Executive Director's Report =========================== 16 June 1997 By Lisa K. Donnelly & Christopher L. Cope execdir@freenet.carleton.ca) Contents: 1. Funding and Public Relations Update 2. NCF Administration 3. Member Services and Future Initiatives 1. Funding Update ================= a) Cash Received in May ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ $3,229.00 New Registrants/Individual donations (167 donations w/ 6 PFAs and 12 separate from registration) $25,887.70 Renewals (1249 donations w/ 17 PFAs) $401.00 Organizational Accounts $120.00 Boutique $350.00 Connection Sponsors (Embassy of Spain) $134.11 Foreign (non US) Currency Exchange * $198.78 US Exchange (gain) ** -------------------------------------- $30,320.59 Total Deposit ** This exchange is the aggregate for a variety of foreign (non US) currencies gathered throughout the renewal process. b) Membership Activity: Renewals ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ The process of 1st, 2nd, 3rd and final letters continued throughout the month of May. Older unrenewed accounts were put into a ten minute 'hibernation' mode. As in previous months, the majority of members renewed their accounts during the period beginning from the 'first renewal letter' which they received 30 days before the renewal date until approximately 15 days after the renewal date. 'First renewal letters' are sent out 30 days before the account renewal date. Accordingly, the number of these first letters provides a forecast of the renewal revenue for the following period. During the month of May, the last of the phased group of 'first renewal letters' was sent on May 11. Up until that time, an average of 245 letters were generated daily. As of May 12, the daily average dropped to approximately 19 per day with a total of 3079 for the month(compared to 7,817 last month). This has had significant impact on the revenue for the second half of the month. Beginning in Early June, the first of the non-renewing accounts will be archived. Non-renewing members will have had five months to respond before this stage. There will still be a two month opportunity to renew and change the archived status of the account, so that members will have had a 7 month period to renew their accounts. Member IDs will not be recycled, so it will be possible for someone to recover their original ID for up to two months from initial archiving. After that time account information will be deleted and a person wishing to regain access to NCF can simply go through the registration process again. Data for November, December 1996, January, February, March, April & May, 1997 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Sent Rec'd Donors %/Donor Rtrn/mo. Rtrn/cum. Tot/don Budget Av/don Nov. 6,155 213 141 66% 3.5% 3.5% $3,063 $5,000 $21.72 Dec. 8,560 1,065 666 63% 12.4% 8.7% $15,373 $7,000 $23.08 Jan. 8,219 1,277 1,136 89% 15.5% 11.1% $24,278 $31,000 $21.37 Feb. 7,846 2,331 1,495 64% 29.7% 15.9% $33,163 $31,000 $22.18 Mar. 8,889 2,190 1,659 76% 24.7% 20.5% $31,229 $31,000 $18.82 Apr. 7,817 2,217 1,437 65% 28.4% 20.5% $31,738 $31,000 $22.01 May. 3,079 1,831 1,266 69% 41.1% 21.9% $25,888 $31,000 $20.45 ~~~~~~ ~~~~~~ ~~~~~ ~~~ ~~~~~ 50,565 11,124 7,800 70% 15.4% c) Organizational Accounts ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ This is the first month to show the new "Organizational Accounts". The first 4 organizations donating this month were: Webmotion, Business & Professional Women of Ottawa, Newlife Christian Publications and MASC Arts in Schools and Communities. The Alzheimer Society of Ottawa-Carleton (ASOC) and The Council on Aging for Lanark, Leeds-Grenville, both contributed in previous months as part of our test of this option. d) April Connection Sponsors ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ We received one connection sponsorship in May. The Embassy Of Spain renewed their sponsorship for a half year. e) Government Grants ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ The Trillium grant submission is nearing completion. This $23,500 request for On-line Job Search Training will be sent out by June 10, 1997. NCF's contribution to this venture will be in the form of Staff resources and volunteer time, with no cash expenditure for the project. Thanks are in order to Denise Skrypkar and Jeff Bossert! f) Visits to Key Partners ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ The new Executive Director, the outgoing Executive Director and the Treasurer will visit as many of our Key Partners as can be scheduled during the first 3 weeks of June. 11 appointments have been made with 2 more pending. 