Annual Report 2013-2014 - Annerley Community Bookshop Annual Report 2014.pdf · the section...

Annual Report

2013-2014

“This Annerley institution is a not-‐for-‐profit community project …... The volunteer staff are always helpful, and the store is littered with comfy armchairs

where you can sit and enjoy your bargains. “

Jemima Skelley, http://www.buzzfeed.com/jemimaskelley/bookshops-‐in-‐australia-‐to-‐see-‐before-‐you-‐die

Annerley Community Bookshop Annual Report 2014

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President’s Report

(Naomi Frampton)

Welcome once again to all of you who are helping us celebrate another year of the Annerley Community Bookshop. Let’s first acknowledge the Traditional Custodians of the Brisbane region, the Jagera and Turrbal people. One of the really heartening things that I, as someone with no

particular personal links to the Australian Indigenous communities, have been noticing is a turning, a shift in the Indigenous voice and perceptions of the value of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island heritage and culture. All the ongoing issues of injustice and disenfranchisement notwithstanding, my sense is that there has been a palpable shift in awareness and pride in the Indigenous cultures, that seems to come from within and a new urgency around their preservation and continuation. It is no coincidence that at the same time there has been a marked increase in the number and range of Indigenous people telling their own stories, in their own voices,

through the diversity of media; television, painting and other art forms, theatre and music as well as the published book. Stories are powerful both for the teller and the receiver.

Our Successes in 2014

A bookshop is a sort of overt statement of recognition of the value of stories, both ‘fact’ and ‘fiction’. The presence and the success of a community bookshop is an indication that people, you, value the dissemination and diversity of ideas and are willing to put time and effort into sustaining that. The community model, with the whole Association maintained by volunteers and supporters, also speaks of a commitment to the right to maintain a non-commercial space; one that is not premised on the primary function of making a financial profit for its owners but asserts the right to pursue other outcomes, particularly the promotion of reading and literacy and the building of relationships through participation and to value these as a legitimate purpose.

At this time last year I was speaking about the difficulties we were facing financially and the challenges I mentioned focused on finding ways to reduce costs and new ways of generating income. Looking back now over 2014 I find that the great success of this year has been the way people have rallied round and shown their willingness to support the Annerley Community Bookshop through contribution of ideas, practical effort and financial support.

Section Sponsorship Programme

A significant initiative this year is the new Section Sponsorship Programme. This arose out of Cath Rafferty’s suggestion at last year’s AGM that people might want to support the Bookshop even if they are unable to volunteer or be regular customers, by making a financial contribution.

This led to the idea of encouraging businesses, organisations and individuals to sponsor sections of their choice for 6 or 12 month periods. As always that wasn’t just a straightforward action but entailed a number of other things to get it happening – a proper identification of our sections, revisiting the section labelling and other tasks that might be a quick job in a normal business but can take a couple of months to carry out when we’re all part-timers! But it’s now underway and we have several generous sponsors that I can happily tell you


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about:

o Cath Rafferty sponsors General fiction

o Cr. Helen Abrahams sponsors Australian Fiction

o Carolyn Cullen sponsors Craft and Hobbies

o Annerley Labor sponsors Australian Politics

o Rogue Chemin through his owner Sue sponsors the Pets section.

That’s been a welcome boost to the bottom line and my call to you this year is for ideas on how to encourage more sponsorship – I’m open to all suggestions.

Fundraising Friends – No Trivial Matter

Our local librarian and yarn jammer Carolyn Cullen was at the AGM last year and when her keen ear for financial bottom lines heard the figure that threw us into the red, she took matters into her own hands and came to us with the proposal of holding a Trivia Event as a fundraiser for the Bookshop. She then proceeded to do all the organisation – venue, questions, prizes, invitations -

and pulled off a magnificent event in July this year that ended up filling two whole rooms in the Junction Hotel and made $720 - over 3 times the set target that she’d hoped to achieve. That’s been fantastic for our bottom line and was also great fun. The triviality of some of the trivia could only be appreciated by the most trivial of minds – I’m hoping she’ll collaborate with me to run another one!

