2024-12-13 Meeting notes

Public Page

   CIECA 500 Westover Dr #11617; Sanford, NC  27330 

Date

Dec 13, 2024

Agenda

• November Financials

• 2025 Budget

Meeting Minutes

• 2024 November Financials.

  • Paul reviewed the November 2024 YTD financials. All numbers are in line with expectations and within budget.

  • No concerns by the committee

• 2025 Budget

  • The committee reviewed the proposed budget

  • We take a conservative view of the budget (revenue lower / expenses higher) than what we may actually achieve.

    • Our

  • Key assumptions

    • Conference will be planned to break even ($75k revenue and expenses)

    • New Membership: Planning at 85% of historical. We have had significant growth in recent years due to new startup activity tied to ADAS, Calibration and other new technology. We anticipate that growth may slow in 2025.

    • Renewals: Historically we have planned at 5% churn rate or 95% of current renewals.

      • We are seeing an increase in churn rate attributable to the significant number of new members over the last 3 years.

      • CIECA has grown by more than 50% in the last few years and the majority of those companies are startups

        • We find that many startups last only 1-2 years (They either go out of business or can’t get the data they were hoping for).

      • For 2025 we are going to plan a 7.25% churn rate or 92.5% of renewals.

    • Planning $3,000 for contractor training and $12,000 for special project associated with the 2025 objective of the CIECA Boot Camp.

    • Contractor fees are set based on the contracts that are in place

    • All other numbers are based on inflationary growth of historical

  • The committee reviewed the budget and had no questions or concerns.

  • Next step is to take the budget to the full board for approval.

• CIECA Surplus

  • Bryce Boyer asked Paul to share more information on what happens to the profits / surplus that we have been building over the last several years.

  • I shared some history that until relatively recently, CIECA did not enjoy much in the way of surplus and in fact the budget was pretty tight in many years.

    • Due to growth in membership and successful CONNEX events, we have started to grow a surplus.

  • A number of years ago, a goal was set to grow the surplus to twice the CIECA operating budget.

    • Our current budget is approximately $600k annually

    • Our goal, therefore, is a surplus of $1.2M at current levels.

    • As of this writing, our surplus is roughly $650,000.

  • In the past any additional monies were swept into a savings account at a rate of $1,000 / month.

    • That savings account now only pays 0.02%, which is relatively insignificant.

    • Last year, as we saw the amount of money in the Savings account growing, we made a decision to keep roughly $150 in the primary checking and $250k or less in Savings.

    • We invested in a series of staggered CD’s as a safe way to grow the surplus capital.

      • So far the CD’s have yielded a decent return of approximately 5% on the monies invested or likely $12,000 in 2024 (the equivalent of 12 new Tier 1 memberships.)

    • Assuming we continue to grow the surplus in the coming years, we may be in a position to seek out more aggressive growth options, while still taking a conservative position relative to risk. (Low risk treasury bonds, corporate bonds or something similar)

    • We should continue to invest in CD’s for the time being, but if and when our surplus rises above $750k, we may want to explore other options, which would need to be approved by the Finance Committee.

Up Next

• Antitrust Agreement and Meeting minutes acceptance

Action items

Decisions

Participants

• @Paul Barry Jeff Dietrich @Bryce.Boyer @Brady Bonner @Kim DeVallance Caron

Participants in the meetings are noted for your information.  If you have questions on the committee’s activities, please contact a recent attendee.