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The President's Letter
Annual Report to Members
There were a lot of positives for the Friends in 2024. Revenues were up. Expenses were under control. We helped introduce a new park outside the library. We sponsored a visit by a New York Times best-selling author. And, we added some terrific new volunteers to an already state-of-the-art group. Let’s take a look at the numbers in more detail.
Total Income: Gross revenues for the year were $171,075 compared to $97,669 in 2023, a 75.2% increase, with every revenue source showing improvement over the year before:
- Book Sales: Total sales came in at $99,891, a 13.2% increase! Online sales had a record year with $53,284 in gross revenues compared to $46,826 in 2023, a 13.8 percent increase. Our sorters and online team got creative and built sets of books by popular authors that really bumped up online sales. Bookstore sales were up almost 2%, at $32,168, and should get a boost in the last half of 2025 with the expansion of the “Chapter Two” bookstore. Book Sale Events revenues were $14,228, up 15.3% over last year.
- Memberships: Revenue from dues was $2,460 in 2024 compared to $1,510 last year...a 62.9% increase. The number of active members was 427 at year-end compared to 362 at the end of 2023, an increase of 18%.
- Donations: We had a bit of a pleasant anomaly this year, which resulted in a total of $64,514 in donation revenue compared to $5,910 last year. The vast majority of that came from the estate of Claude and Marion Robinson. We probably can’t count on this every year.
Expenses: Overall expenditures were up significantly in 2024 due to the one-time capital investment of $201,000 in Friendship Park. However, the team did a great job managing normal operating expenses when you control for the investment in Friendship Park.
- Our total operating expenses were $66,265, up 10.2%, but that’s to be expected given our significant increase in online sales and the variable expenses associated with them.
- A better way to look at it is to compare expense ratios (expenses divided by gross revenues) after eliminating unusual one-time income (donations) and expenses (Friendship Park). It was 57.6% compared to 61.6% last year, a 4-point improvement.
Volunteers: We continue to have the best volunteers in the solar system. We added seven great new volunteers to the basement team in 2023, bringing the total active to about 45. Plus, we have another 10-15 who work just the book sales.
--Joe David
