For my two penn'orth, socials, merchandise and so on should be self-funding.
Interesting and welcome views. Some narrative and explanation on this might be helpful as the admin team held mixed views on this too.
Firstly merchandising will be self funding if we progress the idea. That is any initial investment will be recouped through a dividend from sales. Till now this was voluntary work carried out by Ben, WoolyA2 and Skipton but there was a lot of work and hidden out of pocket expenses involved. The new concept will be to work through a third party intermediary for any items apart from the club badges. Thus removing the handling issues and retaining the copyright to the club logo.
The social aspect of the forum goes from strength to strength with 30 ish attendees at each event made up of stalwart and new members. That's only a small percentage of the 250 or so people who have donated funds to the club but the social aspect to the forum is our link to other clubs at ADI and AITP and is important for us in that context. We all benefit from the social reports and photo galleries plus the shared knowledge and information that makes its way onto the forum through networking at the socials.
Mike and Vonnie do an amazing and sometimes thankless task as social secretaries with much time and their own money invested in researching locations, venues for meals and providing food at the socials. It'd estimated they spend 50 quid of their own cash on food and drinks for each event and have done for several years now.
To be self funding there would need to be a fee for socials or a charge for the hospitality. We'd also need to finance upkeep and replacement of the gazebos and advertising banners by charging people to attend. It doesn't seem fair all round - and even if you don't and will never attend a social I'd argue that we all benefit from this aspect of the forum for reasons already given.
A final note, would there be objection to us running an annual campaign for a charitable donation - say at Christmas time with members proposing a worthy recipient for some money? We thought this to be very much in keeping with the fraternal nature of A2OC but any opposing views is healthy and correct to assure we get it right.
