VAT

We have been notified that ISAAC will receive 481 Euros as tax refund for tax paid on hotel/conference rooms at ISAAC 2006.

Promotion & mass emails

- Promoted all awards: Possum, EchoVoice, Bridge, etc.

- Promoted the Many Stories, One Voice Writing Contest and the LEAD project

- Sent ISAAC March & June Email Alerts to members. The E-News includes the following items: Letter from the President, Projects Update, Secretariat News, Upcoming Events, Conference promotion, Information Exchange, Featured Articles, Family & Friends – Children’s Chat, Technology in the Home – Useful Organizations and translated versions of some articles.

- Asked affiliated members to make information about ISAAC awards available to their members.

- Developed a good relationship with AAATE, one of ISAAC Affiliated members, which is currently circulating information about ISAAC projects and awards to its members. AAATE also created a link from its site to ISAAC’s website.

- Sent 2 mass emails reminding members about the early bird conference deadline.

- Worked with Chairs of the EAN committee and the PWUAAC committee and prepared the 2008 Travel Fund application forms.

- Posted applications on the ISAAC website.

- Sent personalized Travel Fund forms to members who use AAC and EAN members. Invited members to visit the ISAAC website for further details.

- Collected application for both Travel Fund programs & forwarded applications to the appropriate committee for review by the set deadline. We received:

a. 24 requests from members in Emerging Countries, and

b. 9 applications from PWAAC

-  After the committee’s decisions, issued cheques to the winners.

- Worked with T&F and assisted in promoting the AAC Journal and Evidence-Based publication. Prepared ISAAC lists to T&F to promote the AAC Journal and Evidence-Based Communication Assessment and Intervention journal.

- Created a link from ISAAC home page to the Evidence-Based Communication Assessment and Intervention journal page.

Membership

- Prepared the December comparison report, the membership report and the publications report; circulated the report to EC members.

- Sent 3 reminders to Chapters encouraging them to renew/recruit members by March 31^st so that member names would be included in the 2008 Directory.

 - Sent 2 reminders to Corporate members and to Institutional members for non-Chapter members and ISAAC-Canada Chapter and encouraged them to renew by March 31^st.

- Sent 2^nd & 3^rd reminders to ISAAC non-Chapter members and ISAAC-CANADA members.

- Sent 2^nd & 3^rd reminders to Spanish members in Spanish.

- We are pleased to report the addition of new members from Romania as a result of Hilary’s attendance of the Eastern European Conference.

- Completed data entry for renewing members and compiled the 2008 membership directory.

- Sold ads in the directory

- Currently looking for a new mailing house. The mailing house we worked with for the last 10 years has been purchased by another company. The services of the new company do not seem to be reliable.

- Ordering regular issues & back issues of the AAC Journal and the affiliated publications to members as needed

Proposal to Restructure ISAAC

- Assisted in preparing the final draft of the restructure document for pre-circulation for the Board meeting in August; for translation; and for submission to ISAAC’s legal advisor with a request to prepare draft revisions to the bylaws based on the document.

 - Posted document in English, French, German, Italian and Spanish on Board News page of ISAAC website

ISAAC publications

Information Exchange (IE)

IE, which replaces the Bulletin as the primary way to update and publish information about ISAAC initiatives and AAC news in general, is evolving towards its goal of becoming a clearinghouse of information on issues of importance to ISAAC members.

IE has grown substantially in recent months, with new content in many areas. Changes that have been made since January include:

- Flagging recently posted articles to help visitors find the newest additions to IE;

- Batching articles together with their translations to reduce confusion;

- Expanding content related to BUILD and LEAD projects;

- Updating IE more frequently.

We are currently in a transition period with the IE. Work is underway on the Information Exchange design and format to simplify the look of the site and – within the limitations of the program – to make it easier to navigate. We are still trying to solve our problems with the Search and Archives functions. Attempts have been made by our contract web designer to upgrade the software however it is still not working efficiently. We will need some guidance from the EC as we move forward.

AAC Journal

To provide ISAAC members / subscribers with uninterrupted service, we negotiated extension of online access deadline from Dec 31 until March 31^st of following year with T&F.