Miami Council For International Visitors

From the desk of

Armando A. Olmedo

 December 4, 2011

Dear Friends,

As is expected of each board president, I need to provide our board and membership an annual report. I am glad to say, MCIV shows very encouraging signs that the organization is moving toward more solid financial ground.

As many of you may recall, during my installation last year I stated that I wanted to redouble our efforts in expanding our presence in media, particularly social media, with the goal of informing a wider audience of the great work performed by MCIV. This effort needed to go hand-in-hand with a goal to increase our membership, both our individual and particularly our virtually nonexistent corporate memberships. To achieve these goals, we pushed to obtain a more diverse group of visitors, with maximizing our cultural connections in town and creating better events that could generate better buzz for MCIV. We also needed to create signature events, decreasing the number of official events while increasing their quality and profitability.

Twelve months later I am glad to report that we have made tangible progress on our membership front, we have obtained much needed corporate memberships, we have dramatically expanded our social media presence, and have had a series of events that have created great interest in the organization among those who attended them.

However, before I get to those results, let me first report on our bread and butter-our programs. I am pleased to report that MCIV had a small increase in the number of programs received from the State Department.  For fiscal year 2011 we have had 52 programs for a total of 317 visitors. This is an increase when compared to the 49 programs totaling 293 visitors received in fiscal year 2010. As always, we must thank the MCIV staff for creating wonderful programs for our visitors, most of whom leave us with nothing short of high praise for the quality of their meetings.

With regard to memberships, I am glad to report that our membership has dramatically increased this past year. On January of this year MCIV had 45 memberships totaling 73 individual members. Eleven months later, on December 1, 2011, MCIV had 95 memberships totaling 143 members. Of these 50 new memberships, 15 (totaling 21 new members) came as a result of the MCIV Jazz Bridge, which I will address shortly. MCIV has therefore approximately doubled our income from individual memberships in comparison to last year.

As to corporate memberships, I am also glad to report that MCIV increased the number of corporate sponsors and that, for the first time in years, we have corporate memberships that are not strictly based on in-kind donations. Among these new corporate sponsors are such companies as Bacardi, Bank United, the Cobb Foundation, Fox Latin American Channels, IBOPE Zogby, the Kellogg School of Management, and the Wolfson Trust. Income from these corporate sponsorships totaled $7000. We have also received significant, in-kind donations from Bacardi, LAN Airlines, Padrino Limousines, the de la Cruz Collection, among others.

With regard to our social media presence, which is increasingly ever more important in our interconnected world, I can report that we have dramatically increased our number of “likes” in our Facebook page to 405. This page, which is continuously updated and provides valuable information about visitors, our events, and citizen diplomacy in general has become a valuable tool for informing our members and friends about MCIV.

My friends, I cannot stress the importance of this number. This means that every time we post an item on Facebook it reaches at least 405 individuals who, if they like the post, can share it among their friends.

As a result, any one of our posts can easily reach over a thousand individuals. Think about the reach we now have.

In so far as our events are concerned, I cannot remember a year with a better slate of events than those we had this past year. I will specifically focus on three of these events which I hope will become signature events for MCIV. First, as a result of our push to obtain more arts-related programs here in South Florida, we held this Spring a fantastic event for international museum managers at the de la Cruz Collection in Wynwood. The event, which was well attended, was an incredible success and was well appreciated by not only our members, but our cultural contacts in Miami, with whom we have been able to solidify and strengthen our ties. The event had the right mix of intellectual exchange and, for lack of a better word, “glam,” that appeals to certain individual and corporate members we need to be able to reach.

The second event which I would like to highlight is our first annual MCIV Jazz Bridge, which was a success on several fronts. First and foremost, this signature event allowed us to approach numerous companies for corporate sponsorships and, although not all opted to sponsor the organization, it did allow us to bring our message before a group of people that was previously unaware of our work. As a result, this coming year we should be able to approach them without having to introduce ourselves, an advantage when trying to secure their commitment to support MCIV.

More importantly the MCIV Jazz Bridge did allow us to obtain our first batch of corporate sponsors to the tune of $7000, not bad for an inaugural event. I am confident this is an amount we improve on now that we will no longer have to go through the learning curve for creating such an event. The final profit from the event, which was of approximately $5000, should be easily surpassed this coming year.

The third event I want to focus on is the fantastic seminar that was held at the Akerman Senterfitt offices for the Murrow Program journalists following the MCIV Jazz Bridge. In that event we were able to bring together all of our strengths- our visitors, our community contacts, and our friends and members along with potential sponsors and potential new members. We were able to create the valuable exchange of ideas which is at the crux of our diplomatic mission. The success of the seminar gave us the blueprint for creating what I hope will be a series for which we will be known in South Florida.

So what does this all add up to? In 2010 we had a surplus of just over $4000 thanks in large part to the close to $9000 generated by the NCIV regional conference we hosted. For fiscal year 2011, we were running a deficit of approximately $5000. The profit from the MCIV Jazz Bridge, when applied to the deficit, means that this year we barely broke even, a positive sign that our hard work is moving the organization into a more sustainable fiscal position. The seeds we have planted have already begun to reap positive rewards for the organization.

Of course, our work is far from over. As we move forward this coming year, we need to continue to focus on each of the fronts I have mentioned. We must continue our expansion in social media, we must continue to increase our membership ranks, both individual and corporate, we must strive to obtain more diverse programs from NCIV, and we must institutionalize our signature events, particularly the MCIV Jazz Bridge. Our very achievable goal should be to double our membership, double our income from corporate sponsors, significantly increase our profit from the MCIV Jazz Bridge, and continue to increase our social media presence. We need to also build a stronger publicity and media infrastructure in order to gain even more local visibility and recognition for our work and our impact in South Florida.

Finally, as we finish this year, I would like to thank each and every one of my fellow board members for a job well done. I would also like to thank the MCIV staff, interns and volunteers as well as our members and community resources for all of their hard work. We are on our way toward a stronger, better, healthier MCIV and you have each had a hand in marking this turning point for the organization.

Have a wonderful holiday season. I wish to each of you and your families a healthy and successful 2012.

Best wishes,

Armando A. Olmedo