ANST - Kingdom Finance - long

[Galen W. Bevel]

Timothy A. McDaniel wrote:

> 
> Rhiannon, I don't think the 30% or 50% rule is unfair.
> Why not proportional to the money put in?
> 
> (Not that you have anything to do with it now,
> and neither do I ...)
> 
> Daniel de Lincolia
> --

Although this was not addressed specifically to me, I think I can answer
it for you, if Rhiannon doesn't mind.  As I stated in an earlier post,
when this was instated, I was KS, and Rhiannon was KT, and Bear and
Catherine were Crown.  At that time, there was no set, regular way for
the Kingdom to make money, and the coffers were getting quite bare.  We
had several expenditures upcoming, such as the publishing of Kingdom
Law, etc. for which the Kingdom had no way to pay.  Rhodri was just
stepping out of the KS position, and as a business man he was quite
concerned that the Kingdom had no way to make a budget for the year,
having no income.  You can't plan how you are going to allot and spend
what you don't have, especially if you have no hope of ever having
it....so to speak.

But, there was a lot of resistance to the idea of the Kingdom taking ANY
money from events...groups had kept all of the profits from the events
to that time.  It took a lot of education of the seneschallate, etc.
around the Kingdom to show first the need, and then the right, of the
Kingdom to keep some of the profits from its own events (see my previous
post). Rhodri, Bear, Catherine, myself, and I believe Don Jeremy, as
High Chancellor, sat down and discussed it and came up with this plan
(if I have left anyone else out, please forgive me).  If the Kingdom
fronted the money for the event, it took 50% of the profits.  It would
be a Kingdom event, and thus very likely to be larger than usual and
generate more profit for the group, but the group would do all of the
work, and so should get a good portion of those profits.  If the group
fronted the money, they were taking all of the financial risk, plus
doing all of the work, so they should get a larger proportion of the
profits.  The only reason that the Kingdom would get 30% is because it
_was_ an event beloning to the Kingdom (see previous post) and the only
way the group would be holding the event, with its increased possibility
of profit, was because the kingdom bestowed it upon them instead of
running the event itself, and keeping all of the profits. (Whew, can I
make a sentence run on, or what...).  Basically, if you wanted to view
it that way, the Kingdom "sold" its right to host its own event to the
local group in exchange for 30% of the profits.

As I said, there had been no income plan for the Kingdom before (at
least in my memory), and this was intended to be a makeshift, first
attempt to generate one.  We fully expected it to be reviewed, dropped,
changed, replaced etc. as time went on and showed us a better way to
finance the Kingdom.  However, it seems to have worked well enough that
it is essentially the same now as it was then.  I don't know the status
of the Kingdom coffers, but I'm sure that if they were bad, there would
be a lot more hand wringing and hair pulling by the Goofs than there is,
and if it were exceptionally good, we would see a lot more silly plans
on how to spend the excess being foisted upon us.  

Graf Galen K.
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