ANST - Money needs (was Kingdom membership)

Michael Tucker michaelt at neosoft.com
Thu Feb 10 13:40:38 PST 2000


Greetings from Michael Silverhands:

Keith Hood (Tomonaga) wrote:
> 
> A question comes to mind:  does this kingdom or the SCA need to increase
> paid memberships because its coffers are low and it needs to raise funds for
> some good reason?  If that's the case, there may be easier ways to raise the
> money than by pushing membership buying.
> 
>       Tomonaga
> 

No, I don't think that's it. Costs of various things (especially printing and
mailing costs for the newsletters) have increased, but I don't think that's the
point of all this. Paid members contribute towards the cost of newsletters, but
only paid members receive the benefit. If you look at the published SCA budget,
the revenues and expenses for these categories are about even (as they should
be). Both the Society and our Kingdom seem to be financially healthy [although
there is an ongoing concern of how the Kingdom will pay for recurring expenses
since it has no substantial recurring income (a lively topic of discussion in
itself *grin*)].

But consider this: in 1996 it cost the SCA $58,700 for liability insurance(*).
This cost was divided among 25,614 paid members of one kind or another. So,
every paid member contributed a little more than $2 for liability insurance
coverage for the year (a pretty good deal, if you think about it). But everyone
who attended an event, paid member or not, received that benefit. What if we
could double (for example) the number of paid members? I don't think the cost of
insurance would change significantly, but the *burden* per *paid member* would
be cut in half. That would free up about $1 per member that could be used
towards some other purpose, or the cost of membership could be reduced.

(*) Source: <http://www.sca.org/BOD/reports/1996.budget.html>

This doesn't even consider other expenses, such as the operational expenses of
board members, society officers, and society meetings. In 1996, those costs (not
counting salaries, just expenses) totalled $66,100. It's harder to see the
connection, but because we have an SCA, Inc., it makes it easier to have, for
example, combat standards that are recognized among most (if not all) kingdoms.
You can build your armor and weapons in Ansteorra, and have a fair degree of
confidence that they will pass inspection by a marshal from Meridies or
Trimaris. This makes things like Gulf Wars possible. Again, we *all* get the
benefit, whether we're paid members or not. But only the paid members underwrite
the cost.

I could go on, but hopefully you see the point. :-)

To reiterate my position: I'm perfectly happy with this arrangement. It allows
folks to sample what we do without having to pony up the fee. With good support
from friends and households, you can actually play quite a while (a year or
more) without investing a cent. People will loan you clothes, feast gear, arms
and armor. You don't have to buy a membership. All you have to do is show up,
have fun, and contribute to what we do by being there and taking part.
Eventually, though, somebody has to be responsible for their share of the costs
of our Society. The more who do that, the lower the burden is on those who are paying.

Yours,
Michael
============================================================================
Go to http://lists.ansteorra.org/lists.html to perform mailing list tasks.



More information about the Ansteorra mailing list