- What office are you seeking, and what are your qualifications? I am Carla Ruschival, and I am running for a second term as Treasurer of the American Council of the Blind.
I am from Louisville, Kentucky, and I have been a member of ACB since I was a teen-ager. I bring a wide range of experience to the office of Treasurer. I have served as Treasurer of the Kentucky Council of the Blind since 1998, Treasurer of the Kentucky School for the Blind Alumni Association since 2001, and Treasurer of ACB since 2011. I served as a Director on the ACB Board from 1982-1990, and again from 2002-2010; both times I found it necessary to make tough decisions concerning ACB's financial future.
I have served as ACB Convention Chair for 11 years and Assistant Chair for seven years. I have worked on four Local Host Committees. In these roles I brought change and new features to the convention, helped create a week that was richer and more diverse while keeping costs down, and instituted policies and programs that generated tens of thousands of dollars for ACB over the past several years.
Other relevant experience includes serving on the ACB Budget Committee and the ACB Enterprises and Services Board of Directors. As Treasurer I have chaired the ACB Budget and Investment Committees, served as Officer Liaison to the Durward K. McDaniel First-timers' Committee, the Monthly Monetary Support Committee, and the Resource Development Copmittee and its Walk and Auction Subcommittees. I also am chair of the Goal 1 Strategic Planning Group, a member of the Website Taskforce, chair of the ACB Mini Mall, and Officer Liaison for the Leaderstip Institute Taskforce. Finally, I have an excellent working relationship with our finance office in Minneapolis, and enjoy working with the numbers. - What would you do to strengthen the relationship between the ACB national leadership and state and special-interest affiliates?
If ACB, its affiliates and chapters work as a team in the areas of public relations, fund-raising, membership development etc., our successes will increase manyfold. Here are just a few ideas that can help:
a. The Resource Development Committee is exploring the creation of a program to work in partnership with affiliates to boost local fundraisers. This was done on a small scale many years ago by Jim Olsen, ACB's first CFO; I believe it has merit for us today.
b. The National Office receives many calls, scholarship applications, or other inquiries throughout the year. Referrals should be made to appropriate affiliates on a regular day-to-day basis, rather than be the exception to the rule. Our National Office needs to regularly check the accuracy of affiliate contact information so as to better refer callers to state and local ACB groups.
c. ACB should continue to develop the new affiliate database, refining the contact management side of the system that allows each affiliate to utilize this powerful web-based software for its own specific membership recruitment and fundraising needs.
d. The Membership and Public Relations Committees have done outstanding work in providing training tools via conference call, thus permitting affiliate and chapter members to take advantage of programming from their own communities and at minimal cost. ACB should take such training to the next level, utilizing webinar capabilities for the benefit of our organizations down to the local chapter level.
e. Every affiliate now has a contact page on the ACB website. Each affiliate can determine how it wishes to utilize this web space. ACB should extend a helping hand, showing affiliates how to add text, images, and links to their pages. - In light of the current national economic crisis, how can long-term financial stability be achieved for ACB?
Financial stability is a problem for many nonprofits. Most depend on donations, bequests, grants and other sources of funding that may not happen every quarter or every year. When the economy becomes bleak, individual contributions suffer; sponsors, grantors and foundations don't have as much money to distribute due to lower returns on investments. Bequests may be over-plentiful in one year and nonexistent in another.
The budget process is based on averages and projections: average bequests over the long term; projected income from events such as the auction or convention; projected return on investments etc.
As a fiscal conservative, I prefer to project low income and high expense. It is distressing that the 2013 ACB budget is a deficit, necessitating pulling money from reserves.
It's easy to say "just cut staff and expenses". Our problem is that we have done both with a vengeance. Staff and contract personnel have been trimmed about as far as we can trim; expenses have taken a very close shave. The change in the ACB Braille Forum to six hard-copy issues, and the initiation of the new E-Forum, is an example of cutting expenses while keeping services to members at a high level.
ACB must now look outside itself for funding partners. The sponsorship and advertising model established in the convention is infusing more money into ACB this year than the walk, auction, and MMS programs combined. The expansion of that program alone throughout ACB could erase half of our budget deficit. Effectively tracking prospects and donors with our new Donor Perfect database, getting more results from our Director of Development position, increasing our visibility to outside potential funders, making ourselves more attractive to grantors - these are a sample of the avenues down which ACB should travel to a more prosperous future. - List three issues you plan to work on should you be elected and how you plan to effect change in those three areas.
a. Increased public relations is key to reaching potential members, funders etc. The ACB Board engaged in a day of strategic planning at its 2012 mid-year meeting. From that process came working groups of Board members, staff and others that transcended individual committees and co-ordinated various efforts within ACB. I have chaired the Goal 1 group for the past several months, and if elected hope to continue to work on Goal 1 activities, especially toward a greatly-expanded presence in social media, increased visibility and funding for ACB Radio, and more numerous press releases and other strategies to tell the ACB story.
b. In 2013 the ACB Store has become the ACB Virtual Mini Mall. We issued our first catalog and opened the ACB Treasures shop with a new line of ACB-branded products and commemorative designs. I hope to continue to expand product lines in the ACB Virtual Mini Mall and see the advent of additional shops featuring products by and for people with visual impairments. Examples of such products are books and CD's by people who are blind or visually impaired; games and high- and low-tech products for home, school and work; and other unique and useful items from a variety of sources.
c. The National Conference and Convention sponsorship program has been a huge success since its inception in 2006. I hope to work more actively with Margarine Beaman and others to expand this program to other areas of ACB, creating and increasing income streams from outside the organization.
This web page was last updated June 4, 2013.