illinois association for college stores (iacs)

JUNE 2004

Greetings to the IACS Membership from the President, Officers, and Board of Directors -

Your new Association Officers & Board of Directors met for the first time on May 26 at Pheasant Run in St. Charles, IL, site of our 2004 Fall Meeting (October 24 - 26). Preparations are well underway and you can read all about them by visiting the article by Lynne Durin, IACS Vice President.

For an inside look into the May 27th Mininar held at Waubonsee College, please check out JoAnne's report (forthcoming). I sent two of my employees from Illinois Valley Community College, and they both had nothing but good to say about their first Mininar experience. Thanks to JoAnne Leibold, Madge Buchholz, and the others on the Mininar Committee for their hard work.

The Board of Directors made a number of changes when we met and you are viewing one now. This is your first newsletter delivered to you directly from the IACS website. From now on the link you are sent will bring you to the President's Page which will direct you to a number of links throughout the website which will include Board Meeting Minutes, Business Meeting Minutes, the most recent Income Statement/Balance Sheet (in Members Only), as well as articles like those I mentioned above. For this reason, a Newsletter Committee will no longer be needed. We will have four deadlines each year for receipt of information to include on the website prior to a membership-wide email. Those dates are February 1, May 1, July 1 and November 1. You may send information to Stacey Douglas any time you wish and he will post job openings, requests for information, member news, etc. This is the first in a series of innovations that we hope will make the website a more practical and useful tool for our membership. We hope you'll help us accomplish that goal.

I am pleased to announce that our new Membership Chair is Loreen Maxfield of UIC Chicago. Loreen's first mission is go once again after those Illinois stores who are non-members. She has come up with the idea of offering them a 'guest membership' to this fall meeting. These non-members will receive an invitation from the President and the Board to visit our website and become a 'guest member'. They will be invited to attend the fall meeting and participate so that we can welcome them and show them IACS hospitality. They will not pay dues, will not vote during the business meeting, and will pay half of the registration fee. With the addition of our trade show, we hope to entice some new attendees.

Speaking of our fall trade show, the board is hoping that we could see a new spirit of unity at our trade show this fall. Store members - please come with an eye to buying. Please make our vendor members feel as though the time, money and effort they spend being there for you at our trade show is appreciated. Vendor members - please come ready, willing, and able to sell your wares. The board suggests having some show specials available which could be advertised for you before the show so store members can see what you are offering. Let's do some business and support each other this fall!

Finally, in the face of rising costs and some member approved expenditures, the board made the unanimous decision to raise dues. Membership rates are now $55 for stores and $65 for vendors, an increase of $10 each. This will generate approximately $1,220 in additional revenue for IACS given our current membership. This decision was not made lightly. The Past Presidents, Committees, and Boards have all received rave reviews for the annual meetings and CAMEX hospitality that has been arranged for the benefit and enjoyment of our members. Like everything else, costs in these areas are continuing to rise and since we don't want to leave the membership disappointed when they attend any IACS event, we felt we needed to ask that members contribute additionally to the association's income. This increase was also brought about by two member approved expenditures. First was the $5,000 donation to the NACS Foundation which will be paid in $1,000 installments over the next 5 years. Second was the purchase of two laptops and some software needed by our treasurer and other board members to continue to serve the membership efficiently.

Of course I welcome any comments that you wish to make about our decisions. You can email me directly at Lauren_Sandberg@ivcc.edu. If you wish to volunteer to help with the fall meeting, we can use your ideas and enthusiasm. Please take a few minutes to look around the website and forward any ideas, comments, or compliments to our webmaster Stacey Douglas.

Good luck this fall. May your registers work through rush, your website forget to crash, and your student workers show up on time every day they're expected. Then we will surely all feel blessed.

Lauren Sandberg
IACS President