On behalf of the District Leadership and Finance Committee, I am submitting the proposed 2022-2023 District Budget to all of our District members for comment and review prior to the Annual Meeting on May 12th.
The last two year's budgets were dramatically shaped by COVID. In both years, we rebated unused funds back to our clubs because the budgets were predicated on face-to-face events. This year we are predicting a return to normalcy. Our biggest challenge with this is the impact COVID has had on membership. While we have some clubs doing very well-even gaining members-many clubs have been impacted by the challenges of the last two years.
Membership drives the funding for the District Budget. We were already confronting membership related budget issues prior to COVID. Over the last five years we have significantly trimmed the District Budget and driven a more accurate projected budget. Since the 2017-2018 Rotary year, the membership projection (and corresponding actual membership) has dropped from 2,050 to 1,800. Each drop of 50 members is a decrease of $1,750 in collected dues, so the drop in membership from 2,050 to 1,800 equates to a drop in District revenues of approximately $8,750 since 2017-2018 at the $35 per member per year dues amount.
This was recognized in at the 2019-2020 annual meeting when a motion was raised and passed to raise the District dues by $1 per year from the then current $35/member amount for three years until the dues reached $38. We did not implement the approved increase in the last two budget years due to COVID, as it was apparent that the reduction in face-to-face events were going to dramatically curtail expenses. The return to face-to-face events this year combined with membership trends forces us to consider catching the dues increase up to what was originally planned for the 2022-2023 year: up to $38 per member.
The attached Proposed 2022-2023 Budget V2 shows the budget we are proposing based on the $38 per member dues amount. That budget is projected to be $950 in the red based on a total budget of $82,750. The spreadsheet is unlocked, so I would encourage anyone to experiment with both the number of members and the dues amount to see the impact of these two items on the budget. Basically, an increase of 50 members offsets roughly $1 per member per year in dues.
[Note: the attached budget documents are posted on the left side of this page.]
Based on the $38 per member dues, we do believe that the budget will actually be in the black based on how several budget items play out:
- We do not believe that the entire $7,000 in seed funding normally provided to Youth Exchange will be needed this year, as there are significant funds currently held in their accounts and there will only be 3 students going outbound this year as part of restarting the program that was placed in hiatus during COVID. This is an ongoing point of discussion relative to the budget. That $7,000 reduces the contribution that student's families must make to fund their Youth Exchange experience...but if District membership continues to decline, at some point we'll have to ask the question which comes first: seed funding for the Youth Exchange students or our member's pocketbooks. That is not an easy discussion as Youth Exchange has a significant impact not just on out students, but on the club's and communities they are connected to.
- Committee budgets to this point have been rarely fully expended.
- There is a little bit of slack in some budget items that represents a potential reserve of $500-$1,500.
We are, however, not planning on these savings from a conservative budgeting point of view. We are assuming a budget based on the assumptions shown in the attached spreadsheet. We do still have one potential negative impact on the budget....if membership on July 1 is less than 1,800, that will reduce the dues revenue we will collect.
To allow our annual meeting to be as productive as possible, we ask you to review the attached proposed District budget (in both Excel and PDF format) and provide comments or questions back to us as part of an open comment period. All of the adjusted budget items are highlighted in red (for increases in expenses or reductions in revenues) and green (for increases in revenue or reductions in expenses) and have an associated note explaining the change.
The open comment period will run until May 5th, at which time we will close the dialog in preparation for the annual meeting on May 12th.
Please send any comments on the proposed budget to
budget@rotarydistrict5650.org. This address automatically distributes email to the members of the District Leadership team.
We will be sharing any comments back to the district every few weeks to make sure this process is transparent. The comments will be shared anonymously, unless the author of the comment wishes to be known. These comments—along with related feedback from the Leadership team—will be posted on the District Website. Because of this process, we will be changing how the budget is presented in the Annual meeting. We will not do a detailed line by line review, but use summary information and the results of the open comment process. This will allow us to cover the budget in 10-15 minutes instead of 45-60 minutes....unless there is a need for additional discussion within the meeting.
As a reminder, everyone is welcome to attend the Annual meeting, but the vote on items on the agenda are done by Electors. Clubs are granted one elector for every 25 members the club has. No club has less than one Elector and the number of Electors is rounded up or down to the nearest increment of members that is divisible by 25, per our District Bylaws. For example a club with 37 members is granted one Elector and a club with 38 members is granted two Electors.
Your Electors will represent you and your club’s vote on this important item at the Annual Meeting.