Have Pride (cause we might not for much longer)
As most people in the GLBT community in Perth would know, Pride (our equivilant of Sydney's Mardi Gras) is in serious financial trouble. The much publicised special general meeting was held last night to try to come up with some way forward and it was something of an interesting experience. Although there were a few flare ups, it was general civil and there wasn't much in the way of laying blame. There was quite a bit of discussion about where we go from here.
In effect, Pride has a very large amount of money that it owes and is having trouble paying because a number of events have made a huge loss and the events that have made a profit are nowhere near enough to cover that. I'll use bullet points to sum up the situation:
So what are the options at this point? Well, there seems to be not much that can be done. Winding up the organisation seems to be the most obvious way out of this situation. There was a few suggestions of running events to try to raise funds, but this runs into a problem. It costs money to run these events and that's something Pride doesn't have. On top of that, low attendance at the events that are supposed to raise money is one reason this situation has occured. Also, a failure to get money out of people who are attending. Fairday stands as the obvious example here. The number of people through the gates at Fairday is huge, but once they're passed the gold coin donation, the only way Pride gets funds out of them is if they go and drink at the bar. All up, it seems to be a case of closing the doors and doing our best to save Fairday and the Parade. No one seemed to have any interest in saving Party and several people were suggesting that even if Pride itself survives, the Party should not.
So the next meeting will be sixty days with a motion to wind up the organisation. In the absence of a sudden injection of cash it will probably pass. It's sad to see, but in the end this has been coming for a while and there's just no other way out.
In effect, Pride has a very large amount of money that it owes and is having trouble paying because a number of events have made a huge loss and the events that have made a profit are nowhere near enough to cover that. I'll use bullet points to sum up the situation:
- Fairday was very expensive this year. This seems to have mostly been a result of changes in the liquor laws. Because of that it became much more expensive to run the bar, needing more security, fencing etc. So in previous years the bar contributed a lot of money to offset the cost, this year it cost far more than it made.
- The Party was a huge loss. Attendance for the Party has been going down for a while now and an attempt to revitalise it was made, but in doing so the cost of it went up as well. Attendance didn't rise at all, so this resulted in a substantial loss as well.
- The Women's Sundowner is the most profitable event. This just blew my mind. My impression of the Sundowner was that they were a small, low key event run on a regular basis. However, they are far and away the most profitable fundraising event, making almost three times anything else over the course of the year.
- Sponsership only covers stuff here and there. Don't get me wrong, sponsership is stopping things getting even further in the red, but it would take a huge sponser to cover this and sponsers are generally only interested in sponsering particular events. That means those events will break even, but doesn't really help other events unless the 'break even' can be turned into a profit instead.
- Membership keeps declining. It's about a third of what it was just a few years ago. As the numbers have gone down, so has the base of people prepared to volunteer to be on the commitee and to run things. Most of the people on the commitee have good intentions and have stood up when no one else would, but don't really know what they're doing.
- There's no institutional memory. Some of these mistakes have happened in the past, but they keep getting repeated.
So what are the options at this point? Well, there seems to be not much that can be done. Winding up the organisation seems to be the most obvious way out of this situation. There was a few suggestions of running events to try to raise funds, but this runs into a problem. It costs money to run these events and that's something Pride doesn't have. On top of that, low attendance at the events that are supposed to raise money is one reason this situation has occured. Also, a failure to get money out of people who are attending. Fairday stands as the obvious example here. The number of people through the gates at Fairday is huge, but once they're passed the gold coin donation, the only way Pride gets funds out of them is if they go and drink at the bar. All up, it seems to be a case of closing the doors and doing our best to save Fairday and the Parade. No one seemed to have any interest in saving Party and several people were suggesting that even if Pride itself survives, the Party should not.
So the next meeting will be sixty days with a motion to wind up the organisation. In the absence of a sudden injection of cash it will probably pass. It's sad to see, but in the end this has been coming for a while and there's just no other way out.