Executive Director Update

February 10, 2011

This is another in a series of occasional ASHA Executive Director updates. These updates are intended to provide ASHA members with a more in-depth view of various National Office units, their key member services and initiatives, and the names and roles of ASHA staff. Information about staff changes and ASHA National Office recognitions/awards is also included.

Many thanks to those of you who have provided feedback regarding the previous updates or suggestions for future Executive Director updates.

2010 Cost Savings and Efficiencies at ASHA's National Office

Though we have seen some improvement in economic conditions in 2010, ASHA continues to work hard in holding the line on discretionary spending. Of course, all this was done with the overriding goal of maintaining member services. Though our final results have not yet been through audit (that will take place in March), we expect to deliver a positive balance of revenue over expenses for 2010. All staff participated in these efforts in many large and small ways. Below are some highlights of the most significant cost-saving and revenue-enhancement efforts of 2010.

Going digital, being green, and reducing costs by eliminating paper

• Over the past 2 years, the National Office ethics staff have been partnering with the Board of Ethics in a project to move the board from being an entity primarily driven by paper-based procedures to one that is now (essentially) paperless. This was no small feat when you consider that ethics complaint adjudications generate thousands of pages of materials each year, which, in turn, must be provided to all 12 members of the Board of Ethics. The board now utilizes ASHA's confidential online SharePoint collaboration site for the majority of its work, and the ethics program's budget devoted to postage continues to reflect the associated cost savings.
• ASHA has gone online with a whole range of governance materials, including those of the Committee on Nominations and Elections, the Committee on Honors, and numerous other committees and boards, as well as the orientation materials for the Board of Directors.
• Leadership Development is using ASHA's online collaboration site for applications and reviews instead of using the services of an outside vendor (a $5,000 savings).
• We have moved fully to an all electronic national elections process.
• The Council on Academic Accreditation (CAA) has moved closer to having all assessment and evaluation forms online. About 75% of them are electronic now.
• New resources that are developed by the Academic Affairs & Research Education team are posted online and distributed electronically. Print materials are mailed only when electronic versions would be inappropriate.
• All existing and newly created Higher Education Data System orientation and instructional materials for program directors are available on the ASHA Web site.
• Booklets that feature the profiles of participating academic programs for the Graduate School Fair are no longer printed. This information is now available in EDFIND, ASHA's online search engine for academic programs in communication sciences and disorders.
• In the first year of exclusively online content of journals, production expenses, including printing and mailing, were reduced by more than $575,000 while members gained access to all four online journals, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, rather than one print journal.
• ASHA continues to benefit from a more efficient ScholarOne Manuscripts submission process, eliminating the need for authors to create cover letters and including online submission of copyright transfer agreements to reduce delays in content posting and production and to reduce the effort needed to monitor compliance with copyright transfer.
• The ASHA Leader increased use of online proofing for content review to facilitate remote proofing and reduce use of printer supplies and paper.
• The advertising Media Kit print version was eliminated, saving the association over $10,000. As an added bonus, ASHA received both national and international recognition in the form of two marketing awards (Excel Gold Award and Hermes Gold Award) for the redesigned, electronic-only kit.
• The Surveys and Information Team continues to save money by using a low-cost, Web-based survey package, which costs $200 per year. The cost per response is about $0.05 compared to more than $5 per paper survey respondent. Implemented in 2004, it has already saved the association approximately $350,000.
• Staff respond to member and consumer requests for technical information via e-mail, rather than mail hard copies of information, and encourage members to download and print documents or read them online, rather than print and mail them.

Reducing costs by eliminating travel

• The National Office is piloting use of GoToMeeting and GoToWebinar, which we hope will reduce the number of face-to-face meetings in 2011 and beyond.
• The Physician Quality Reporting Initiative activities are primarily done through conference calls and electronic communications, so now there is only one annual face-to-face meeting.
• All committees worked hard to conduct as much of their work via e-mail and conference calls as possible.

Other cost savings

• The decision to sunset the ASHA and Council on Education of the Deaf (CED) Joint Committee, because of its redundancy with other well-established and far-reaching committees, will save ASHA $9,314 in 2011.
• Because of the increase in shipping costs and costs to duplicate materials, we are sending far fewer materials to exhibits.
• The ASHA Leader increased the issue page count from 36 in 2009 to 40 pages in 2010 while achieving a savings of nearly $100,000 by soliciting new bids for production services in 2009 and negotiating pricing.
• By continuing to carefully negotiate all work agreements and review all invoices to take advantage of discounts for on-time payment, and by eliminating billing errors, ASHA saved more than $20,000 in 2010.
• The design department began using Web-based transfer of logos to Continuing Education (CE) Providers instead of mailing them on CDs, which saved over $3,000.
• Maintenance fees on ASHA's statistical software package (SPSS) were cut from $8,800 to $3,800 by reconfiguring license arrangements.
• The Surveys and Information Team identified a transcriptionist in the Midwest to transcribe focus-group recordings who charges roughly a third of what a local firm was charging ($100 vs. $300). A savings of nearly $2,000 was realized in 2010.
• Increased revenue from sponsorships reduced ASHA's net expenses for the Researcher– Academic Town Meeting.
• Increased CE revenue was generated by sending CE invoices weekly by e-mail rather than by regular mail, which also reduced mailing costs by $20,000.

National Office Staff Updates

The following individuals have left ASHA to pursue other opportunities:

• Susan Boswell, Assistant Managing Editor, ASHA Leader
• Maureen Thompson, Director, Association Governance Operations

Recent ASHA and ASHA National Office Awards

• Maggie McGary, ASHA's Online Community & Social Media Manager, was named 2011 Publishing Trendsetter by the Angerosa Research Foundation, a nonprofit organization established by Stratton Publishing & Marketing Inc., for her social media innovations at ASHA.

The Next Executive Director Update

2011 Public Policy Agenda