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2010-11_Report-White Tops Magazine 

Submitted by Webmaster on   4/15/2012
Last Modified

White Tops Magazine

Report to the membership 2010-2011
by John & Mardi Wells

The last two years have been very busy at White Tops and an understanding of all that has happened requires covering more than the 2010-2011 fiscal year. Because our conventions and fiscal year have not coincided either, we have chosen to report on all that has happened since our last report to the CFA membership.

Falling membership of the CFA has caused a shortfall in revenues for the association. But a combination of factors led to the White Tops budget not being dealt with last fiscal year until so late in the year, that the Board of Directors chose to use savings (an estimated $10,000.00 from about $110,000.00 in CDs and investments) to keep the White Tops as it had become rather than sacrifice the publicationʼs benefit to members and as a tool for marketing new CFA memberships.
It was also decided to make a general appeal to the membership on behalf of White Tops for $10,000.00. This was chaired by Pete Adams and raised some $9,862.00 by July, 2011.

But it was recognized that the 2011-2012 budget would need to be adjusted as asking for “emergency” funds again was not a good long range solution. The answer, of course, is to replace and expand our membership, but until that can be planned and accomplished, other things must be done.

One was to cut the cost of producing White Tops. This was addressed by the editors and ways were found to cut $9,500.00 from the 2011-2012 budget. This was done with a new printer who uses very modern means to publish. Benefits to CFA, besides lower costs, have been becoming a full color publication, faster turnaround, and better mail service.

It also needs to be mentioned that the White Tops editors decided to make serious contributions to the cause that do not show up in the ledgers. In order to save the $9,500.00 in printing costs mentioned above, the printer required proofing of the magazine by what is called soft proofing.

Instead of an inkjet printed proof in your hands, you approve what you see on a calibrated computer monitor. But to do that you must have an approved display with special software that insures what you see on the monitor is what you get on the printing press. Those monitors cost the editors $2,500.00 of real money. (The software was provided by the printer).

In addition, the work load to make White Tops as good as it is, has exceeded the time available by the editors so an employee of their company, Quality Design Xpress, was brought in to help and is paid by the editors for his work. He works about half time on the magazine.

You will notice some changes in the magazine because we now use 16 page signatures, printing 16 magazine pages on one sheet of paper, instead of eight. 72 page magazines will become obsolete because 3, 72 page issues costs the same as a 64 page and 2, 80 page issues and you get 8 more pages of content...all in full color.

We really need some new authors and photographers to help out the present cadre. Many CFA members have worked long hours, spent their own money, and given us outstanding coverage of circus. But it is not reasonable to expect these folks to keep-up this pace forever.

Now we must all share in the work of creating our White Tops. More members need to become authors, reporters, photographers, artists, and poem writers. We want to cover circus – all circus – from every angle, location and time. It's your turn...

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