Re: AGA2K3 $ Info

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

You're right, Kathy, and certainly this needs to be
addressed in the Bid Doc. How?

This was a thorny issue that came up during the convention
preparation period. I'll try to present the issue without
taking any sides. That should be easy since I have so much
ambivalence onthis issue, I think I have a dotted line
running down the middle of my body.

AG2K3 was s separate entity from AGA, for convention
purposes, and was responsible for it's own bottom line.
Although the host club was not at financial risk of of loss
under the agreement with AGA, it did not receive any
funding from AGA and was under pressure to be solvent
without any AGA fiancial support. In fact, AGA2K3 staff put
up the initial outlays until AGA2K3 revenues were adequate
to cover expenses as they arose. As such, AGA2K3 believed
that it should not be donating any of it's items to AGA, or
any other organization or activity -- each was on it's own
financial path. I.e., the Aquascaping contest was seen as
an AGA activity separate from AGA2K3.  The only connection,
and it was incidental and not financial, was that the
winners were announced at the Convention Banquet.

However, I think the AGA2K3 staff responsible for
soliciting donations for AG2K3 was/were also resposnible
for soliciting donations for the AGA Aquascaping Contest --
not sure about this. But, I'm pretty sure that that staff
did not distinguish between AGA2K3 and the AGA Aquascaping
Contest -- most people don't; it's all AGA to them.
Therefore, no donations were requested specifically for the
Contest and AGA2K3 did not allocate any to the Contest.
Although I was not involved in this part of preparations, I
was under the impression that this situation was understood
on both sides. My impression proved untrue.

As Kathy points out, there is an inherent problem with this
separate entity approach as far as donations are concerned.
Consider, can a person  ask for donations for the AGA2K3
Convention and then ask for more donations for the AGA
Contest? To a sponsor this would surely seem like double
dipping.

Otoh, if an AGA2K3 person requests donations for AGA2K3 and
then an person representing AGA but not AGA2K3 separately
comes in and asks for donations for the AGA Contest, again
it will seem like double dipping, no?

It's doubtful that vendors will distinguish the Convention
and the Contest as two separate entities, especially since
both are, at bottom, under the auspices of AGA.

How to resolve this for 2003, given that donations have
already been processed? I can see three ways:

1) AGA insist that AGA2K3 give up a portion of the AGA2K3
revenues to subsidize the Contest, thereby providing funds
for purchasing Contest prizes and reducing the AGA2K3 
net revenue accordingly.

2) Treat the contest as a separate activity of AGA and AGA
comes up with prizes on it's own.

3) Give no prizes.

How to resolve this for future convnetions and contest?

1) Have the contest be an integral part of the convention
with the convention host explicitly reponsible for aquiring
and providing prizes for the Contest. With this situation,
I can imagine the host team wanting some say in the Contest
operations (selection of judges, categories, who knows).
But that could all be negotiated up front.

2) Maintain a strict financial separation between the
convention and the contest, and AGA comes up with prizes
independently from the convention.

sh

--- Kathy Olson <
kathy@thekrib.com> wrote:
 
> . . .On another note, wasn't sure if this was included 
> and
> that is that the 
> donations for the AGA were suppose to have included the
> prizes for the 
> aquascaping contest.  Erik may have already addressed
> this, or it may be 
> in your document (I can't pull up attachements) but I
> wanted to make sure 
> that it wasn't missed for future conventions.  Usually
> not many donations 
> are pulled for the contest.  Manufacturers usually will
> only donate once 
> for both things, at least from our experience in the
> past.
> 
> Just a heads up.

> 


=====
S. Hieber

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