By Bruce Ross, Executive Director bross@wisducks.org
This article originally appeared in Wisconsin Waterfowl Association’s February, 2025 Newsletter edition.
WWA had a great 2024, diversifying and growing our revenue to put us in the best financial condition, maybe ever.
We used our limited resources more efficiently than ever — over 86 cents from every WWA dollar was used to support our mission. And we shrunk even further the use of member dollars to raise funds.
- This is extremely difficult for a small organization like WWA
- We ended the year with a surplus of $65K, simultaneously growing our reserves to the strongest level ever. Having sufficient reserves programs is important if we want to survive economic downturns, and more importantly, to grow our organization’s impact.
For example, WWA is currently managing nearly $2 million in grant funds focused on habitat and education—the largest level ever! These grants required some “seed money” to attract donors, and they all require WWA to front the costs of restorations, and then be reimbursed. Larger projects require more front money.- Several years ago, WWA leaders recognized that our over-dependence on chapter revenue, coupled with the changing nature of volunteerism could put us in a hole unless we diversified to other sources of income, and we have. This chart shows that while chapter revenues were stable in 2024, WWA is reducing its dependency on chapters, even as our overall revenue goes up.
These considerations are important to maintaining our top ratings with organizations like the Better Business Bureau and Charity Navigator, which help provide confidence to private and public donors who are considering investing in WWA.
