PRESIDENT BERNIE P . DISHLER ’ S rEPorT To ThE housE of DELEgATEs
This has been a very interesting year , filled with successes and challenges . Let ’ s get the challenges out of the way first , so we can focus on the successes . Our membership numbers continue to be one of our biggest challenges . Our membership is aging . Each year our average age continues to rise . The aging membership also manifests in the growing number of Active Life members who pay reduced dues . We do have many younger members who have taken leadership positions across all of the levels ; local , district and statewide . But we need more . One of the reasons for having fewer younger members is the diminishing numbers of dentists graduating from Pennsylvania dental schools . Dean Ismail at the Kornberg School at Temple has made a concerted effort to attract more Pennsylvania residents to his school . We hope this will pay off in membership in a few years . The large student debt that our graduates incur is also a deterrent to joining organized dentistry .
We tried not to raise our dues because many of our members are struggling due to the economic downturn . So , we had several years when we had deficit budgets . Each year we would start using the next year ’ s prepaid dues for current expenses . In May of this year , we ran out of cash . Our Budget , Finance and Property Committee made some dramatic recommendations to the Board of Trustees ( BOT ). We withdrew almost one million dollars from reserves to cover all of 2012 expenses . We advised the CEO that we needed to reduce the only expense that we had not already reduced . That was our staff . So , we reduced the staff by 20 percent . That was not an easy decision since our staff is very loyal and like family to us . We also reduced some other expenses . We are now operating in a very responsible financial manner . Unhappily , we had to raise the dues by $ 38 to balance our budget . For the first time in several years we have a balanced budget .
At the 2012 Annual Session , I was instructed to form a Governance Task Force ( GTF ) to study our governance and report back to this Annual Session . A conference for all local and district incoming presidents was already in place for July . We had invited Ms . Mary Byers a speaker on association management and author of the book , “ Race for Relevance ,” to keynote the conference .
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