By Gil Gullickson
2019-2020 AAEA President
Jim Lee Howell won a National Football League (NFL) championship and was runner-up several times during his tenure as coach of the NFL’s New York Giants.
His biggest claim to fame, though, is that he hired two assistant coaches who became NFL legends—the Green Bay Packers’
Vince Lombardi and the Dallas Cowboys’ Tom Landry. With Lombardi running the offense and Landry running the defense, Howell joked that his biggest job was filling the team’s footballs with air.
That’s the way I’ve felt so far in my tenure when it comes to the finances of the Agricultural Communicator’s Network (ACN). A little over a year ago, the turbulent agricultural economy had us facing a $24,000 deficit. Led by 2018-2019 President Christy Lee Couch, past-president Julie Deering, executive director Samantha Kilgore, and your ACN board and committees, we tackled this financial conundrum. We saved $4,000 by not printing a membership directory. We boosted the search for additional sponsors. We raised dues (ouch) and added entries to our esteemed writing, photography, design, and marketing communications contests. We successfully hosted an Agricultural Media Summit (AMS) and International Federation of Agricultural Journalists meeting last July in Bloomington, Minnesota. These steps and others have us (fingers crossed) set to end this fiscal year approximately $4,000 in the black.
And I didn’t even need to add air in the footballs.
Things can change, and we need to be vigilant regarding our expenses. This projection is partially based on proceeds from another successful AMS slated for next July in Kansas City. It’s our 100th anniversary celebration, so the outlook is terrific for another great AMS. Jim Patrico is compiling a neat book commemorating our 100th anniversary complete with historical photos and background on our organization. This is also when the Ag Communicators Network will replace the American Agricultural Editors’ Association as our official name.
It’s all part of our strategic plan initiated several years ago. Our roots are in agricultural journalism, and it will remain so. Still, the Agricultural Communicators Network more accurately reflects our membership—editors, writers, photographers, public relations and corporation communications professionals, and others. We’ve also voted to allow associate members to serve in leadership capacity. These changes make our organization more inclusive.
Finances and the Agricultural Media Summit were main topics of a recent ACN board meeting held in Des Moines in late October.
Other highlights include:
- A regional meeting is planned for late April in Chicago. Chicago is where our organization was founded, and this is a way to return for our roots. Amy Roady is hard at work organizing the meeting. Look for more information in future issues of The Byline.
- There’s a salary survey in the works. The last one we conducted was in 2011, and this will be an updated version.
- We are expanding our awards program for 2020 by adding a Master of Marketing Communications achievement element to the MarComm Awards. The Awards designations and levels will align with the existing requirements for the Master Writer Program.
Please contact me at [email protected] with any suggestions to make this great organization even better.