<CORSA Chapters> Membership, dues and such
AeroNed at aol.com
AeroNed at aol.com
Mon Jul 14 22:41:38 EDT 2008
Bruce,
No funds came out of the 2007 CORSA general fund for the scholarship or for
the past years that I have budgets from. The scholarship fund is very much
self sustaining, thanks to the generous donations from chapters and individual
CORSA members. There is no money flowing from the Scholarship fund account to
the CORSA general fund. I believe that could only be done, if at all, as a
loan because of tax laws.
I'm not on the scholarship award committee so I don't know the actual
numbers, but I'd venture to guess that we are not turning away many, if any,
applicants. I would not ever endorse requiring financial data on applications. Our
scholarships, $250 and $500 are not big enough to warrant knowing the
applicant's family financial details.
I would disagree with Bruce's assessment one the recipient not being someone
CORSA should be giving money to. I believe that any and all money that goes
toward a college education is money well spent. Obviously, the $500 did not
make a huge difference, based on the assumed financial situation. But did we
turn someone else away? Did we have to go into debt or dip into the CORSA
funds to award that scholarship? I think we gave $500 to a very nice young man
that will remember and appreciate what CORSA and the Corvair community did for
him.
Ned
In a message dated 7/14/2008 8:15:45 P.M. Central Daylight Time,
bwschug at charter.net writes:
Ned and others: I wrote this some time ago and never finished the
second one, as referenced in this e-mail. Since that one might not
ever get finished, I'll send this now. - Bruce
On Mar 15, 2008, at 8:58 AM, AeroNed at aol.com wrote:
> Bruce,
>
> In my opinion, CORSA doesn't have $0.02 to spend "willy nilly" or
> any other
> way. The dropping revenues through dues and merchandise sale are
> making it
> extremely tough to come up with a balanced budget.
>
> Ned
>
>
> In a message dated 3/14/2008 3:44:12 P.M. Central Daylight Time,
> bwschug at charter.net writes:
>
> Does CORSA have, perhaps, two or three-thousand dollars to spend
> "willy nilly"?
>
Ned,
If money is so tight in the CORSA budget, I have to wonder then, why
the BOD continues to award scholarships to applicants who haven't
demonstrated that they need the money. To me, this is simply spending
CORSA money "willy nilly" (thanks to Tim for using the phrase "willy
nilly" to describe this careless spending. It sounds much better than
the phrase that comes to my mind, "pissing it away".) In 2007 $2,500
was awarded in this manner.
Now I know that the scholarship money doesn't come out of the CORSA
budget. Or does it? Quoting from the Operating Procedure of the
scholarship (which may have been changed), "Scholarships will be
funded by donations to the CPF Scholarship Fund and from CORSA's
General Fund. Scholarships will be in denominations of either $500 or
$1000 with the total amount not to exceed $2000 per year.
Determination of the number and amount will be made by March 1. If
CORSA has retained earnings of at least $5000, CORSA will fund one
$500 Scholarship by depositing the difference between that amount and
the amount in the CPF Scholarship fund. In addition, CORSA will
deposit into the CPF Scholarship Fund 10 percent of the retained
earnings in excess of $5000 to a maximum of $2000 total."
I presume CORSA doesn't have retained earnings of $5,000 so this isn't
being done. But I question the wisdom of putting this statement in the
procedure in the first place. This means that we have dues at a level
that we are losing members, and we still don't have enough money, but
we would still give some of this dues money away to students with no
demonstrated need if we had enough of it. Is this what the policy
really should be?
In actuality, I believe the scholarship money is donated or raised
specifically for that purpose. But I'll bet that if the scholarship
program didn't exist, most of it would come to CORSA anyway, either to
the CORSA budget or the CPF budget. I'll also bet that if those who
make the donations understood how their donations were being awarded,
most of them wouldn't make the donation.
Two years after I wrote my letter (available to anyone who e-mails me
asking for a copy) to point out the problems with the scholarship
program, and exactly how to solve them, I am still dumbfounded,
flabbergasted, and in shock with the reception of my recommendation. I
told the BOD and scholarship committee more than they ever thought of
regarding awarding scholarships, what was wrong with the way it was
being done and answered every question as to how it should be done. I
gave them a turn-key solution to a problem that none of them knew they
had. Still, they fail to understand or at least own up to what's wrong
with what they're doing.
You probably saw the nice letter in the October Communique, from the
fellow who was awarded a $500 scholarship last year, thanking CORSA
for the award. I would like to point out that this fellow, who lives
in Texas, 1. Has been to six conventions, including the one in
"Detroit". 2. Owns a '65 Monza that he leaves at home while away at
school. 3. Has a Mini Cooper, presumably which he has at school. 4.
