About Us

A Letter From the President

Greetings IWCS members. My name is Dennis Wilson, I assumed the Presidency of the IWCS at the close of our annual business meeting in September. I know many members do not know me, so I thought I would provide a brief summary of my history with the Society. I joined the IWCS in 1977, 43 years ago. I have served as All Mail Auction Coordinator, Secretary Treasurer, Vice President, President Elect, President Archivist, and now, President for the second time. You can see my history with the Society is a long one.

At this year’s annual meeting we all learned that the Society’s general operating fund would be out of money in February, 2021. The Board of Directors made the difficult decision to withdraw $25,000 from our Endowment Fund to use for continued operations. This will sustain the Society, as it currently stands, until the end of the fiscal year, 31 May 2021.

Some of our members have risen to this challenge. Bill Cockrell, who handles the physical mailing of the World of Wood to all members, paid the entire postage cost for one mailing out the previous issue of his own pocket as a donation. Gary Green, our Past President, has paid to have our Membership Directory printed. Our sincere thanks to these members for their donations.

We also have a couple members who have made a major commitment that we are using to begin a Matching Funds drive. Please see the introductory article on page 11 in this issue. The Society’s largest expense is providing the World of Wood to our members. I believe the journal we currently receive is the best it has ever been. My thanks and congratulations to Willem Hurkmans, the Publications Chair, Mihaly Czako, our editor and all of our Associate Editors for a wonderful job. We do not want to see changes to our journal but that may be necessary in the future. Please join the momentum to supplement our income with a matching donation.

As I begin my term I want to keep, you, our membership apprised of our current status as a group. I am starting what I call our Score Card that will have basic facts that affect our Society. These basic numbers will allow all members to see and understand how we are doing.