One of our long-term volunteers, Wendy Eastwell, currently off fundraising in other parts of the globe, also helped the income generation with a Fundraiser evening for the Unitarians using the Booksale model that we’ve hosted a few times now where community groups use the shop to hold their event and funds from the sale of books during the event are split 50/50 between us and the other group. That brought in about $200 which is equivalent to a reasonable day’s sales, another great result.

Another initiative that brought in some much-needed readies was a raffle that we ran here in the shop . In the winter Annerley had a Jolly Jumper fair, initiated by our wonderful community development worker, Em James who has been instrumental in reviving community collaboration and spirit among local traders and local people generally. In keeping with that we had a bright woolly window which featured a lovely blanket crocheted by our much –missed committee member, Maxine Darnell. There were so many inquiries from passers-by wanting to buy the blanket or know where they could get one, that Maxine pulled out her crochet hook again and made a fantastic blanket for us to raffle. That was really popular and at $2 a ticket, brought in about $250.00 by the deadline. Sadly I didn’t win! Her parting gift to us before she rode out of town, was a lovely parquet lazy susan, handcrafted by her dad - get your tickets here!


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Extending our Community

Another success which has contributed to the flavour of this year has been the interactions with communities beyond our usual customer base. The Annerley fairs have become a regular event and we have a street presence, putting a table outside the shop to interact with all the locals that turn out. A part of that includes the interactions with other local traders as we prepare for the event, with the working together and development of relationships that entails. In an effort to encourage Brisbane City Council to revitalise the Annerley Community Centre and make it available for wider use, we took part in an event called Annerley Uncovered and held a book swap as part of a general showing of the type of groups that would access the space if it was available. I’ve also been getting along to some of the fortnightly Town Hall Meetings, both as a resident and representing the Bookshop, to discuss local issues and local actions.

The Yarn Jammers, the Annerley History Group and a Unitarians Reading Group all come in to use the space after-hours on various evenings and make regular contribution through a gold coin donation from all participants. The Literature Out Loud reading group continued through much of the year, though its future is a bit unclear at the moment with the loss of Maxine who was one of the main readers giving it some continuity.

A particularly enjoyable interaction this year was initiated by Anna McCormack, a long-term friend of the shop, in her role running a community leadership forum with the Ethnic Communities Council of Qld. We’ve now hosted 3 groups of participants from a range of communities who have come to the shop to hear about how the Association works, what’s involved in operating as a not-for-profit Association, how we run the Bookshop and manage operations, volunteers, meetings and so on. As part of that we invited some people to come along to committee meetings to experience how they work here, things we discuss, how we follow the agenda and keep minutes

and other protocols and even discuss how to make wine.

What’s going on inside

Within the shop itself as well as the signage improvements we’ve also put effort into attending to the upper realms, adding a picture rail that extends around most of the wall and allows us to display artworks. We’ve continued displaying the works of Colin Wightman that you see on the back wall and make a small commission on any sales and we’ve also recently finished a showing of work by local artist Diane de Cruz. We’ve instituted a small hanging fee of $30 and are happy to show suitable works and take a negotiated commission. We also reintroduced 2 community noticeboards that allow people to put up relevant notices.

The purchase of books from Magabala Press, a significant publisher of Indigenous books based in Broome, and their sale in the shop both for donation to the My Mum’s Voice programme and as personal purchases has continued successfully, with a regular turnover allowing us to reorder every few weeks.

I’d like to add here that I think the shop is looking lovely with the ongoing attention that goes on from our fantastic team of regular weekday volunteers to stocktaking, culling of old books general attention to the quality of what’s on the shelves and the weekly change of window stock and weekly specials. That’s all the day-to-day work that, like any housework, doesn’t get much


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recognition or attention but is fundamental to creating the general atmosphere that people respond to and makes them want to return.

We’ve continued the programme of donations to Correctional Centre libraries and maintained the relationship with the officers who come to collect books as often as they can.

