Der Gasser- Letter to Editor

[Mike Andrews]

larrybard wrote:

Mike Andrews wrote:

Larry,

The profit from the the track program is used to fund other club activities. Does that answer both parts of your question?

Sort of. And let me apologize if my questions seem too confusing and/or intrusive. And thank you for your efforts to patiently respond.

By definition, I suppose, any profits from one program will be available for all other club activities (including other expenses of all kinds, such as printing and accounting services, etc.).

More specifically what I was addressing was whether the club roughly calculates the net profits/losses annually for each of its key programs (e.g., not just DE but also AX -- though I am emphatically using that just as an example that comes immediately to mind), and if there is some policy as to the extent to which each such individual activity ought to at least break even (e.g., on average over a period of 3 years).

This may be a deeply flawed question, but if membership dues were enough to pay for general overhead (such as accounting services, where there are no associated revenues), and DE was producing $20k of profits, would the $20k be enough to permit each 2 student instructor to participate for half the normal fee, for example?

Larry

Larry,

I guess you could look at it like a multi faceted company that has many different groups. Some turn a profit and some don’t.



In the case of the club, we take each program (Track, Autocross, Social and so on) and ask the chairperson to budget their activities for the year and what they project to spend and then take in. PCA National also sends us a portion of you dues so that gets added into the mix as well. What we’ve done in past years (not sure about this year) is do a little give and take until we project zero growth. In other words, our expenses equal our income.

In a perfect world each of the programs would be able to stand on their own. Now to try and answer your question. We set (or raise) the DE fees to balance the bottom line of the budget so I would assume if we had more revenue from other places then we would price the DE’s accordingly.



I don’t know if that answer your specific question….



Let me make a comment on your two students per instructor question. Our goal is to get back to one student per instructor. Two students (even when the instructor drives for free) is not fun.










emayer wrote:

larrybard wrote:

Mike Andrews wrote:

Larry,

The profit from the the track program is used to fund other club activities. Does that answer both parts of your question?

Sort of. And let me apologize if my questions seem too confusing and/or intrusive. And thank you for your efforts to patiently respond.

By definition, I suppose, any profits from one program will be available for all other club activities (including other expenses of all kinds, such as printing and accounting services, etc.).

More specifically what I was addressing was whether the club roughly calculates the net profits/losses annually for each of its key programs (e.g., not just DE but also AX -- though I am emphatically using that just as an example that comes immediately to mind), and if there is some policy as to the extent to which each such individual activity ought to at least break even (e.g., on average over a period of 3 years).

This may be a deeply flawed question, but if membership dues were enough to pay for general overhead (such as accounting services, where there are no associated revenues), and DE was producing $20k of profits, would the $20k be enough to permit each 2 student instructor to participate for half the normal fee, for example?

Larry

That's a very interesting line of questioning, I hope we're not out of line for engaging in this discussion. Brainstorming like this doesn't seem reasonable or practicable at a monthly meeting either.

Another way of looking at this is to ask: Is an increase in membership fees necessary to help cover other programs and permit retention of some of the DE profit toward reducing instructor track fees? I can feel flames already..... hock:

Eric,


You're not out of line... it's your club and you have every right to know the details. There have been a number of comments in this thread and as I said, if you guys will ask questions I'll answer them (or do my best).



I don't think it's (just) an instructor thing. We are curretnly at 1 to 1 for Pocono but our blue group attendance is way down. So is our black run group. So there are fewer people across the board.



To your question. More income, however it gets there, reduces the load from the revenue producing programs.