Western Region Hospitaler

[Tim McDaniel]

On Wed, 15 Jan 1997, DEIDRA L GOUGH <cat_eyes at juno.com> wrote:
> which does require a minium number of paid members. Heaven forbid we fall
> below this number or even close to it for that matter.

And your evidence that we're anywhere close to that is ...?

> As to lowering membership costs, at this point the only possible way
> to do this is to increase memberships so much that we don't need to
> pay $35/person/year to maintain administrative costs.

Um, no.  It's beyond the scope of this mailing list, but there are
several ideas out there that would reduce per-capita fixed costs
without just piling on new members.

OK, just one: there is an association-management industry out there.
They manage an administrative office, membership databases, mailing
lists, publications, insurance, incorporation issues, taxes, et cetera
ad nauseum for organizations.  The organization boards can then
concentrate on left-handed basket-weaving, or whatever they like to
do, and the A.M.C. does what *they're* expert in, which is
administration.  Each A.M.C. has multiple clients, so they spread the
costs out a lot.  The person suggesting this originally got estimates
of savings on the order of hundreds of thousands of dollars per year,
IIRC (last SCA annual budget I saw was on the order of a million
dollar, IIRC).  Unfortunately, SCA, Inc. has dragged its feet about
checking into it.

> If a few more people thought of the Society of a game for people
> needing people to survive and not so much as one big nationwide fund
> raiser, memberships might not be an issue.

Unfortunately, there's history here -- the Great Milpitas Meltdown of
recent unpleasant memory.  I'm still twitchy on the topic.

-- 
Daniel de Lincoln
                             Tim McDaniel
                        Reply-To: tmcd at crl.com
      tmcd at mcdaniel.dallas.tx.us is wrong tool.  Never use this.