One final initiative that I must mention is the return to Sunday Trading that we decided to try in response to the number of requests from customers who said they are often busy and don’t get the time for proper bookshop browsing until Sunday afternoon. For Paul this has meant a whole new

roster of volunteers to manage, which he does very patiently, and it has also meant taking on and training new volunteers. Thanks to Kaye for her effort in developing a workable induction and orientation programme for weekend volunteers – I’m finding it very useful. Although Sunday trading has mainly been quite slow, with the odd surprise, it does seem to generate enough income to make it worth continuing, though we’ll revisit it in the new year.

Keeping the Books in Order

One of the issues that arose from our bookkeeping and audit process last year was the need to transition to using a more reliable version of MYOB. Kaye Linden, our Treasurer went through the process of researching options including purchase of the MYOB programme and the new equipment needed to run it and making the case for us to move to a ‘Cloud’ version of MYOB that can be accessed remotely, with an ongoing fee paid annually. She then carried out a trial process, learned how to set it up for our accounts and proceeded to enter the necessary data to enable her to complete our end of year reports satisfactorily. Like housework this has been one of those vital tasks that doesn’t get much attention and I must thank her for the time and effort she has put into carrying it out and insisting on the best route to a committee who didn’t really understand quite what it was all about.

Other Bits and Pieces to Report

A couple of things worth reporting are an application for a ‘Caring for Our Community ‘ grant, from State Government, that was submitted in October. We’ve requested $1000 to buy a couple of new trollies for getting books around the shop. We should hear in January whether or not that has been successful.

Because of our financial position at the end of last year we requested a one year lease from the Landlord, which was accepted, but that does mean that we’ll have to negotiate again when the lease comes up in February.

I should also mention that the Australian Tax Office had another go this year at giving Paul a heart attack by demanding income tax returns from the shop for every year since 2004. He spent the better part of a day on the phone trying to find out more about it before he told me and I reminded him that we’d been through all this before in 2009 and received definite advice that as a not-for-profit Association with our community focused aims we are tax-exempt. We will continue to complete an Income Tax Status Review annually to ensure that nothing has changed.


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Thanks to the Committee

Thanks to the outgoing committee from 2014. We’ve already lost Maxine, who has moved interstate to be a Proper Grandma, and Grace Phibbs who is off to be a student in Chile for a few months. We’re also losing our Treasurer, Kaye, who has been a long-term and very reliable volunteer with the shop, has made a great contribution as a committee member in numerous ways and whose parting gift to us has been the transition to MYOB that I mentioned. Not present tonight is Amy Samaranayake, our Secretary, who is taking a well-earned rest in New Zealand, but has agreed to continue in that role next year. Thanks also to Clare who has also agreed to continue on the committee in 2015. I must thank Em, taking the minutes for our AGM tonight, who has not officially joined the committee but takes the time to come to meetings whenever she can and makes valuable input in her role as Community Development worker for Annerley. And thanks of course to Paul who is really the backbone of the Association.

What comes next?

The goals for 2015 are really to further consolidate the things that we’ve put in place in the last 2 years; make efforts to increase the section sponsorship, promote the fundraising partnerships, encourage more artists to use the shop space to show their work and make better use of the webpage and Facebook page that are up, running and useable. More raffles and a trivia event might even be on the cards. Once again I encourage you to contribute ideas and to continue to be part of the story.

Naomi


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Manager’s Report

Paul Hodges

Hi everyone,

First, let me echo Naomi's thanks to each of you for being here. We know how very busy this time of year gets, and it's fantastic that you've found time to join us.

This is my tenth AGM report so I struggled to find anything new to say, which should keep this fairly brief!

I am conscious of causing a bit of a stir last year when I started with a negative overview of our finances so before I say anything else this year, let me state very clearly that thanks to the many and varied initiatives that Naomi has already mentioned, we are well and truly 'in the black' and I think even a little better off than we have been for quite some time.

There's a separate finance report, so I won't go into detail but we currently have about $13,000.00 saved, spread across three different bank accounts. Thanks to Kaye, this amount includes our working capital as well as provisions for both long-service leave and our annual insurance bill – our largest annual expense.

We're now talking about a financial year that ended six to eighteen months ago which is a bit difficult but I do want to quickly cover some basics so first up, I'm really pleased with, and proud of our sales last year.

