President’s New Year Message in 2014
Mr. Kinoshita, President
The day January 14, 2014 is the 10th foundation anniversary of the NPO “Institute of Industrial Cluster (IIC).” The 10-year-term activities of the IIC was achieved thanks to so many support and assistance granted by the governmental departments and related organizations of Kanagawa Prefecture, Yokohama City and Yokosuka City, as well as comprehension and support by corporate members and individual members, for which I am much grateful.
To perform and develop NPO’s activities, it is indispensable to make and keep it’s income and expenditure stable, which particularly should be the first thing to be considered. Now, I would like to mention about IIC’s income sources that decide the performance levels of our activities.
Our income is mainly consisting of: (1) payment by mid/small-businesses for our support to them; (2) donation; (3) grant; and (4) member fees.
(1) Our main activity is to vitalize local economy through support to mid/small-enterprises and accordingly this largely shares IIC’s income. We have to continue and expand this activity furthermore creating additional business fields of which keys were already generated in 2013 through work entrusted by the CSR Center of Yokohama City University and projects related to environment and energy saving.
(2) NPOs cannot be independent from donation to them, and particularly the NPOs authorized as a tax-incentive organization are specially required to be financed with a certain percentage of donation. However, NPOs are not well recognized socially, which was shown as a 40% recognition level by the Japanese Cabinet Office research, and we have to obtain a higher level of social reliance through our effective activities followed by our public relational advertisement. This kind of pro-active action cycles will, we are confident, promote IIC’s much better performance.
(3) Since the amendment of the NPO law, the support to “New Public Commons” has been given greater importance. In this field, our activities in 2013, the cooperative projects “Lecture to Vitalize Citizen’s Public Organizations” entrusted by Yokosuka City, and the “Ecology Education” for elementary schools in Yokohama City, were favorably received. We will promote these kinds of activities in 2014 and thus we can expect much more grants by national and local governments.
New-year block print
(4) Our corporate members and individual members are key factors for the IIC’s tasks and activities to obtain social reliance and to perform the role to “provide citizens chances for their challenge and performance of their capabilities” revealed in the Japanese Cabinet Office research. All of the interested corporates and individuals are invited to join the Institute of Industrial Cluster and to exert your capabilities.
On the occasion of our IIC’s 10th anniversary, I expect IIC will advance to achieve further business tasks and social projects through stabilized financial basis supported by relevant organizations and enterprises in addition to current corporate and individual members.
New-year block print, handwork by one of our individual members
