FOR's Annual Report: July 1, 2008 to June 30, 2009
You may download the full annual report (PDF) and FOR’s 990 form (PDF). Following is the annual report’s introductory letter from FOR’s Executive Director, Mark Johnson.
I continue to be struck by how much we are able to accomplish with diminishing financial resources, stretched demands on staff, and growing political challenges.
The financial statements and balance sheet show the effects of both the economic freefall of the past year and the maturation of selected but significant charitable instruments in our investment portfolios. New York State, for example, required that non-profits maintaining annuity funds (ours are managed by Wachovia/Wells Fargo) increase the reserves by 15% which meant we have to move nearly $400,000 from our National Council restricted reserves to the Annuity Reserves.In the face of declining contributed support, common across all charitable sectors, we have also continued to rely on significant bequests to maintain a fairly flat level of operations. Two staff departures have created vacancies that we cannot fill under current economic conditions (one in communications, one in program).
The political climate, which seemed to many to offer new promise in the shift in administrations following the election, remained gloomy through the program year. The national candidates actually brought little hope to containing the expansion of American military presence and in fact we have only seen some shift of forces and focus, no transition in political ideology or action. The year also ended with our international arenas of action in heightened conflict, particularly in Colombia and Iran.
One of the emerging practices, not entirely new by any means but deepened in the current world of peace movements, is cooperation across program areas within FOR and among partners. The visit and tour of young conscientious objectors from Colombia, woven into a campus tour of the US, using Hip Hop artists as part of a training tactic in nonviolence is one example. Working with representatives from Women for Peace, Peace Action, Veterans for Peace, American Friends Service Committee, Shomer Shalom Institute for Jewish Nonviolence, the Reconstructionist Rabbinical Association, UFPJ, Christian Peace Witness and the Ruckus Society are only some of our partnering examples.
The National Council entered an extended period of strategic planning which is scheduled to conclude with a new strategic vision for review and consideration by membership and the National Council by the end of the current fiscal year. There were no new staff in FY 2009, and two resignations (one for family reasons and one to pursue new directions professionally) and the National Council was also relatively stable though two members did resign to pursue personal goals.
The biggest challenges to FOR are fully shared by the United States and the world, an extremely fragile and unstable economic environment overall with little prospect of recovery in any traditional sense soon, if ever; and a growing use of military force and violence to address political and social inequities and ideological differences rather than nonviolence. The work of FOR is more important than ever before, and our appreciation for the thousands who have contributed to our work deeper than ever.
Mark C. Johnson, Ph.D.
Executive Director
