Financial Loss Mitigation Just like in the movies, when the war ship takes a torpedo — as our ALOA ship’s profile exhibited a five-degree list to star- board in the beginning of Q2 of 2020 — we called for a dam- age report. The forecast was a substantial projected financial operating loss for fiscal year 2020. Frankly, the magnitude of our projected financial loss was, shall we say, alarming! Worse yet was the fact that this was early in the war with no light at the end of this tunnel, and we didn’t know how long the tunnel was. Aſter securing a reading from Madame Zenda’s online Cred- ible, Reliably Accurate Projections (aka CRAP) Fortune Telling Service, like an insecure mob boss, ALOA’s A-Team developed a “hit list” of potential overhead and operating expense reduc- tions, but the first quarter had already passed. This meant than whatever cost and expense reductions we could achieve would, at best (aſter implementation), apply to only the remaining eight months of the 2020 fiscal year. We made our list, checked it twice and began what some might call “The ALOA Inquisi- tions.” You know the drill! Did we really need that much toilet paper? Could we flush less oſten, etc.? This is a good time to mention that — as with many member- ship and nonprofit organizations — most members are essen- tially passengers in the organization’s airplane. They are likely unaware of what it takes to run a multi-million-dollar entity with thousands of members and a global scope. That’s why we have a staff and board of directors. As we identified potential cost savings, we began with a scalpel, moved to a machete and finally, to avoid a cash hemorrhage, reluctantly reached for a chainsaw. The projected 2020 fiscal year financial loss was more than a half million dollars! Needless to say, cost reductions such as using smaller paper clips were not going to close this gap! So, the slashing began. This would be what’s technically known as a two-six-pack challenge! Maybe even a keg. Along the way, our staff abandoned the headquarters bun- ker and took up hermitage in their homes. Fortunately, parole officers were cooperative and uncharacteristically flexible… just kidding! (Did you know that, back in the day, ALOA’s staff numbered more than 20 full-time employees?) So, just as fami- lies could not visit each other and kids had to learn at home, our staff began to work at home as well. And, unfortunately, some of ALOA’s staff became collateral damage as we searched for opportunities to reduce our over- head and operating expenses. Staff employment benefits were also reduced and, of course, lots of other stuff was eliminated, but I’ll spare you the ugly details. With everyone working from home and trapped in Zoom purgatory, we managed to use less WWW.ALOA.ORG TP and saved on utilities back at the Easy Street (yes, that’s the name) headquarters bunker. To make another long and pain- ful story short, at the end of what historians might someday refer to as “ALOA’s Night of the Long Knives,” we reduced our forecasted financial damage by hundreds of thousands of dol- lars while still proudly delivering membership services. But, a sizeable loss remained. Two more victims of our Helter Skelter-type of extreme cost cutting were our award-winning magazines. We have printed our world-class Keynotes monthly for decades, and many mem- bers maintain their copies (since forever) as invaluable technical reference materials. Our bimonthly Safe and Vault Technology magazine boasts a similar heritage. Many years ago, we intro- duced a digital format for these publications as well, and we maintain a decade of archival issues online at www.aloa.org. When the “ship” hit the fan, we were compelled to make one of those classic no-win decisions that you might encounter in the Saw movie series. Very reluctantly, we temporarily postponed the print version of our magazines for the last five months of 2020. Although not without risk or consequences, this action yielded significant cost reduction. Residential. Commercial. We have you covered. Great customer service | Quality products Same-day shipping | Competitive pricing Educational seminars Tel: (800) 225-7405 www.stoneandberg.com Fax: (800) 535-5625 JULY/AUGUST 2021 KEYNOTES 21
