Food Protection Trends - September 2010 - 526

from the executive director
his is always a hard time of the year to write a column for Food Protection Trends. Reasons being, it has to be written prior to the Annual Meeting start up, but it will be read by you and other Members almost a month after IAFP 2010 has concluded! So, there is a little “forecasting” and “crystal ball” involved in this month’s column. We won’t know the financial outcome from IAFP 2010 until midto late-September because of closing out all of the various bills that must be paid, but based on a number of indicators; I have to believe that the meeting will provide the needed influx of revenue to the Association. We have been very surprised at the extreme interest in IAFP 2010 in Anaheim after a disappointing result last year in Grapevine. Although we did expect a rebound, I don’t believe that anyone could have predicted what we have experienced! Preregistration for IAFP 2010 has exceeded all previous records and even reached 2,000 one-week prior to commencement of the meeting. Normally, we have somewhere between 200 and 300 people who register during the week prior or onsite at our Annual Meeting. We won’t know the actual outcome in time for this month’s column, but indications are that we will exceed 2,100 and break our previous registration record (set in 2007). For exhibit sales, again we have broken past records. Last year in Grapevine, we were down a little because of the economic conditions at the time and we had 118 booths in the exhibition hall. Our previous record was 132 booths, also occurring in 2007. But this year, all stops were pulled out and we topped 150 booths!!! Our total number of spaces taken was 154; certainly a new record. Add to this that our sponsorship revenues increased to an all-time high

“COMMENTARY”

By DAVID W. THARP, CAE
EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR

“We hope that all IAFP Members see the value in belonging to the Association”

and you can see that our expectations are for a very profitable IAFP Annual Meeting. Of course, this profit will depend on our expense allocation for the meeting. We have undertaken a number of decisions based on expense reductions but have done so with the overall quality of the meeting continuing to be the utmost priority. I’m certain that most repeat

attendees will notice a few changes,but for the most part; the Annual Meeting remains the same. I mentioned that we expect the Annual Meeting to be very profitable and sometimes we receive questions about this “goal” (to make a profit from IAFP’s Annual Meeting). Let me begin by saying the overall budget for IAFP includes a “contribution” to the bottom line from the Annual Meeting. If we could not count on this addition to the bottom line each year, the monies to operate the Association would need to come from another source. The most likely source would be Member dues. In order to “fund” the Association for the same activities that we currently carry out (or in other words, to keep the same budgeted revenue), our current base Member dues of $50 would have to be raised by $100 to total $150! You can easily see this is not a good option for IAFP. Therefore, we must be able to maintain collecting more revenue for Annual Meeting than we pay out in expenses (again, creating a profit to be contributed to the bottom line). Most of the time, once this is explained to anyone asking why we should “profit” from the Annual Meeting, the reasons are easily understood. By keeping our base Membership dues at a very economical $50 (we do have a request to the Board to raise dues by $5 though), we are able to attract and include many more food safety professionals to IAFP than if our dues were $100 higher. Speaking of this, we have seen a large increase in Membership over the past years. If you compare to our total number of Members in 2000, we have increased by 14%. In 2003 and 2004, our Membership dipped down close to 2,900. When comparing to those years, we have increased by 17%. Just in the last three years

526 FOOD PROTECTION TRENDS | SEPTEMBER 2010

Food Protection Trends - September 2010

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