Reporting on the month of March 2005

Congratulations Elaine and Tony with their election to NCF's Board of
 Directors and to Gary and Mary Anne for their re-election.  I appreciate
that you have all put aside time from your busy lives to help the NCF.
I also want to thank the volunteers that organized and ran this years
NCF election.  The election, the election process and the election
results are a real credit to the NCF and to the volunteers that ran it.

Financial results:
March has continued the previous trend of donations being better than
previous years but less than forecast.  In March, NCF members donated
$25,902 which was shy of the forecast $28,624.

The accounting for this month reflected two payments to Telus, each of
$8211.00.  Taking this and the depreciation results in expenses for the
month of $22,176.  With the expenses slightly lower than expected NCF 
saved $3,726 as compared to $5,432 forecast.  Although close to target,
this negative result continues a trend of not meeting forecast and 
ultimately in the NCF eating into its small reserves by year end.

Bank charges were up again this month.  It is clearly an area that we
will be looking at as this is just a waste of money.

We had one major outage during the month.  The outage was caused by a
hardware failure at Telus in Toronto and resulted in our dialup services
being unavailable for 4 hours.

The membership level is stable at approximately 8750 members.  Of those:
	- 4382 (+140) members have probably read mail in the last month.
	- 5169 (+ 86) members used a modem this month.

	- 7962 (+203) members have seen start page at least once.
	- 1254 (+ 32) members currently use SpamFilter.

There is a substantial turnover of members - there are new members
coming to the internet for the first time or migrating from ISPs,
while an equal number of members are leaving the NCF, in a large part
to move to some form of broadband access.


Most new members come to the NCF citing word of mouth or the library as
where they first heard of the NCF.   A significant portion of the new
members are also new to the Ottawa area.

Our volunteer numbers have greatly rebounded with over 30 members
currently helping in the office or waiting to be given a task.  Once
again we have a member that has offered to provide us with French
translations.

All of the technical systems are working well, though modem usage is
nearing capacity.  The modem sharing software is a valuable asset to NCF
in that it ensures fair use of this important resource.  The email and
office systems are also working effectively.   The design of the office
tools is helping the volunteers to offer the better help desk support.
As they are all browser-based it should allow us to extend the help desk
hours with volunteers working from home.

The Ottawa Public Library has started its trials of its new computer
systems at three branches (Beaverbrook, Alta vista & Cumberland).  Our
training was very well received by the library staff and I am confident
that the trials will be a success.  The head of marketing for the
libraries has endorsed our marketing materials, and distribution will
begin in April.

We're finding that NCF is not on radar screen of most mainstream families
in the Ottawa area.  NCF is viewed as internet for those that cannot
afford internet, and as such a lower quality service. That NCF offers
only dial-up access service reinforces this impression.

Higher-speed broadband access (such as DSL or cable) has been offered by
Ottawa ISPs for several years and has become commonplace -- many members
have been asking if NCF could provide it.  Offering broadband access
along with dial-up would help NCF to remain relevant and of interest to
broader range of local residents, helping NCF better accomplish its
purpose.  Therefore I am exploring means for NCF to offer high speed
internet access.   Our survey of NCF members with respect to DSL resulted
in a large number of responses.  I will provide a more detailed response
at the coming Board meeting.

Looking forward to seeing you at the meeting.  I have reserved room D481
Loeb building for our meeting.

Cheers

John