Dear AAVSO Members, Observers, and Supporters,
Welcome to the first Director’s Report of 2024. In this edition, I’ve provided you with a snapshot of the meaningful work and achievements of the last quarter. I especially want to draw your attention to the 2024 Annual Fundraising campaign, progress towards our 2024 Strategic Goals, current activities of the Strategic Planning Committee, and recent decisions by the Board of Directors.
As always, I’d be happy to hear from you regarding any of these items. Please feel free to send an email to either me or the Board using the information on the contact us page.
Results of the 2024 annual fundraising campaign
As you may recall, the AAVSO’s 2024 Annual Fundraising Campaign had an ambitious goal of raising a total of $110,000 by Feb. 1, 2024. These funds are directed towards the five objectives in AAVSO’s 2024 Strategic Plan. Thanks to the contributions of AAVSO members worldwide and two last-minute donations, we raised a total of $100,403 which is 91% of our goal. It is worth noting that 100% of AAVSO’s Board of Directors contributed to this campaign, demonstrating their strong commitment to our cause.
The Board of Directors and I are working together to secure the remaining funds necessary to fully realize our strategic plan. Your continued support is critical to this ongoing journey. If you didn’t have the chance to donate during the campaign, please know that you can contribute anytime during the year simply by clicking on the Donate Now button on the AAVSO website.
Progress towards our strategic goals
I’m pleased to report that we are making steady progress towards achieving our goals as outlined in our 2024 Strategic Plan.
Goal 2 - Infrastructure Improvements
We successfully deployed and integrated a new authentication system in early January. This required making a multitude of changes to our website and applications. I’d like to thank David Benn for updating VStar and George Silvis for his changes to SunEntry.
During the next quarter, we will be making several changes to the appearance of our website to unify themes, moving some applications to low-cost, scalable computing instances, and replace the forums.
Goal 4 - Reduce the barrier to variable star astronomy
This quarter we kicked off two efforts to make it easier for the public to participate in variable star astronomy.
Our Smart Telescope Initiative had two significant achievements. First, we created a draft requirements document that codifies the objectives of our Smart Telescope Initiative, defines interface requirements, and discusses how we envision the data reduction and calibration process will work. In the next quarter, we hope to begin work on the various applications. Second, Dwarflab donated one of their DWARF II smart telescopes to the AAVSO. Peter Bealo completed an initial evaluation of the unit and provided Dwarflab with feedback on changes that would make variable star astronomy easier. We thank Dwarflab for their willingness to support our cause and look forward to testing future firmware releases. Second, we created a draft requirements document that elaborates on
Outside of the Smart Telescope Initiative, I’m also happy to report that seven of AAVSO’s 12 Sections now host Quarterly meetings on Zoom. If you’d like to join, check our Programs and Events calendar or watch for announcements in AAVSO Communications.
Goal 5 - Build stronger ties with researchers
In March I attended the 2024 CHARA Science Meeting in Tucson, Arizona which was jointly hosted with NOIRLabs. I presented a talk summarizing the first six months of the CHARA - AAVSO Collaboration. To summarize, the AAVSO received 5 proposals from the 2023B proposal cycle. Of those, three were executed:
- Sigma Gem Shashank Dholakia (University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia) - BVRI photometry during 8-day TESS run. 166 data points obtained by Ken Menzies. https://www.aavso.org/aavso-alert-notice-837
- ARMADA - John Monnier U Mich and Tyler Gardner (Exiter) effort to get BVR photometry on a series of non-variable stars. Ken Menzies and Tom Calderwood working on that with me. Thus far, 53 / 75 stars have been observed.
- T CrB - Ryan Norris at New Mexico Tech
For the 2024A cycle, we received four additional proposals. Announcements on those will soon be released.
2023 Annual Report
Late last month we released our 2023 Annual Report. The report includes a letter from Richard Berry (AAVSO President) discussing AAVSO’s future, a letter from Brian Kloppenborg (Executive Director) summarizing last year’s accomplishments, science highlights, a summary of how your donations are used to further AAVSO’s mission, the Treasurer’s Report, and acknowledgements of AAVSO’s many benefactors, volunteers, and donors.
From the Board of Directors
The Board of Directors has been exceptionally busy this quarter with strategic planning and program evaluation activities.
The Board created a Project Assessment Working Group and tasked them to assess AAVSO’s programs and services. This group is to identify programs that no longer align with our long-term goals, have become ineffective, or cannot be executed due to limited resources. For each program within AAVSO’s portfolio, the Working Group is to recommend if a program should be expanded, left as-is, or discontinued. The Working Group is further tasked with balancing AAVSO’s resource budget with its ambitious goals. Members of the Working Group include Richard Berry, Brian Kloppenborg, Peter Bealo (chair), Arne Henden, Pat Boyce, and Diogo Teixeira. The Project Assessment Working Group has met six times since it was created. They have developed a list of programs and services which will be evaluated as well as some tentative evaluation criteria.
After much deliberation, the Board voted unanimously to close the AAVSO Ambassador Program. Although the program was judged successful, it was no longer feasible to maintain due to changes in staffing resources. The Board and I would like to express our sincere appreciation to the 33 individuals who took part in the program. Many of the Ambassadors now volunteer their time to other activities within the AAVSO.
Strategic planning for 2025 and beyond
Strategic planning is essential for any organization. It is our roadmap to the future. In this quarter, the Strategic Planning Committee met almost every week, completing key documents that define our stakeholders, mandates, mission, and values for review by the Board. These documents have already been used to focus and adapt our marketing strategy and to define content for the AAVSO’s new website.
Clear Skies,
Dr. Brian Kloppenborg
Executive Director, AAVSO