1 Key Partner representative will be away for the entire period (but will be pursued later) and 1 is located in a remote city and will be contacted by mail. A laminated NCF Plaque (poster contest winner) will be given to all Key Partners, together with a letter updating them on recent activities at NCF together with a copy of Freenews and a 'Wish List' outlining NCF's current hardware, software and services needs. g) Public Relations Update ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ - The May issue of the NCF Newsletter "FreeNews" is now online (go freenews) and is also available on the Web at http://www.ncf.carleton.ca/public-relations/ for the Web version. - Ads were run in both Monitor and Ottawa Computes (Thanks to Key Partners) h) Funding Administrivia ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ - The online list of donor files updated to reflect all May donations. - A new category (Organizational Accounts) was added to the Funding Hall of Fame on Funding menu (go funding) - Thank You letters were sent to all donors. 2. NCF Administration ======================= a) Network Upgrades ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ There were several scheduled upgrades over the last month. The first was Wednesday, 14 May from 8:30 AM to 1:00 PM. The primarily goal of this downtime was to upgrade freenet3 and install a fast Ethernet card as well as making maintenance changes to our Sun machines. A second scheduled downtime occurred on Wednesday, 21 May from 9:00 AM to 12:00 PM. The primary goal was to install a new filter machine. The largest upgrading was done on Wednesday, 4 June from 9:00 AM to 12:00 PM. The upgrade on 4 June effected freenet4 and Email. Freenet4 was upgraded to Solaris 2.5.1. The web server, DNS and proxy servers were all taken down. The email subsystem was upgraded to sendmail 8.8.5 and patched to prevent relaying and to block unsolicited commercial mail. Consequently, NCF can now block known spam sites thus reducing the amount of unwanted commercial mail members are exposed to. Some commercial mail will occur as this is a large problem on the Internet but reductions should be noticeable on NCF in the near future. Some of the side effects of the last upgrade were interruption of some services from the 4th to the 10th of June: difficulties were encountered with members using PPP connectivity on Friday the 6th, PFA addresses were temporarily suspended; and immediately after the upgrade certain reply addresses added a number after the word freenet (e.g. freenet1) thus causing problems with some newsgroups and listserve postings which required confirmation of the poster's return address. To the best of our knowledge, the problems from 4 June were all fixed by the 10th. 3. Member Services =================== a) Shared Content Authoring ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ In May NCF launched organizational accounts. To compliment this Information Provider service, we will soon we be releasing a tool, which will allow shared authoring of content areas on NCF. This means that organizations that wish to have up to three people maintaining pages or menus from their separate accounts can do so. Testing has begun and a formal announcement should be up by the end of June. b) Archiving of unrenewed accounts begins ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ The software for archiving unrenewed accounts was created and tested in late May. In early June NCF started the actual process. Unwanted accounts are now archived if a member has not renewed in five months. The archiving will last for two months and during that time a member can still complete the renewal process and reclaim their member ID. c) Progress with Auto-install Diskettes for PPP Connectivity ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Andre Vellino had created a test version of a Mac diskette. Help Desk Chair, Richard Bethall, is helping to test the application. Some software is still outstanding for completing the project. A donation request is being sent to the software company in hopes of an in-kind donation. Colin McFadyen has been waiting to complete the PC version of the auto-install diskettes. An in-kind donation from Netscape is due to arrive mid-June. Given Colin's time availability, we hope to have the test version ready by early July. d) NCF Search Engine Still in Test Mode ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Given the system problems and aggressive upgrade schedule of April and June the search engine software, WebGlimpse, is still in test mode. We have talked to Netscape and will be receiving their Catalogue Server and will install it for testing in June As well. When possible, we try to utilize software created by our Key Partners. This project is now top priority for the next three weeks.