Being $361,295 in the red doesn’t seem like cause for celebration.
Of course, having once been $900,000 in the red does offer some perspective.
That’s the way Robert Pedde likes to look at the National Farmers Union’s account books.
The organization’s director of finance and administration says the bottom line may not be very pretty, but it’s a lot less ugly than it used to be.
“I know when I go to the banker now, he smiles a lot more than he did seven or eight years ago,” he said.
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Nine years ago, says Pedde, he spent 50 percent of his time answering calls from creditors. Now it’s one or two calls a month.
“You couldn’t run a commercial business the way we used to run the NFU. You’d go bankrupt.”
In 1983, the NFU reported an accumulated debt of $939,068. By the end of the last fiscal year in September 1994, the debt had been whittled down to $361,295 and Pedde confidently predicts a balanced budget in a just a few more years.
NFU officials like to point out that only about $117,313 is owed to banks. Most of the organization’s debt is money owed to itself, either to various special funds the union has set up or to individual officers, members or locals.
Over the years, much of that internal debt has been written off, a sacrifice noted by Pedde in his report to members at the organization’s recent annual meeting.
Dedication of staff, officials
“The NFU has survived 25 years of continual financial hardship,” he said. “The dedication of elected officials that are willing to work for little or no pay and/or expenses, and staff members … have made this possible.”
But he also issued a warning that the organization can’t continue to expect a few people to carry such a heavy burden. All members must do their part.
Despite those serious words, Pedde said in a recent interview the NFU isn’t about to fold.
“Two years ago, I wondered that myself,” he said. “But this year I look at the cash flow up and I see the mood better among members and more enthusiasm in the office.”
Just to make things even more difficult, the union has had some major staffing problems, going through two executive secretaries in the last two years and losing the long-time editor of the Union Farmer newspaper. Three staff members were temporarily laid off last summer as a cost-cutting measure.
“We have had to become a very lean and efficient organization,” said Pedde. “We do a tremendous amount of work with very limited resources.”
The key to turning around the union’s finances remains memberships, which provide about 70 percent of total income. Membership numbers have been on a steady downward spiral for years, hitting a new low of 3,009 family memberships in September 1994 (each family membership represents an average of about three individual members).
But things seem to be turning around, with canvassing efforts in Manitoba and Alberta boosting the number back up to around 3,300 in January, according to Pedde.
Don Kelsey, a board member from Choiceland, Sask., was recently appointed national membership co-ordinator to figure out ways to turn around the decline in membership. The modest but realistic goal, he says, is to end the year with no net loss of members.
A lot of reasons have been cited for the drop in membership, including fewer farmers, tough financial times, deaths and policy disagreements. But Kelsey said the biggest single reason is that the organization hasn’t done a good enough job of visiting members and encouraging them to sign up again each year.
The union will encourage more members to pay through bank authorization and it is considering hiring someone to develop a program to train members in canvassing techniques. Success of these new efforts remains to be seen, but for at least one NFU member, the struggle for dollars and bodies goes with the territory.
“If you’re a volunteer organization, you’re going to be continually under financial stress and membership stress, but you’re also going to be continually in contact with the people you’re supposed to be representing,” said Fred Tait of Rossendale, Man.
