KPFA: Oct-December 2010 Financial Statement

The enclosed was sent to the current KPFA board treasurer (with a few questions snipped for brevity). I am the outgoing delegate to the Pacifica's National Finance Committee and a listener rep on KPFA's board.

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Two pieces of information that should be presented and are not present here are quarter-ending cash-in-bank at 12/31/10 and outstanding short-term liabilities (accounts payable) due and unpaid at the quarter end. It would also be helpful to get the net total outflows from each fund drive that are payable to KPFK (50% of the news pledges) and to KFCF (Fresno-area donors).

In reviewing the 1st quarter documents, here are some trends.

Income: The original projection was for 4 additional days of fundraising in November and December to raise $150,000 in income. Happily for us, that became 5 days of additional fundraising in December alone, that not only met the goal, but surpassed it by an additional $200,000. Those unexpected funds account for the surplus and without them we would be in a deficit position. That indicates December is a good time to raise funds and we may want to strongly recommend a December on-air minidrive be institutionalized.

The only other significant area of discrepancy is that crafts fair income came up short of projections by 25K or 25% of expected.

Expenses:

Expenses came in pretty much as anticipated in total, but there were two areas of overrun, with underruns in 4 other areas to balance things out.

The areas of overrun were on salaries and benefits (29K) and the annual crafts fair (4K). We may want to review the crafts fair planning for next year as coming over on expenses and under on revenue suggests some modifications might be needed with the event planning for this
year.

The salary overrun consisted of 36K more than budgeted for the quarter, with some corresponding decrease in health benefit obligations, which suggests unanticipated payments of more funds to existing employees or to employees who are not receiving benefits (very part-time). The expenses were accrued in November and December of 2010 mostly, so we might need to pay attention to where those overruns are coming from.

Savings occurred largely in administrative costs: eliminating consultants, and greatly reducing telephone bills.

Other significant savings included the board election expenses, which came in at 6K less than anticipated.

Website expenses were also reduced by 6K in the programming expenses category.

The final area of savings is in the development category and is largely composed of printing bills we didn't incur because a planned fundraising mailing in the fall did not get printed and sent.

Conclusion: On the whole, this is not a bad quarterly statement. It indicates enough cash flow to not encounter serious problems in this current quarter with a respectable showing in the current fund drive. But our budget is tight and without the quite remarkable December results and the November reductions, we would be under water.

It also seems we are subsidizing salary overruns by reducing both technology expenses and development efforts, and in the long run, those are areas that need more investment, not less. There is also the question of marketing and promotion and when we are going to start
investing in that area.

Our long-term health would benefit from more development, more technology and more promotion, but right now our overhead level prevents that.