NCF For the months of November and December. During the months of November and December donations combined were $36,907 as compared to the same period last year with $33,542 and a budget forecast of $42,863. Expenses are expected to be close to budget at approximately $$35,000 for the period. Donations, modem sales and DSL subscriptions are looking strong for January. Our new accountant has done a tremendous job of restoring our financial accounts for the entire year. The new accounts highlight some areas for obvious improvement (such as bank fees) and other areas that we can be proud of. NCF’s equipment and software has now almost entirely been depreciated – indicating a need to budget for future replacements. Careful expense containment has resulted in our overall year end balance being only slightly shy of where we started the year. The NCF renewal system has been revamped to better educate the membership as to the costs of providing service. Members are also provided information on the assistance funds and NCF improvement funds with suggested appropriate donations. I expect that this will be the last of the major changes to the NCF donation system. As the new donation page only became live last week it is still too early to conclusively determine its effects although initial indications are positive. Assistance funds: The child poverty access assistance fund is now operating with its first couple of families having now provided all of the necessary details. This and the members helping members funds are important improvements to the way that NCF has traditionally helped those in need to gain access to the benefits of the internet. Membership is static at approximately 8000 members, from those: - 4242 members have read mail in the last month. - 5083 members used a modem this month. - 7759 members have seen start page at least once. - 1222 members currently use SpamFilter. The remainder of the years marketing budget was spent during the month on a run of posters and bilingual bookmarks for the libraries and community centres. We are also finding that the bookmarks work well when distributed through CCS and at Carleton sporting events. Volunteer numbers are level although the overall quality of the team has never been higher. Permanent parking passes have been issued to two of our long time volunteers. Our tradition of providing parking passes was providing to be increasingly expensive as Carleton keeps raising the rates on day passes. The two permanent passes will provide greater flexibility and cost savings over the long term. All of the technical systems are working well although we now have sufficient dial-up capabilities to ensure a very high degree of availability. We continue to add enhancements to the office tools for better accounting and better support of the membership. Additional DSL support tools allow for rapid testing of line sync and unlisted number support. The DSL service is becoming more popular. Initial uptake rates have nearly doubled since the start of January. Initial setup of DSL members is more time consuming than we originally expected. The unfortunate side effect of these two points is a growing delay in responding to traditional dial-up members’ concerns. Cheers john