Welcome to another financial year with KASK! We have got a few important things to report on.

1. Survey results: We were delighted with the level of participations from members and community in the KASK survey last month. The survey is closed now with 182 members responding as of today. We will share the summary from the survey as well as some of the great ideas that were collected from the survey in coming months. But here are some highlights:

How likely is it that you would recommend KASK to a friend or colleague?

With a NET PROMOTER® score of 50 indicate that majority of the members feel that KASK is doing enough worthwhile stuff for them to recommend the organization to others. However, the drill down into the other responses told us that there is a lot of stuff we could be doing better like reaching out to the youth, making our web site in line with what members want and how we handle our membership workflow and deliver on our promise regarding the well overdue KASK handbook.

In order for KASK to be sustainable and stay relevant for a long time to come, we decided to formerly consult our membership and community about the future and future directions that we should adopt. Unlike previous member surveys (e.g. 2016 member survey) that educated us about our members, this time the questions were more complex, and we were basically getting input from our members for our strategy session – starting with the vision, the mission the objectives …

2. Strategy Workshop: We used the survey input as the starting point for our strategic workshop that we did last month with our team of committee members. This is our new vision statement (in the middle) and mission statement for KASK:

The session was very productive and the outcome from it was a strategic plan on how we are going to achieve our strategic goals for 2017 and 2018. More on that in coming months!

A big thank you to all the members and community for having your input into the strategic vision for KASK as well as our lively committee of ten made up of Peter Brooks, Shaun Maclaren, Steve Flack and Rob Brown, Lois Cowan, David Welch, Sandy Ferguson, Ian McKenzie, Paul Caffyn and myself.

3. New Systems: We also surveyed about 200 ex-members who left KASK in recent years about why they left and what we could have done better. Most said they left for changing personal circumstances, no longer kayaking or relocated away from NZ. Some told us that there are few things we could do better like the member interaction and membership management. As a result, we are now investing in new systems and processes that will streamline the lifecycle of new members thanks to a generous donation of licenses from SalesForce.com. The new system to better engage with our members and community will come into effect shortly.

4. The magazine: We had great feedback from last edition of the renamed magazine. I want to reassure members the printed magazine will continue but all the members who opted to receive it in PDF format will get it electronically by now.

5. Kayak Fest 2018: We like to see you at the 2018 Kayak Fest. If you have not yet registered, please take the time to register. It is important we get the numbers to ensure that we repeat the success of the 2017 Ponui event. Registration detail on page 4.

6. Membership renewal and subscription: Thank you to the hundreds that have paid the subscription last month. If you have not, please do so using the instruction emailed to you or using the paper form that was delivered with last magazine.

Picture from last weekend, a very wet South Head Challenge

Tim Muhundan, President, KASK
[email protected] / 021 2767727