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Back to the Future

Back to the Future. Lessons Learned and Applied during a Restructure. What is AOCS?. 100 years old Founded by 9 scientists who were studying cottonseed oil and needed to standardize their experiments (Book of Methods) One of the Founders was Wesson. And then in 2005.

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Back to the Future

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  1. Back to the Future Lessons Learned and Applied during a Restructure

  2. What is AOCS? • 100 years old • Founded by 9 scientists who were studying cottonseed oil and needed to standardize their experiments (Book of Methods) • One of the Founders was Wesson

  3. And then in 2005 The auditor reports to the Board (at our urging) that they are flat broke (basically “Out of Business”) and have been for at least 5 years!

  4. How did this happen? • Silo-ed departments and accounting (everyone charging everyone back for everything) • Belief that the past would predict the future • Unforeseen events • Revenue bases change • In fact, all the constants changed!

  5. Living on a Line of Credit • Refinance – hope the bank understands • Sell extra land (in overbuilt market - not) • Sell building (in overbuilt market – not) • Cut staff • Look for external solutions for publishing

  6. What Happened Next? • Audit of every program • What can be cut out? • What can be done more efficiently? • What can be outsourced? • Which jobs can be consolidated with another job? • Which skills do we need that we do not currently have on staff?

  7. As a Result We • Restructured the Board, the Foundation Board, the staff. • Built reserves in excess of any time in the past. • Brought in as much money through the AOCS Foundation as in all previous years combined.

  8. Think it through • What does your Board bring to your business? • What does your staff bring to your business? • How is your business important to the field it serves? • How is your business important within the broader marketplace?

  9. The Role of the Board(get ready for some blasphemy) • The Board has oversight over: • The business of the association? 990? (Eadie) (Seriously. The IRS doesn’t even understand it! And if you have international Board members like I do, they just think you’re insane for asking them to review it!) • Internal management. Nope. They’re not supposed to touch it. (Carter) • The relevance of the association to the field. (Hmmm. They could be good at this, couldn’t they?)

  10. Staff • The management of the business of the organization. Yep. • The facilitation of the membership to higher level conversations about developing and disseminating meaningful information to the field. Seems good to me. • Keeping abreast of normative practices within the not-for-profit community. (Yep, that too.) • Connection between the individual and the field.

  11. Marketplace • What are our competitors (for profit; not for profit) doing that affects us? • How do we price things? • What is open to our members only; to the marketplace overall. Do we have a smart policy where that’s concerned?

  12. Market driven product development Who is our market? How do we fund it? How do we develop product in a timely manner? How do we market it? Multi-year initiatives?

  13. The Unique Value Proposition of Associations Today is … Knowledge Generation The foundation upon which any field is based determines its relevance (or lack of same). By interacting over information and coming to new conclusions and solutions, we create new knowledge that is unique.

  14. The End Jean Wills Hinton AOCS Executive Vice President jeanwh@aocs.org 217 693-4838

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