Acquiring the headquarters building at a very favorable price in 2002 met a request of the Fraternity and saved us the costs of moving every 5-10 years, but we had not concluded all of the fund-raising when the building we wanted became available and we had to take on a mortgage.  The cost of this mortgage, some $200,000 in principal and interest per year, has been a drag on our operations.

Fundraising for us for the past year has been geared toward pursuing major gifts for specific Fraternity programs that still need funding.  In addition, we focused on managing the endowment as carefully as we could, trimming operations to the bare minimum, and paying down the mortgage. 

We started all of these initiatives even before last year’s financial meltdown on Wall Street and are we ever glad.  We are now on a good solid road to recovery, but not out of the woods yet.  Read on to see what’s going right and what still needs attention.

Completion of the Headquarters Project

Two of the strongest supporters of the headquarters acquisition were Foundation Directors John Fisher and John Nichols.  We lost both men within a year to the Chapter Eternal (John Nichols in July of 2008 and John Fisher in June 2009).   Our goal this year was to completely pay off the mortgage owed on the Headquarters building.  John Fisher wanted us to approach the Nichols’ family to make a joint gift of $1 million dollars to pay down the bank mortgage on the building.  Mary Nichols (John’s wife) thought it was a great idea and the deal was done.

We have asks out to alumni to retire the remaining $150,000 that is on a line of credit and $373,788 that was borrowed from the endowment account for the original down payment for the Headquarters in 2001.  We hope to satisfy these remaining amounts yet this year.  This has nearly eliminated the negative drag the Headquarters had on operations.  Operating margins on the headquarters have been and will remain a challenge, but we will come very close to breaking even this year.

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