country. We need to continue to support out Legislative Committee in all aspects including budgetary funding. It would definitely benefit CFA to partner with AKC in this and many other efforts to continue to fight this battle.
3. My most significant accomplishment with CFA: I would have said that being in the CFA Cat Fancy for 40 years has been an accomplishment. I would have said that being a CFA judge for over 20 years has been an accomplishment. I would have said that being on the CFA Finance Committee for ten years has been an accomplishment. Being the CFA Accountant for the past year has been a most rewarding accomplishment. I have been able to apply my professional skills and experience as a financial executive to the organization. I have accomplished the goal of simplifying and clarifying the financial reports for the Board. While much has been accomplished there is still more to done.
4. As CFA revenues continue to decline, we need to attack this on at least two fronts. CFA needs to bolster our declining registrations and diversify our revenue sources. We need to put in place programs the insure that we register every pedigreed kitten born and aggressively market these programs to our breeders. We also need to grab the interest of the pedigreed pet kitten owner. As the owner of pedigreed dogs, I was amazed and in awe of the marketing materials and techniques that were used when I registered my AKC puppy. From different levels of registration, informational materials, CD’s, books, etc. to new canine products, it is a great sales job and really makes you want to join in enthusiastically on the joys of a pedigreed puppy. We need to use those same marketing techniques as we register our pedigreed pet kittens. We need to expand our markets including the household pet registry. This is such a broad untapped market for CFA and we need to develop it to the fullest. The registry will be a great source of new revenue and open up a whole new market to CFA. Many a breeder of purebred cats got their start by showing household pets. With our sagging show entry counts, it would be great for the show producing clubs to bolster their entries with a large household pet entry. These can be incorporated with the pedigreed show or on a stand alone basis with guest judges. This would also help our shows as the Household Pet Class is a favorite among spectators as well. In addition to adding registration revenue and spectator friendly entries to our shows, it would improve our demographics with our corporate sponsors. While our sponsors our supporting us and our pedigreed cats they would love the much larger demographics of non pedigreed household pets as well.
5. Show Scheduling: The first level of Show Scheduling should be within the region. The individual Regional Director has the best sense of population density and geographic considerations for their regions and can use these to make equitable decisions within their boundaries for show scheduling. When two neighboring regions develop a conflict, the first line of resolution should be between the two regional directors. If resolutions cannot be obtained, then and only then should the conflict be brought to the NSSC. The decision of the NSSC should be determined only after a majority of the committee has agreed to the determination.
10. I feel that the 6x6 format and the 10 ring format are a good thing for CFA. The six ring one day shows are a very popular and economic format and have definitely changed the profile of our shows, but in the process we have lost some of the camaraderie of those 2 day shows and the wonderful Saturday night dinners. Both of these formats bring the two day show back and they increase the number of rings for the exhibitors. Care needs to be taken in scheduling these shows as they do have a competitive advantage over the smaller 6 or 8 ring shows. Until these scheduling issues are worked out, the licensing of these larger 6X6 and 10 ring format shows need to be monitored closely.
