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I would like to introduce myself for those that don’t know me, I am Mike Yazel your Treasurer of the NMLRA and a past President of the same. I have been involved in Muzzle Loading most of my life as my parents began coming to Friendship in 1962 when I was about 3 years old. Our whole family shot together for many years until us kids got older and my sisters drifted away from it but my father and I continued on shooting, building guns and collecting interesting Muzzle Load-ers. I have served on the Board of Directors in various capacities over the years although I have devoted the bulk of my effort to updating the Associations business and accounting practices. While this has been a very long journey we are in the home stretch now and will have things modernized with far better reporting that will aid the board and membership in making the best decisions for the NMLRA going forward.

This is truly a time of transition for the NMLRA as the Board of Directors has voted to move forward with the Pittman Robertson program which will help us transform the range to better serve the membership and other shooters who come to use it. This alone provided much impetus to update our accounting procedures so we could track Range Operations as well as Association Operations. The NMLRA is roughly a $1.5 to $1.8 million dollar operation in any given year with many different and diverse areas of operations. We print a monthly magazine that requires specialized staff both in house and outside, membership requires people and programs to sign people up and interact with them across the country and around the globe. Our accounting system is much more than simple dollars in and dollars out. We need the ability to track the performance of our events large and small, powder and target sales, gate revenue, camping,   registration and the list goes on and on. 

Off shoot time there are memberships to be entered daily and this time of year camping reservations are in full swing for the coming shooting season. We take registrations for programs like the Gunsmithing Seminars and classes held here in the Education Center at the Range in Friendship. We have people joining the 1 of 1000 endowment which if you have not yet done please consider it as this program is about three-quarters of the way to its goal of establishing a $1,000,000 endowment from which 75 percent of the yearly earnings can be used for projects on the range.

This year will see new camping software come online along with card swipers at all points of sale, later in the year we hope to begin the first use of barcoding to make your transactions quicker and our accounting of them much simpler. For those of you that do not frequent the range there are many changes you are beginning to see as well. The NMLRA presence online has expanded dramatically in recent months as we have begun podcasts and videos about all things Muzzle Loading and Living History. As we reach out to an even wider audience online you will see growth in the digital version of the magazine as it becomes more interactive and sign-ups for memberships, camping, classes, and registration take on a new look at the website. Behind the scenes of all of this has to be an accounting system that ties all of this information and the thousands of transactions we process each year together. This system had in the past simply contained too many separate and often out of date pieces that prevented us from doing the job as well as we could and burdened the staff with work that should be automated. With the hiring addition of Kim Scobee to our accounting operation, this transformation has kicked into high gear. Kim has a broad background in IT as it applies to finances and has been working hard for several months putting the pieces of software and systems in place to move us forward. While most of you will never see all of the changes being made behind the scenes rest assured they are all to serve you, the membership of the NMLRA better in the future.

 Thank you for supporting the NMLRA and helping all of us serve you better as a member.

Mike Yazel

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