Indicates that he is a CORSA member.
While I'm sure this is a nice young man, as evidenced by his taking
time to thank CORSA for his scholarship, to me, this is not someone
that CORSA should be giving $500 to, no matter where the $500 comes
from. The students that we award scholarships to at our church are not
at all like this young man. Typically, they are from a single-parent
family or a family that is basically part of the large "working poor"
class in our country. I assure you, they haven't been all over the
country to six collector car conventions. They don't own two cars, one
being a collector car that they leave home while at school and one
being a cool little Mini Coper. They also don't themselves belong to
$38-a-year club. Heck, this e-mail list has been full of messages from
people lately telling of how their own club members can't afford $38
for CORSA dues! Now here's a guy who can afford it and we're giving
him $500! The fact that this "picture" is all wrong to me but
perfectly fine to the scholarship committee and the BOD is very
troublesome to me and those CORSA members who share my views.
This reminds me of a former BOD member who apparently came from more
wealth than did most of us. His family had a scholarship fund set up
which his children received scholarships from. But now that his
children are out of school, he shows his appreciation for these
scholarships by sending a check to the scholarship fund. Maybe I'm
reading too much into his remarks, but he seems to be suggesting that
the way to keep CORSA members is to give them each, perhaps, a
thousand-dollars. They, in turn, will be so appreciative that they
will continue to send their dues checks in. Now if we only had the
funds to give all 5,000 CORSA members a thousand dollars, we could see
if this theory works. Maybe that's not what he really meant.
I have seen references to the scholarship lately as a merit
scholarship, which is exactly what it is. I have also seen it
mentioned that no financial information is required, which I think is
correct. I only point this out because I don't think the committee
knew the difference between a need-based scholarship and a merit
scholarship until I pointed it out to them. Now, I don't fault them
for that and am glad that some of them are referring to the
scholarship as a merit scholarship. But when this was being discussed
a year ago, the then-scholarship-chair wrote in his comments to the
Operating Procedure, "I believe the matter of need, if it is an issue
at all, should be up to the judge to read into the application.
Charlie West does this well." With all due respect to Charlie West,
there's no way he could read anything like this into an application,
when there's no financial information there!!! And if this is a merit
scholarship, there's no need to read anything about need into the
application!!!
Further, two directors told me they supported my recommendation, one
even telling me they were going to try and get me on the scholarship
committee. That was the last I ever heard of that. Even after it was
discussed and voted down by the BOD, no one reported back to me to
tell me the results of the discussion. I wonder how many BOD members
understand what their responsibilities are to their constituents. As
my representatives, I don't expect my board members to automatically
agree with me, but I do feel they're responsible to report back to me
with the results of a BOD decision about an issue I raised.
But the scholarship issue is only the tip of the iceberg. I don't
really know any board members personally, and have only met a few of
them. Most of them are people with recognizable names because of their
involvement with CORSA over the years. I'm sure most of them are nice
people too. But that doesn't mean they have the ability to make good
decisions regarding issues that come before them when they sit in a
board meeting. If the way this scholarship issue was handled is any
indication of the kind of decisions the board makes then I have no
confidence that they can make good decisions with the other issues
that come before them and solve the financial problems that CORSA has.
I will write another post and comment on Tim's original question.
Because of my friend Chuck Armer's suggestion, I am airing my views on
this here instead of in VirtualVairs. I agree with Chuck that's it's
not necessary to put all of this out to the general membership as well
as potential CORSA members, at least not at this time.
So, am I going to drop out of CORSA because of this? Am I going to
boycott CORSA and urge my club to not donate money to CORSA like we do
most years? Am I going to change my position that anyone interested in
organized Corvairing should join CORSA? Not at all. I firmly believe
that there is some waste in every system (How many of you have seen
letters-to-the editors in your papers from disgruntled taxpayers
saying they will not vote for a tax increase for the local schools
because someone in the school system is wasting some money? So, they
propose punishing the whole system.) I simply want to identify this
waste to those on this list with the hopes that the situation will
someday be corrected. I think you leave yourself open to criticism
when you allow this kind of waste and then come to your members and
tell them about being in such bad financial shape.
Sincerely,
Bruce
Bruce W. Schug
Treasurer, CORSA South Carolina
Greenville, SC
Stock Corvair Group
Performance Corvair Group
bwschug at charter.net
CORSA member since 1980
'67 Monza. "67AC140"
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