Dave Cason VE6DED
Now that it has rolled around to being my turn for this month’s Key Klix message, I thought I would cover the fascinating world of finances. Don’t groan in pain, this is good stuff! Anyway, as you know or maybe have heard somewhere, CARA is the club with the big bucks! Right !? Well yes, and no.
We’ve been getting checks from the AGLC every 2 years for hosting casinos for the past 15 years. Oddly enough, while we have lots of money in our Casino Account, we also have another account called our General Account that is not quite as robust! (grin) That is the account we really need to watch. We are allowed to transfer 10% of casino money, which has to last over two years in to the General Account, and that is it. It is not enough money for our day-to-day expenses like internet, security alarms, repeater sites, other general club costs, etc!
As an example, we have a casino and from that we get a check for ~$51,000. Out of that we can take 10% and put that in the General Account, which is $5,100. But we need to remember, casinos only run once every two years so then for that one year we only have $2,550 in the General Account for that year from casino money, but we spend about $11,700 in a year. So as you can see, we have a deficit for the operation budget.
We have to make up the extra money by holding license classes, have flea markets, and the big one, membership dues. With COVID we can’t do the make up stuff, so that’s why we’re trying to cut costs. And yes, we will be able to raise funds in the future with license classes and flea markets, but not right now. And we don’t want to raise dues if we can avoid it. If we need to buy some equipment we’re in great shape because we can use the money in the Casino Account, but for day-to-day stuff, we’re a bit tight. So what we’re trying to do as an Executive is cut our day-to-day cost for things that have to come out of our General Account; we can’t run the club using money from the Casino Account, ever. The AGLC has a big thick binder called “Use of Proceeds”, and that is a hard "no".
We are trying to recover our storage costs for old equipment, and between the storage locker and the club trailer, we spend about $2,000 a year. If we can get rid of old things, and maybe keep the “must have things”, along with the trailer at the clubhouse, it would help cut our costs. And yes, we’re working on it!
Another expense is classroom rent for our ham classes that we hold to raise money for the club, but last time it cost us $1,700 to rent the hall. So again we’re going to try to use the clubhouse, and those ideas are in the works. So we are actively selling old equipment and working towards using the clubhouse for ham classes and trailer storage. If you have any other suggestions for us, please let us know!
