Hi Everyone,
It is amazing to see the summer weather continuing on, and now
it has just gone into May it really is challenging the concept of
what our 'summer' season really is, and indeed how long we need to
be providing services!
The April Board meeting was held in Wellington on Monday
18th, the first time in many years we have had a midweek
meeting.
From a financial perspective the results for the nine months to
31st March are a Net Operating Surplus of $0.865
million, which is $177,000 ahead of budget. This positive
variance is all due to timing variations and the latest forecast
the full year Net Operating Surplus has stayed very similar to last
month at $3k (i.e. at a breakeven level). The full
explanation of the variances is in the Financial Summary Dashboard
report.
The forecast is $350k less than budget, driven by the NZLGB
grant being $200,000 less than budgeted, a short term sponsorship
contract of $100,000 not being renewed and two gaming trust grants
being a combined $160,000 less than budgeted, with a few wins along
the way offsetting this. With depreciation being close to
$0.5m this year a breakeven Net Operating Surplus result still
leaves (after paying for capital expenditure) with a good level of
positive cashflow for the year and in line with last year. We
will however need to closely monitor the run-out to the end of the
year as there is a lot less 'fat' left to deal with any unexpected
events.
As I noted last month, the targets set for this year were
deliberately very aggressive, knowing that we would be starting to
see the loss of State Insurance sponsorship income, so the Board is
comfortable with the likely outcome for the year.
Looking ahead to 2016/17, there has been a lot of noise in the
media about Lotto not generating as much money as in previous
years. With a large amount of our funding coming from the NZ
Lottery Grants Board (NZLGB) it is a serious issue and will most
likely impact all of us. The Outdoor Safety Committee of
NZLGB will not be able to advise us until the end of September how
much money we will receive, which is a month later than
normal. However, as we all have to do our budgeting well
before that it will be prudent to anticipate less money - possibly
as much as 20%. This is speculative, but we can be very sure
we won't be getting more money than last year and with clear
warning signals being given out by the Government and Lotto, we
would do well to listen to them. We will do everything we can
to absorb as much of any reduction in NZLGB funding as
possible. However we are unlikely to be able to absorb the
full impact of the reduction. So, if you are doing your
budgeting it would be worthwhile factoring in a reduction of up to
20% in the Club Support Payments and the subsidy for insurance
dropping from 70% to 50%. Fingers crossed the final outcome
won't be as bad as that. We will let clubs know the actual
figures as soon as we find out in late September. SLSNZ also
has work to do in terms of identifying where any funding cuts will
come from our own expenditure.
In terms of the items of note from the meeting:
- This meeting was the first since our Planning Workshop in
February, so we spent quite a bit of time going over the feedback
from that session and the revised Strategic Plan. This is now
ready for circulation and is attached to this email and also
available on the SLSNZ website. While we do recognise most
clubs don't have a lot of interest in the SLSNZ Strategic Plan, we
do welcome any feedback that you may have. In that context,
we would also welcome clubs to send us your Strategic Plans - we
have a specific action to look at those to make sure the Strategic
Plan for the SLS Movement that we drafted in 2015 is aligned to
club individual plans, so the more club plans we get the more
robust that process will be. Please send your plans to our
CEO, at paul.dalton@surflifesaving.org.nz
- Another topic of conversation was around the followup from the
400m Swim Time proposals of last year. Since the survey of
club views was completed last year, the Board has asked the
National Lifesaving Committee to look at a broader project around
assessing our Lifeguard capability, including what we are doing
well, and if there are any areas where we need to be or can be
better. From the 400m swim time discussion we have taken the
message that while there may be areas where we can improve
lifeguard capability, the 400m swim time alone is probably not the
best lever to pull to do that, and a more holistic approach will
better suit. As such, this will start with a feedback process
from clubs via Local Lifesaving Committees and other stakeholders
to double check our lifeguards continue to be safe and effective
now, and in the future. Following this feedback stage the
plan is to use part of the time at the AGM Club Chairs workshop to
discuss the findings and any ideas that have come up. There is no
agenda behind this and if nothing is broken we won't try to fix
it.
- Brent Warner updated the Board on Water Safety NZ activities,
including their progress in appointing a new CEO and some Board
vacancies. WSNZ also gets its core funding from NZLGB (via
Sport NZ) so we were warned it too will be impacted by the Lotto
funding reduction in 2016/17 which may then flow back to us in
terms of the grant we get to support Beach Education and Surf to
School programmes.
- In looking at Health & Safety, the number of serious
injuries to members is running below last year, which is great but
it is still premature to draw any conclusions from this until all
the incident data has been entered into the PAM system. A
better indication is expected at the end of May. Once
finalised this information will again be shared with clubs, and
clubs are encouraged to review their own information from PAM to
see what their injury profile has been for the year and if there
are actions that can be taken to reduce this next season. In
terms of sport, feedback was noted from the recent Nationals that a
small number of clubs did need to review the 'fitness for purpose'
of the high visibility vests their athletes are wearing. This
responsibility currently rests with clubs, but will only remain
that way if everyone is taking this responsibility seriously.
- The Board finalised a 'Memorandum of Understanding' between
SLSNZ and the soon to be created Surf Life Saving Foundation -
setting out the administrative support that SLSNZ will provide the
Foundation. While the workload will be small in the first few
years, this is still an important step in the process of bringing
the Foundation back to life.
- The appointment of Moore Stephens Markhams as the new SLSNZ
auditors was ratified. They are taking over from Munro Benge
who have done a great job over many years but have recently pulled
out of auditing work in Wellington.
- The Board noted the latest Terms of References for the National
Lifesaving Committee and the National Sport Committee (and its
sub-committees). These are two vital groups for the
organisation and the Board really appreciates the work these
volunteers do. The NLC Workplan and the Blue Sky Review
progress were also noted and underlined how much activity is going
on in these areas.
- Also noted was the process of selecting people to be nominated
for the International Lifesaving Federation Commissions, for which
a number of positions are available at the General Assembly being
held in September. To do this the Board appointed a small panel to
review the applications currently being received.
- The Board also noted progress on the Coastal Public Safety
project and was pleased to see the first reports from this are
finally getting out to clubs in some parts of the country. A
strong focus remains on getting these reports done as quickly as
possible, subject to the funding we have available to do it.
The next Board meeting will be held in Wellington on Sunday
26th June. So that's it from me - although I will
add one reminder - that nominations for National Service Awards on
30th
June - please take advantage of these opportunities to
reward the longstanding contributors to your clubs and the
movement.
So until my next update……
Yours in surf,
Geoff Hamilton
Chairman
Surf Life Saving New
Zealand
