Current situation
The last few years have affected every aspect of our lives, including our club.
We had to close the club because of the lockdown in March 2020 and it soon became clear that we would be subject to restrictions for some time. Because we were unable to meet, we decided to suspend the collection of annual fees from that time and of course the income from attendance fees stopped as well.
It was only on Monday 24 May 2021 that we were able to resume meetings, limited by the health regulations and to some extent by the willingness of members in the current situation. Partly to minimise the risks associated with handing cash, we decided not to collect attendance fees when we reopened. The annual membership fee was charged from September 2021.
Clearly this situation has affected our finances. Over recent years there has been a steady decline in membership income whilst our relatively high administrative costs such as the “rent” have remained substantially fixed.
With no income during the past 22 months, we have experienced a decrease of 9.692,67€ in our reserves.
Assuming that we will return to a new normality in 2022, we need to address the funding of the club to prevent the erosion of our reserves.
Our fixed costs are:-
Rent 6,840€
Bar 3,744€
Insurance 160,27€
Website 365,39€
Microsoft Office 99,00€
Total 11.208,66€
Whilst we will keep these costs under review, the committee feels that these facilities are essential for the club to operate as we want it.
Proposal
Our income comes entirely from our members. The committee has given a lot of consideration to the membership fees and are agreed that, in addition to ensuring that we cover our fixed costs, above, the fee structure should be
- more equitable, and
- easier to administer
Fairness
By the end of 2022, a total of 143 members will have “free” annual membership because of the 15-year rule approved by the AGM in 2015 subsequently revised to 10 years in 2016. However, the total membership has declined since 2020 from 430 to 298 and with the addition of further members becoming entitled during 2022 the result would be 50% of our members not contributing an annual fee to the funds. We propose to cancel this arrangement so that all members pay the annual fee.
Attendance fees
Although our historic practice of charging an attendance fee might seem to be a way of accruing revenue, on closer inspection there is little, if any, benefit from this practice.
Attendances are down from an average of roughly 63 per week in 2019 to 43 per week in 2021. There is no real prospect of improvement, whilst Covid is around combined with membership numbers decreasing.
This element of our income is completely out of our control and we cannot rely on it to form the major source of income. To cover the ‘lost’ income from fewer attendances we would have to put the daily fee up by a significant amount.
We can see that our annual liabilities of around 12,000€ across 300 members means that the annual cost of providing club facilities to each member is about 40€ p.a.
Considering the previous fee structure in terms of fairness:
In the extreme case, a member who only attends once in the year pays 13.50€ p.a. = (12€ + 1.50€) for a facility that has to be made available 3 times a week, 52 weeks per year, just in case they want to attend.
However, the regular members, helpers and committee have to pay much more than this for the privilege of running the club. For example
2 times per week = (2 * 52 * 1.50€) + 12€ = 168€
3 times per week = (3 * 52 * 1.50€ ) + 12€ = 246€
Note that some of the committee etc are exempt from the 12€.
Not only is the use of attendance fees inequitable, but they also cause administrative complexity at the entrance desk and for the Treasurer.
We propose to simplify our administration greatly by removing the attendance fee. This would:
- Eliminate the need to find volunteers to sit exclusively at the desk for nearly three hours to collect cash. It is virtually impossible to find anyone to do this job.
- Eliminate the tasks for the cash desk person that do not contribute to our aims as a club – e.g. ensuring everyone pays, dealing with “haven’t got the correct money”, “can I just pop in for a minute” etc.
- Eliminate the extra administrative work of collecting and accounting for coins and notes and having to take these to the bank every week at a time when they do not charge.
- Minimise the physical handling of cash which is undesirable especially in the current pandemic
Our proposal is to
Set an annual membership fee of 35€ for all members in 2022
Note that
- There will be no joining fee in view of the higher annual fee.
- Free memberships previously granted will be withdrawn.
- Only Honorary members will be exempt from the annual fee, currently there are 4.
- The renewal date for all members will be changed to 1st March
Going Forward
If members are prepared to agree this proposal, we expect that not all current members will renew so we will have a shortfall of income.
Our reserve fund is still in a healthy position so we can weather another year of depletion and review the situation at the end of the year.
We will launch a publicity campaign to attract new members.
We will look very carefully at how we can reduce our fixed costs and take action to achieve that.
Implementation
What we would like to do to is implement the new fees structure from 1 March 2022 and ask all members to pay the required fee. This will mean the renewal date for all members will become March each year.
If we don’t charge now, we will have no income until September 2022 which is currently the next renewal date.
Asking members to pay the new fee now reflects the fact that we have not been charging attendance fees since we opened in May 2021 covering 36 weeks up to the AGM.
Conclusion
Active members will be better off, other members who attend less frequently or only use the Helpline, will be paying more but ensuring we keep the Club open for the year without depleting our reserves too much and so that we are available for when they do want to attend and/or help through the Helpline.