PRESIDENT’S REPORT FOR 1983
The Australian Flora Foundation was formally incorporated in June, 1983 and together with tax deductibility provisions previously granted, the process of consolidating a Research Fund must now begin in earnest.
The financial base of the Foundation is still slight and there will be a substantial sum involved in meeting the costs of production of Report No. 2 despite a helpful subsidy from the printer Messrs. Surrey Beatty. If the Research Fund is to be untouched, more members must pay their membership fee; at present there is insufficient in the working account to meet the Report bill.
The Annual General Meeting, the evening Seminar and Saturday Symposium in Adelaide have largely been funded by the South Australian Department of Environment and Planning.
The preparation of the Annual Report was unacceptably protracted, partly through my own fault. It is essential that Council recognise the commitment for regularly reporting news to Foundation members, and it may be that a cheaper and more frequent form of newsletter than the report is required, perhaps issued nationally and quarterly from successive State bases but with a uniform format.
There has been little feedback on the matter of State-based membership drives and fund raising. I am aware that South Australia has tried the later, and that Western Australia favours national rather than State-based fund raising. Without more membership and without more research funds the Foundation cannot support research activity.
The Foundation has received promotion in the national S.G.A.P. Journal, and appears as the endorsing organisation in the book “Flowering Plants in Australia” which will be displayed by Rigby at the Adelaide Annual General Meeting. This meeting has been scheduled to tie-in with the S.G.A.P. National Conference to attract maximum promotional advantage. I shall be promoting our native flora and the Foundation as Trevelyan Fellow with the University of Durham in the next few months; in is my hope that there may be some financial benefit from this promotion as the University is developing a programme of growing and researching Australian natives as house plants.
I thank Council for their support over the past two years and wish it make way for a new President who will carry on the process of consolidating the Foundation, perhaps more rapidly than I have been able.
DR B.D. MORLEY