Re: [AGA-mcm] ACA Spy Report, lessons to learn #126, "purpose of the convention"

["S. Hieber" <shieber@yahoo.com>]

I don't think out-of-auction selling has been a big issue
for AGA. I don't think there are many folks selling stuff
out of their rooms or in the hallways, etc. I think what is
more likely is swapping/giving plants throughout the year
has a bigger impact on how much people want to buy at the
convention. And I wouldn't want to change that for leaf nor
money.

RE convention purposes -- I'll toss out a couple of points.
We went into AGA2K4 knowing that we might do no better than
break even and I think we are all willing to do conventions
that way. Whether it's the preferred thing right now is
something I'll say a bit more about in a second -- but
we're willing to do conventions as no-significant-loss
undertaings. The bones I've been picking are the ones that
point to revenue we didn't get, not because the convention
wasn't *supposed* to make money but merely because of
avoidable poor (no pun intended) practices -- weak
accounting, sloppy cash management, uninspired marketing,
inattention to detail, we all know the list. Why I'm still
whipping this poor dead, don't know -- there's a diff
between lessons learned and just not getting over it and I
probably am still lost between the two :-\

RE convention revs -- and I don't know if this is relevant
to anything but when did irrelevance ever stop me: That the
ACA gives (or at least administers) grants, undoubtedly
greatly improves their appearance to the IRS as a (c)3
organization. So in some sense they must be much better off
financially, even if it doesn't show in a cash account or
convention net revenues. Anyway, I hope someday we can give
grants.

Back closer to point, a well run non-prof, imo, out to run
with just enough capital to ensure the desired operations.
If we only want to do what we are doing, then we are
probably close to achieving that.

However, if we want to increase the size of TAG, I think we
need higher average annual membership, which is difficult
to achieve, or more convention revs, which is also
difficult to achieve, or given that those are difficult, a
combination of both. The need is yet greater if also we
entertain notions to expand operations beyond those two. 

(I'm not forgetting that AGA has other operations,
Bookstore, list, website contest. But those are much
smaller in term of financial impact than the other two.)

sh

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