In This Issue
2017 Foundation Donors...............................13
2017 Patrons & Sponsors...........................14
Board of Regents Update................................7
Fall All-Fellows Luncheon Las Vegas.........................18
Focus on Fellows............12
Foundation Awarded Access to Justice Pro Bono Award.................................8
Foundation Raises & Grants Record Amounts in 2016...................................6
Heartfelt Thank You.......11
International Bankruptcy Course................................9
Judicial Fellows Diversity Initiative...........................10
Message from the President............................2
Upcoming Circuit Events...............................18
From the Chair
G. Christopher Meyer
It was a pleasure to see many of you in Washington DC for our Annual Meeting and Induction. And it was a special pleasure to welcome the new Fellows from Class 28 into the College. The comments on the meetings and events have generally been quite positive. We continue to welcome your thoughts on how we can improve the experience for attendees.
State of the College. The College’s financial condition remains strong. In 2016, we had a net surplus of $63,000, compared with a budgeted $22,000 surplus. Our core receipts exceeded budget by $35,000, primarily as a function of increased donations through the Patrons and Sponsors Program. The results for the various expense categories tended to even out largely consistent with the 2016 budget. Both the College and the Foundation received clean audit opinions for 2016 with no special changes or adjustments.
Current Initiatives. In the last edition of College Columns, we alerted you to several initiatives that came out of our fall meeting at the NCBJ conference in San Francisco. In March, the College Board considered the initial reports from the groups involved in those initiatives.
Endowment and Reserve Funds. The first initiative considered our investment and handling of funds held by the College and by the Foundation. The first is a fund of approximately $1.4 million held in an informal "endowment" fund by the Foundation. The task force had been asked to consider how that fund should be treated in light of the growing number of requests for pro bono assistance from the College - - whether the fund should be continued, formalized and expanded, under what circumstances we should consider invading the principal of the fund to support current grants and whether we should modify our investment policy on the funds held.
The initial recommendation of the task force was to continue efforts to grow the endowment fund, as well as to consider a more
Greetings from Sarasota! Our busy winter season has pretty much wound to its close. The snowbirds have returned to their northern homes, leaving the rest of us to face the hot and sticky Florida summer. However, it is now much easier to get a dinner reservation or to drive across town. I certainly never had all these issues during the many years I lived in Cleveland.
College Columns
May 2017