• In 10 of the 12 months our sales were greater than the same month the previous year, by an average of $525.00 a month.

• December and May let us down to the tune of $2300.00, but we still had total sales of $71,000, up $6285 or 9 % on the previous year.

This is one area where we can each have some influence through our displays, pricing, suggestions and customer conversations.

• The sales total includes re-introduced Sunday trading from May 25th which added about $450.00 to last year' s sales. (The first 6 months of Sunday trading to end of October have produced $2080.40 in sales).

• The first two fund raisers events generated $614.50 - of which we kept half.

• So far, we've collected $1347.60 from a combination of evening groups using the shop and special book shop raffles.

• And our Section sponsorship has raised $680.00 to date.

This was the year of the Bookshop's 10th Birthday, Woollies re-opening, picture-rail installation, art works inclusion, formal volunteer orientation and trivial trivia.

Sadly of course our expenses (an area that we have very little control over) were $4000 or 33% higher than last year– hence the end result which shows a small profit for the year of $557.00.

So – huge thanks to all of you who make up our slightly eccentric, extended family of volunteers


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for all the hard work you put into keeping the shop not just open, but vibrant, useful and welcoming. This year I'd like to especially thank all those who are leaving us to go on to bigger things, and extend a genuinely warm welcome to all our new volunteers who are gradually filling in the gaps.

We're so lucky that we continue to both attract and retain, such a high calibre of willing workers with such diverse skill sets. Without you we would simply have to close the doors.

This year I especially want to thank our tireless leader, President Naomi Frampton. Her report mentions many of the old and new initiatives which we have tried, what her report doesn't spell out is the high level of Naomi's personal involvement and commitment. There are so very many functions, high and low, which are vitally necessary to the ongoing success of the shop, and they all take time – and an awful lot of that time over the past few years – has been Naomi's. Thanks Naomi, it takes a special person to keep all this moving forward, just know that we do know how lucky we are to have you.

10 years ago the bookshop started with a hand full of volunteers and $20.00 in the till with total sales for the year of $33,000. Now there are around 50 volunteers a year and the turnover is around $70,000 plus.

With expenses normally equalling sales, it's true we're cash poor, but we continue to be product rich which enables our ongoing donations of surplus stock to the six local prisons, who have now very gratefully received many thousands of good general books for their libraries. Our commitment to supporting the My Mum's Voice program and indigenous children’s publishing are likewise very strong and healthily supported in turn by our customers. We still continue to regularly donate books and magazines to other local charities, schools and organisations including the Moorooka 3F club and the PA Mental Health Unit.

The recent cuts to ABC funding have produced a flurry of speculative journalism questioning the continuation of newspapers in broadsheet format. The figures suggest that newsprint sales are down 25-35% over the past ten years and will probably cease to exist altogether in less than ten years.

This industry has obvious and direct implications for the book trade and so the question of the future of physical book selling jumped back into my mind. Will books still be published ten years from now?

The honest answer is 'no-body knows', but I'm actually a bit sick of worrying and speculating about it.

My new thought (maybe naive) is that for us – for now, it doesn't really matter.

For the ten years that I've been part of the Annerley Community Bookshop, we have remained a strong eclectic community of vastly different individuals working towards a common end result.

Almost everyone who finds the bookshop loves it, last year BuzzFeed voted us one of the “17 Spectacular Bookshops in Australia to see before you die” placing us amongst some impressive peers and ahead of some stiff competition. We've got much better stock than ever before – and lots of it and I'm thinking there are still a great many living, breathing book buying readers out there.


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As long as the Bookshop continues to provided a quiet haven of reasonably priced reading for it's serendipity driven customers, presents an obviously worthwhile community based initiative that our donors can identify with, and most importantly, is an inclusive space where each of our volunteer's contributions are really wanted, needed and genuinely appreciated, where we can all feel truly connected, worthwhile and engaged, then we're already achieving some pretty worthwhile and quietly impressive aims.

I'm optimistic about this new financial year which has started quite strongly. I think what we're doing is as necessary now as it was ten years ago. The bookshop remains important enough, to enough people for us to feel reasonably good.

