May Board Status Report.

Donations for April were on track at $21,975 but May showed a significant deviation from forecast 
with only $14,765 versus a target of $25K  This represents a $10,000 shortfall from budget. A 
major red flag as the shortfall must be covered from our reserves.  On closer inspection the 
shortfall while bad, is should not be a complete surprise. Analysis points to two contributing 
factors: 
	1: a 4 week donation period (rather than the normal 5)
	2: a positive deviation in 2003 resulted in an excessively high target for May.

Having said that, it is obviously critical that we keep a close eye on donations in the months ahead.  

Expenses for the period were above budget by about $3K. The deviation from budget occured with 
higher telecomcosts ($1000 setup of the new lines) and higher administration costs due to rising 
insurance costs.

Cash position is currently about $30K plus receivables of $58K.  At May's trend, the cash 
would hold out for three months (with receipts of $14K versus costs of $24K).  We are entering 
the seasonally light period for donations and therefore expect weak cash flow for the summer months. 
I will present a forecast for cash at the coming board meeting.

Membership growth continues although at a slower pace reflecting I think the lessening interest 
in all things internet during the summer months.  Membership as of May 31 was 8990.  

Success! The Modem pool has been enlarged by 48 lines evenings, weekends and holidays.  By 
programming the phone lines to overflow on busy and then cleverly using the modem sharing 
application to ensure no overflow happens during business hours.  Normal day use peaks at about 
220 modems, evenings currently peak at 276 with occasional busy signals indicating additional demand 
is there.  By providing 48 additional lines during evenings I believe that we will see overall use 
grow until we are using 276 during the day and 324 evenings. This should allow the membership to 
grow up to 11,250 while receiving the same level of service as the current 9,000 are currently 
receiving.

Volunteers are working out well.  A new shift of volunteers has arrived and are doing a great job 
at handling the calls from the help desk.  Ricardo, Hibo and Mike are all fluent in French and 
English.  Emelia and Henri complete the team allowing us to have at least two on duty each day of 
the week.  I would like to find a way to honour their contributions to making the NCF and their 
communities a better place.

During the summer months I am particularly interested in revamping the volunteer help facilities 
at the NCF.   We have been receiving interest from a range of new volunteers, many of which are 
very talented and bilingual.  Having said that, we are still shy of the necessary numbers of 
volunteers to expand our hours from the current 9:00 am – 1:00 pm.  I would also like to upgrade 
our systems with a trouble ticket system to more accurately track problems and provide a higher 
level of service to our members.

Problems:  Mitel & Allstream inadvertently used the IP address that was being used to communicate 
with our routers.  This resulted in members being able to dialup to Mitel but not being able to 
access any websites.  This occurred while Glenn was on honeymoon and Andre was having his eyes 
fixed.  The end result is that Mitel was unavailable for nearly two weeks.  This has now been 
fixed and the service restored.

Looking forward to seeing you all at the Board meeting

john