<CORSA Chapters> Membership question -- 100% vs Not

[Dennis Pleau]

I agree with Bruce on all of this.  

A big difference between a chapter and CORSA is costs.  A good portion of
the cost of running the chapters I've been involved in is printing and
mailing of the newsletter.  The production and editing of most if not all
chapters is done by a volunteer.  So if the membership drops by 40% the
expenses also drop by 40%.  Losing members shouldn't bankrupt a local
chapter.  We pay M&P to produce the Communique, so the production cost
remain the same and we only get lower cost on the printing and mailing.

I was in one of those big money chapters.  We went from under $1,000 to
about $8,000 by putting on a International Convention.  The money has
dwindled down over the last 13 years to around $3,000 (I'm not a member now,
so I don't pay a lot of attention to their finances, but I get the
newsletter off the web).  I know the first thing we did was to exempt anyone
who worked on the convention from paying dues for a year.  

I think most if not all the big money chapters, are big money chapters
because they put on a convention.  I hope they are not wealthy from member
dues.  When a club puts on a Convention, they split the profits 50 50 with
CORSA, but if they take a loss CORSA eats all the loss.  The chapters put a
lot of volunteer work into a convention, CORSA pays M&P for their work on a
convention, although on the 1996 convention they went way beyond what the
contract required so I can say they put in a lot of volunteer hours also.
The chapters who put on the convention can chose to give some of their 50%
to CORSA and some have, but it's part of the deal up front.

I was asked to jump in and be the local Concours chair at the Lake Tahoe
convention when the original Concours chair had a stroke a few months before
the convention.  I gathered people from Corvairs of New Mexico, my chapter
at the time and we ran with it.  CNM didn't ask or expect any of the
profits, we were just there to make it a successful convention.  I did over
sleep the morning of the Concours, get over it was 10 years ago!<ggg>

dp