I just got back from serving on staff for the National Order of the Arrow Conservation and Leadership Summit. Last year was a National Order of the Arrow Conference (NOAC). This normally would be an off-year but there will be three years between NOACs. The next one is not until 2009. The reason is to not have a NOAC on a National Jamboree year and to get on a cycle that puts the NOACs to hit the 100th anniversary of the OA in 2010.

The OA organized this event so as to provide something in between the NOACs. So, you have an event, what do you do for content? The purpose was the roll-out of the new OA strategic plan and to prepare for the Arrow Corps 5 program in 2008.

The last National Leadership Summit was in 1999. Having a summit gives another leadership opportunity for OA officers and advisors. That’s always good. But, there were problems with this one.

This was actually two parallel events. This makes sense from staffing and logistics but it was not clearly communicated to lodges. One event was the Leadership Summit. The other was the Conservation Summit. From talking with several contingents this was not really clear.

Nor was it clear that those participating in the Conservation Summit were expected to be crew leaders for next year’s program.

Because of confusion, or at least lack of clarifcation, of the purpose of the two events attendance was way under plan. The planned numbers I heard at the conference were 2,000 with a hoped for 2,500. Now, I am not sure who came up with the plan but last summer at NOAC we were hearing that the event was planned for five (5) people per lodge (both lead advisors, Lodge Chief and one or two Vice Chiefs). Take that number times 300 lodges and I thought the event was going to be 1,500 person event. That was much closer to the reality. I never did get final numbers but it seemed that 1,250 was more like the attendance. Of this, 400 were staff and National Committee members. From one source, I heard that the OA Committee was expecting 800 for the Conservation Summit but had less than 250. Not a very good showing from us for the National Forest Service.

My ‘back of envelope’ numbers would indicate that the OA took a significant financial loss on this event. Guestimating a revenue number of $600,000 – $700,000 actual is probably more like $400,000. That’s $200,000 under budget on revenue. With guarantees in place for meals and beds, they could not scale back the expense side fast enough nor large enough to close this gap. Ouch.