From Patricia Greenfield, President, 2016-2017, UCLA Faculty Center Board of Governors
Dear Members,
As I end my year as President of the Faculty Center Board of Governors, the most challenging assignment of my career at UCLA, I want to report to the membership where we are, where we are going, and what is needed, finishing with an important appeal.
The Year's Accomplishments: Thanks to our General Manager, Luciano Sautto, in place for only a year, we now have rooms revealing beautiful views (no more curtains!) and a completely remodeled South wing. We also have a full breakfast and a tapas menu, augmented by Taco Tuesdays, in the Playa Lounge. During the summer, we have had beautiful al fresco barbecues on the Rose Patio every Thursday evening. The Faculty Center now provides take-out dinners, ordered online or in person, and new conference lunch services, including lunch purchase for those attending conferences in classroom buildings. Guests at the UCLA Guest House can purchase meals at the Faculty Center. We have reached out to the broader campus, instituting, with crucial help from the Registrar and his staff, graduation dinners for students and their families with a new online ticketing system.
With help from Campus Human Resources, we have also begun to address the problem of a large career staff in a seasonal business. Campus Human Resources has helped us to have more flexible staffing while preserving the jobs of our valued career staff.
Relationship to the University: The UCLA Faculty Center is a nonprofit corporation run by an elected Board of Governors. Currently it receives no operating funds from the University, but is subject to every charge that university departments pay out of the operating funds they receive from the Administration. Hence our business plan is of utmost importance. While the University had no problem when the Luskin Center lost more than three million dollars last year, the Faculty Center must pay all its bills to the University, our principal creditor, every month, under implicit threat of takeover if we fall behind. Because we are part of UCLA, some of these bills would be unheard of outside a university context. For example, the Faculty Center is charged every time a UCLA police car drives by our building. Not only that, but the policing fees, already unreasonably high last year ($800/month) has now doubled to more than $1600 per month! This kind of charge is both unreasonable and unaffordable for an entity that is receiving no financial support from the University.
At the same time, the Faculty Center has lost the financial partnership with the University that began decades ago when UCLA Faculty and the University split the cost of constructing our beloved mid-century modern building. This year the Board of Governors reached out to the Administration to develop the first-ever formal agreement with the University, hoping to reinstate the Faculty Center-University partnership. So far the response has been disappointing. One can only conclude that the Board and Faculty Center members are on our own to make the Faculty Center a financially thriving enterprise. The Board has therefore taken the following steps:
A New Financial Model
In the face of high labor costs, many if not most faculty clubs around the country have gone out of business. We have decided to follow the path of the few that have survived. That path is to open membership to a much broader community. Our main model in this has been the Harvard Faculty Club; that club has successfully gone from unlimited financial support from Harvard to zero financial support from Harvard. I visited, dined at, and interviewed the General Manager of the Harvard Faculty Club to see how they had made this financial transition. They had successfully done so by opening up their membership to the broader community. Most important, I observed that, despite this new community focus, the club still has the same ambiance as when their membership was exclusively faculty. Based on the steps Harvard has taken, our Board of Governors has modified its bylaws to greatly expand eligible membership categories; membership is now open to all staff, all retirees, all alumni/ae, parents of students and alums, local residents, and local business people. Like UCLA departments, college alumni clubs in the Los Angeles area will now be able to purchase membership for their alumni/ae clubs. At the same time, all current member categories remain in effect. In taking this path, we are also following the lead of the most successful faculty club in the Los Angeles area, the Cal Tech Athenaeum, which has had community memberships for many years.
Democratizing membership and opening up to the community are very much in line with UCLA's overall mission. In terms of financial survival, we are confident that reaching out in this way will increase our income through new membership fees and new business. Indeed, since the Board took this important step in June, we have already seen an uptick in new members.
Financial Situation
The Faculty Center has been losing money every year for the last nine years. It has also suffered from mismanagement on the part of the prior General Manager and inadequate financial oversight from a number of previous Boards. For the last year and a half, the Board has been making a diligent and successful effort to reverse this situation. We hired a wonderful new General Manager, Luciano Sautto, who has taken many measures to improve our financial situation. All controllable expenses are down, while long-deferred maintenance has been completed and long-deferred bills have been paid. New revenue sources are also in the works. Luciano's efforts, supported by the Board, have cut our loss in half this year. Nonetheless, it is still a significant loss: financial turnaround takes time. We are on track to meet the goal of breaking even and starting to replenish our reserve fund in a 3- to 5-year window. But we need our members' help in making this transition to fiscal health.
Appeal
We have raised over $100,000, thanks to member donations during this last fiscal year. The Emeriti led the way with a successful matching fund of $12,000. Now it is time for active Faculty to step up to the plate! I am donating a fund of $25,000, to be matched on a one-to-one basis by active faculty, with a time limit for the match through the end of 2017. I hope we will get some large donations from active faculty -- as well as from all other categories of members. But small gifts from many people are equally important: If we could average $150 from each of our 2000+ members, we would be in a much stronger and stable financial position, giving us the time needed to succeed!
There are three great ways to donate: The Faculty Center has two funds at the UCLA Foundation, one for modernizing our facility, the other for operational expenses; donations to these funds are tax deductible; but the Foundation also keeps a percentage of your donation. To donate through the Foundation, please go online here:
https://giving.ucla.edu/Standard/NetDonate.aspx?SiteNum=461
If you are an active faculty member or researcher, write that information in the comments section, so that your donation is eligible to be matched. If you prefer to mail or bring a check to the Faculty Center, please make it out to the UCLA Foundation, specifying Modernization Fund or Faculty Center Fund (the fund for operational expenses) on the notation line.
The third way is to donate directly by mailing or bringing over a check made out to the UCLA Faculty Center; this donation will not be eligible for a tax deduction, but the Faculty Center will get 100% of your donation.
Conclusion
In a time when the social bonding created by face-to-face interaction has greatly decreased, due to the pervasiveness of electronic communication, the Faculty Center is needed more than ever to create and maintain a sense of community. The UCLA Faculty Center has been the members' club for the last 60 years; it is the responsibility of all of us to make sure it thrives for the next 60!
Sincerely,
Patricia M. Greenfield
Distinguished Professor, Department of Psychology,
President 2016-2017, UCLA Faculty Center Board of Governors
No comments:
Post a Comment