Message from Mike Hess - St. Louis Chapter President

Dear Members:

Beginning in late 2008, our chapter experienced reduced enrollment in many of our education offerings.  Historically, revenue from chapter education offerings has helped to fund the day-to-day operations of our local chapter, along with membership dues.  As a result of lower than anticipated enrollment, we’ve had to access reserve funds to offset the shortfall in anticipated revenue from education.  We believe that the trend of declining enrollment is due to a combination of factors, including the downturn in the economy, competitive pressure from non-AI education programs, as well as competitive pressure from our own AI on-line education offerings.  National has recently proposed sharing revenue from on-line education with local chapters.  Unfortunately, National is also experiencing declining revenue, both from on-line offerings and traditional classroom offerings.  Unfortunately, this assistance from National is far from assured.

I would like to encourage all members to try to attend more classes locally, if possible, so that we can continue to offer our local courses in the future.  A list of courses to be offered during the remainder of 2009 is presented on the Chapter website at www.stlappraisalinstitute.com.  I understand that there are often reasons for not attending our local offerings but it is more important than ever that we support the St. Louis Chapter if we are to continue providing our high-quality education locally.