Thanks everyone – and Merry Christmas.

Paul.


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Volunteers’ Report

(Clare Richmond)

As 2014 draws to a close it’s time to reflect on the volunteers who have made another year of the Annerley Community Bookshop possible.

Figures and Statistics

2014 has seen a total of 48 volunteers grace our bookshop, 21 of those work weekends and 25 work weekdays – we also have 2 committee members who don’t work in the shop.

Of our volunteers 13 are male and 35 are female. Our youngest volunteer is 15 and our oldest is 79.

10 of our volunteers are retired and aged between 60-79, 10 are university students aged between 20 and 30 years old, 10 volunteers are also working and are aged between 30 and 50, 5 are special needs and aged between 25 and 55. We have 6 high school students who work in the bookshop, and they are high school aged, and we also have 7 volunteers who are job seekers aged between 25 and 60.

Most volunteers work 4 hour shifts, and a whopping total of 192 hours per week of volunteer labour is donated to the bookshop!

“News”

Long-time volunteer Damian Perrin - who has been working Thursdays, weekend shifts and generally helping out with filling in for people wherever possible has found himself full time employment and will be taking a step back from his involvement in the bookshop. He will now only be working with us on weekends. Congratulations to Damian on his job and we’re glad that you still have some time for us.

There have been other wonderful members of our bookshop community who have left us or pulled back start down new paths and we want to offer our congratulations to these people as well and thank them for all their hard work and contributions to the bookshop.

With the introduction of the Sunday roster the bookshop has had a larger number of new people starting at the same time. Taking advantage of this a more structured orientation has been drawn up and implemented. A big thank you to Kaye for all her hard work in making this happen.

Connection

Social Events

We’ve only had one official social event this year: barefoot bowls on Sunday the 11th May. There was a small turnout with only six people coming along. We spent more time chatting in the Moorooka Bowls Club than bowling and it was a fun time for all in attendance.

The Bookshop was also represented at a Trivial Trivia afternoon at the Junction Hotel, a fundraiser for the Association, on July 27th. A few of our volunteers took the time to come along and we all had a table at the event. We didn’t win - our trivia skills weren’t trivial enough - but we had a good time all the same.


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The Mighty Pen

The Mighty Pen has continued to put out quality issues this year under the editorship of Maxine. Volunteers have continued to be encouraged to make submissions to The Mighty Pen and we’ve had a few first time contributors this year. The Mighty Pen has kept volunteers up to date with the happenings of the bookshop even when we’re not able to make it into the shop.

The Bookshop Calendar 2015

The annual Bookshop Calendar featuring as many volunteers as will yield their digital image is still popular and a marvelous record of the changes in the volunteer group. The calendar for 2015 follows the usual format. We’ve printed up plenty so come and grab your copy – if we run out it’s no problem to print up more, just ask. And we look forward to seeing plenty of you on the calendar for 2016.


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Treasurer’s Summary 2013-2014 Financial Year

(Kaye Linden)

Total Income:

$66, 029

$62,930 of this was from in shop sales, including soft drinks, gift cards and hiring the shop out at nights for groups to use.

$1,775 of this was from online sales.

$1,270 of this was donations received and grants applied for.

Cost of Sales:

$4,910

Cost of Sales expenses were primarily made up of the purchase of books from AbeBooks for our customers and for our My Mum’s Voice project. In total we spent $2,873 on books to resell.

The other $2,037 was spent on postage, soft drinks to sell, paintings to sell on consignment and subscription fees to ABE.

Total Profit:

$61,119

Our total income minus our cost of sales expenses equals our gross profit.

Total Expenses:

$60,562

$21, 215 of this, was spent on rent, and

$25,898 on wages for Paul, (totalling $47,113);

$13,449 remaining was spent on utilities, insurance, bank fees and of course tea and coffee for the staff.

Net Profit:

Our gross income minus our expenses put our net income for the year at $557.

Liabilities and Assets

Our current liabilities total : $5,527

Our current assets total: $17,224

Our net assets are: $11,697

Annual Report 2013-2014 - Annerley Community Bookshop Annual Report 2014.pdf · the section...

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