Treasurer's report

For Year 2005

This year has been a challenging one for the NCF as we changed the focus of the organization and looked to see how we could develop our services into the future.

This naturally had an effect on our finances. The organization decided that it could not continue to rely on special government projects to supply it with revenue. Such projects often were not profitable per se, but they did allow us to pay for some overheads and staff costs, and also to develop software products that we could use ourselves. However they are often take a considerable amount of time and effort, resources that the Board felt could be better utilized elsewhere.

With the loss of this cash flow, the finances of NCF became very stretched, particularly over the summer which is our traditionally slow period. However in the fall we launched our DSL service, and this has three impacts financially:

1. It stops the loss of members who although fully supportive of the NCF needed a higher connection speed than they could get even with fully optimized dialup
2. It provides a source of ongoing revenue for Freenet that is paid every month and that cumulatively provides a solid base for the organization as more members take that service
3. It provides a way of smoothing out the ups and downs of the donations which tended to be concentrated at certain times of the year.

The Freenet has now weathered its financial storm and we expect to generate a profit in the next fiscal year. Although we are a not-for-profit body, we need surpluses to enable us to invest in hardware and software to continue to offer the Ottawa community a set of services that is the equal of any of the mainstream commercial providers. The Board looks forward to establishing a solid financial basis that will allow us to fulfil some of our future plans

Respectfully submitted

W. Michael Fletcher CGA
Treasurer