WICE 2025 Annual Report

Bonjour à tous,

Once again, on behalf of the entire Board of Directors, I am proud to share with you WICE's accomplishments over the past year as well as some plans for the future. But before we do that, I would like to make a special volunteer shout out.

Member Extraordinaire . . . Kate Wolter!

The WICE Marketing Team

I would also like to take a minute to pay special recognition to the WICE Marketing Team, pictured below.

Before anything else, I want to point out that this is the most cosmpopolitan team you could imagine. Going from left to right, top to bottom:

• Yana Vachkova — Marketing Team Leader — Bulgaria
• Angie Guyonton — Project Manager and WICE Direct Editor — Singapore
• Peter Nustra — Graphics Designer — Cameroon
• Spoorthi Reddy - LinkedIn Manager - India
• Tina Triquart — WICE Direct Asst. Editor — Germany
• Modou Joof — Video Editor — The Gambia
• Aradhana Kumar Prem — Social Media Lead — India
• Ruby Reynertson — Blog Developer — Netherlands/US
• Jay van Wagenen — Content Manager and Board Liaison — US
• Diana Almabekova — Videographer — Kazakhstan (not shown)

The WICE Marketing Department has been one of the great behind-the-scenes success stories. Under the visionary and able leadership of Yana Vachkova, they have . . .

• Reimagined WICE's Facebook and Instagram pages, hugely increasing both viewership and engagement
• Created new LinkedIn strategy and content to appeal to younger professionals
• Revamped the WICE Direct newsletter for a cleaner, snappier presentation
• Incorporated motion graphics to boost involvement with projects like the recent Donation Drive
• Developed a WICE blog that will be launching within the month
• Developed and implemented the June donation campaign marketing strategy that resulted in WICE achieving 182% of its goal

Great jobs, all of you! Please keep up the good work as we go forward.

A Retrospective - Part I

As I get ready to step down as President, I'd like to reflect back a bit on the past three years. We have come a very long way since the summmer of 2022, and because about 80% of WICE members have joined since then, I would like them to know a little of what the past three years have been all about.

WICE was founded in 1978, and for the next 44 years it was a very successful continuing education institute, with membership reaching over 1,000 at one point.

In the late spring and early summer of 2022, however, WICE was headed towards bankruptcy and preparing to dissolve. COVID had taken the wind out of our sails, and both membership and revenue had declined to the point that we had to give up our office, lay off our staff, prepare to give away our remaining assets, and call it the end of an era.

Several WICE members proposed that a new board be formed to give the organization another chance. The proposal was accepted, and in July 2022 a brand new board took the reins and began charting a new course.

The first year—from the summer of 2022 to the summer of 2023—could be characterized as being in crisis mode . With no documentation and very little corporate knowledge to guide us, the new board basically fumbled along in the dark, focusing on keeping our member-facing activities going while trying to figure out how to make all the moving parts—finance, programs, marketing, etc.—work together.

The second year —from the summer of 2023 to the summer of 2024—was much better. We had reestablished our financial health, and we started experimenting with new offerings. We had a much better understanding of how everything should work, and our overall characterization could be thought of as stabilization mode .

This past year, our third year since the crisis, we spent much time and effort preparing to hand over the reins to the next generation of WICE leaders. In that sense, we can characterize this past year as having been in transition mode. And it has, I think, been successful. As we close out the year, I am happy to report that we have most of the key positions filled with fresh new people bringing in fresh new ideas. Furthermore, the incoming Board of Directors has a great blend of old and new who have a great combination of experience, imagination, and energy. I think WICE is set to embark on one of its best eras yet.

And with that brief overview of the past few years, I'll move on to discuss WICE's current state, starting with membership.

The WICE Membership

WICE has about 467 members, but the membership breaks out into a number of different categories. Here are several graphics to illustrate how our membership can be thought of (please keep in mind that because members come and go, these figure are all approximate).

Figure 1 shows the gender breakout of our members. We have about 340 women, and about 127 men. This is about a 2% increase in the number of men since last year.

Figure 2 shows how our members identify in terms of nationality. Americans are the dominant demographic here (241), followed by the French (104), followed by members from the Commonwealth realms (67), and then a smattering from here and there around the world (24 from elsewhere in Europe, 8 from Asia, 3 from Africa).

Figure 3 shows WICE age groups. We clearly tend towards an older demographic, with about 60% of our members (281) in the age category 60 or above. That said, the number of younger WICE members has increased noticeably this past year, and we are making efforts to continue that trend.

Another interesting view of WICE membership is in considering where our members actually live. The following graphics illustrate that.

Figure 4 shows the global distribution. By far the largest number (391) live in France, as should be expected, with the next largest group (55) living in the U.S. There are 13 living in various other countries, and those 8 in the middle of the ocean are the members who did not list their addresses.

Figure 5 shows the distribution in France. Almost all members live in Paris proper (288), with 85 more living in nearby Île de France, and 18 scattered around the rest of the country. This, too, should be expected.

Figure 6 is Paris itself. About 1/3 of our members live in the 7th and 15th arrondissements, which is almost certainly a result of WICE's office spaces having been located in those two arrondissements over the years. But what is interesting to note is that the numbers have increased substantially in the 13th, 16th, and 17th arrondissements, making the western 40% or so of Paris a collection of lavender bubbles. The result is that about 60% of WICE members live in just five arrondissements.

So how are these 467 people organized in WICE?

The WICE Organization

In very general terms, there are about 397 paying members and approximately 70 volunteers who work to make WICE happen. But that's not the whole story.

The volunteers are divided into several different categories: The Board of Directors, Team Leaders, team members, and organizers.

Figure 7 describes the Board of Directors and its composition, and it shows the eight teams that comprise WICE. Seven of the eight teams can be thought of as standard organizational departments with team members doing typical organizational work. The Programs Team, though, is different.

Figure 8 shows the Programs Team, which has by far the largest number of volunteers. This is the team that plans, organizes and conducts all the member-facing activities that the rest of the WICE members enjoy. As you can see, there are eight separate programs, each with its own Program Director, along with a number of volunteer organizers. The organizers are the people you generally see; they organize the coffees, the pétanque games, the conversation groups, the lunches, the book groups, the play readings, the walks, the meditation sessions, and so on. These are the foot soldiers of WICE. We could probably make do in some way, shape, or form without many of the other volunteers, but without the activity organizers, there would arguably be no WICE.

A Retrospective - Part II

This is where I would normally talk about our accomplishments over the past year, followed by our plans for next year. Instead, I'm going to talk about some of the big changes over the past three years, and some of the challenges ahead for the next President and board.

Here are some key things we can be justifiably proud of regarding the past three years:

• Membership: When the new board took over in the summer of 2022, we had something like 230 members. Today we have 467.


• Programs: In the autumn trimester of 2022, we offered a total of 23 courses/classes/activities. This past spring we offered a total of 111. And that's not to mention all the cool new activities we're doing, like the recent Canal/Seine boat cruise, day trips to places like Chartres and Fontainebleau, Qi-Qong, Vipassana meditation, and classes in video and video editing.


• Volunteers: In the summer of 2022, we had approximately 15 volunteers. Today we have about 70.


• Finances: We inherited €34,658.48 from the last administration in our combined savings and checking accounts. Today we have €65,586.07.

Not too bad, any way you look at it.

That said, WICE is not without places that could use improvement and that the next Board should think about seriously:

• Our business model:

  From its inception in 1978 until 2022, WICE operated as a continuing education institute. Our business model was simple. We offered classes, charged for them, paid instructors to teach them, and had a leased office and classroom to support them. We also had full-time support staff to help make it all happen. The course fees and membership fees we charged covered all of our expenses and gave us a small profit at the end of most years, which in turn provided us with a nice reserve cushion.

  That is no longer the case. We have shifted to being primarily a social organization that offers some continuing education activities, such as language and creative writing courses. But most of our activities are now social activities — coffees, lunches, walks, pétanque, etc. — that are free to WICE members. They are only free, though, in a financial sense; there is another cost associated with those activities — the human cost. It takes volunteers to plan and organize all these free activities, and we consider volunteers to be assets in the same way that we consider money to be an asset. And to attract and retain quality volunteers, we offer a number of benefits that — guess what? — cost money.

  As you'll see in the 2025 Finance Report, the current business model is probably not financially sustainable over a long period of time. Our revenues from membership fees and programs do not cover all of our expenses, and we rely too much on donations and fundraising activities. This is a challenge for the next President and next board.

• Membership retention:

  This is one of WICE's hidden weak spots. We seem to be really good at recruiting new members, but we're not so good at keeping them. There are metrics for what good retention numbers should be in an association like WICE, and we're falling short. Not by catastrophic levels — our retention rate is between 60%-65%, compared to an industry standard of 70%-75% — but enough that we should take notice. Far too many members don't renew after the first year, and we need to get a better understanding of why that is and what we can do about it. The good news is that the (probable) next WICE President has already said this is an area of interest for her.

Looking Forward

I would like to end on a high note, and the big high note I want to mention is the partnership we are working on with Serve the City Paris (STCP).

STCP is a nonprofit association that offers support to refugees, asylum seekers, the homeless, and underprivileged foreigners in Paris. They do this in a number of ways, ranging from food outreach activities to language training to helping foreigners find work to providing mentoring. They also have the Impact Café — a co-working space — and connected smaller working spaces.

The partnership we envision would allow WICE and WICE members to:

• Participate in STCP volunteer activities


• Participate in the STCP mentorship program


• Use the co-working space free of charge


• Rent smaller rooms for meetings and classes at discounted prices


• Use the Impact Café main space for our monthly apéros.

There are still details to the partnership to be worked out, but we look at this as a great step forward, and we want to once again thank all the generous WICE members whose donations last month will make this possible.

Wrap Up

It's an indescribable feeling to look back over the past three years and think about all the interesting WICE members I've met, all the fantastic volunteers I've worked with, and all the remarkable things we've accomplished. This has seriously been one of the most rewarding things I've done in my life, and I am grateful for having had the opportunity to do it. Although I'll be stepping down as President on 10 July, I will be remaining with WICE as a volunteer, and I look forward to seeing all of you at coffees, on walks, at lunches, in books groups, and in various other WICE activities. Take care, and have a great summer.

Rick Jones, President