Local Fund Raising
One of the reasons why I get so irritated with discussing local dues is often those who discuss membership local dues seem to be acting as if it were the cure-all for all the local financial issues that ail us. And from a local body leadership position there is something seductive about being able to say that once you establish a "reasonable" local dues system (with "reasonable" defined in some vague, hand-wavey sort of way), then all of the local body financial problems will go away.

Hell, there are even those who suggest that if we could just institute the right local dues system, we would be able to buy a space rather than just rent a space.

If wishes were fishes...

The topic local dues is essentially one dimension of a larger topic of local fund raising, which itself is simply the means by which a local body obtains the resources in order to do what it sets out to do. Local dues is not an ends in and of itself--but a means to an ends.

So on the topic of raising funds for local body activities, there are several questions that come up in my mind--questions which seem not to have been asked, much less addressed, in forums such as this one.

(1) To what purpose is the dues being collected?

Yes, it's easy to answer this with boiler-plate stock answers: "to do the mass, to perform initiations, to establish local body stability and to establish a presence" But the answer that you should be searching for should have more depth than just a boiler-plate stock answer. After all, the answer given above could be done in someone's home without the tens of thousands a year commitment a space entails. And suggesting "to establish a presence outside of someone's home" could be responded with "why?"

In short, neither of these are, in and of themselves, compelling. And unfortunately those who seem to be pushing for a local space have dwelled exclusively upon the negative: "what if the local body master moves?" "Garages are smelly and filthy." "It's unprofessional."

So come up with a compelling positive answer that goes beyond the stock "because." The reason why is not just so you can answer it here or so you can justify yourself to a mentor--but because when you go hat in hand asking for money from your various sources, you need to give them a compelling reason why they should give you the money rather than spend the money on themselves.

(2) How much do you need to collect?

This becomes a very tricky question, in no small part because of the conflict between the resources we have, and the things we want to do. Only someone who is extremely wealthy (and none of us here are in that league) can essentially do anything without worrying about resources. And those who do have the resources have them because--well, because they or their parents worried more than most about how they were spending and investing their money.

Often I've seen rules of thumb here that we should be raising some percentage more than we need to cushon ourselves against a rainy day, or have so much in the bank. But the downside of that is that it means we are buying less with the money than we could--and while we are essentially trying to buy ourselves "security"--sometimes if that means buying less than we could if we explored all of our fundraising alternatives, it could cause our compelling story we're using to raise money look not quite so compelling--and ironically we could find ourselves having a harder time raising money next month.

To me, the answer "what should we collect" is in part driven by what we need--but we should (given the sources of funds we have) not restrict what we need to some arbitrary amount of what we think we can collect in some sort of "ideal" situation where we only exploit half of the fundraising sources we could exploit.

(3) What are your sources of funds?

There seems to be an underlying current in many discussions about local dues that we shouldn't explore all of our sources of revenue. However, that's insane: you should never leave money on the table, especially when you need money, out of some sort of misguided principle of "fairness" or "equitability."

Sure, you can raise money from local dues. It's an obvious source--and aside from the logistics of implementing a local dues collection system, it's an easy one (and certainly here a socially acceptable venue) to raise funds. But what other sources of funds do you have?

Heavy hitters: These are people who could easily give you a lot more than you're collecting from your average member if you have a local dues system in place. Handling them becomes different than handling your typical member--and this is where your compelling story in (1) comes in handy. You need to be comfortable approaching someone who has a lot of money and asking them to donate to you far more than you may make yourself. (And if you can't do it, find someone close to you who can.)

This becomes very socially awkward--but then, if you had a wonderful priest, would you be afraid to approach him to perform the mass? If you had a wonderful ritualist, would you avoid approaching her to do ritual? So why avoid people who could write you a check for perhaps a few hundred a month if they can afford it? You may not know anyone in the area that qualifies under this rubric--but if you do, you may find someone who can give you more than ten other members--and would you turn away the dues of 10 members?

Fundraisers: If done well, you can raise a lot of money--but you can also very quckly suffer from fundraising burnout. If a good fundraiser in your area could quickly raise $900, and your 'nut' is $1200, how many times can you do fundraisers to raise the money?

Fundraisers, in other words, are better for raising a lot of money quickly for a special project, such as raising money to buy initiation equipment or mass equipment. But as an on-going source of funds that well can go dry quickly.

Charging for classes/events, etc. Never underestimate the power of collecting a fiver here and a fiver there. While you may never raise the complete rent from classes and events, if consistently done you can raise several hundred a month if you have a regular weekly class program which draws in 10 people four times a month. That quickly becomes $200 a month--the dues of perhaps 8 members at $25/month--and chances are no-one will ever miss a fiver to attend a class or rite.

Note that I haven't even gotten into more exotic ways of raising money, such as setting up corporations or running businesses--though some local bodies have succeeded by essentially using extra office space that they have rented for their own business: essentially using their own local business to subsidize the local body.

(4) Have realistic expectations as to what you can raise.

I cannot stress this enough. If you are considering raising money through local dues, and you have 20 regular members who may be willing to pay $25 a month, you will not raise $1500/month in local dues. And if you live in a typical area, chances are you won't be able to say "our local dues is $1500/month divided by 20 members"--because while some may think paying $75/month is cheap, others may say "hey, wait a second; right now I can pay the bills, but that $75 blows my budget!" And others may say "hell, for $75/month, I'd rather do something else."

While on principle it may be nice to shoe non-supporters who aren't supporting the local body the way you like it out the door--the reality is that a local body of one isn't a hell of a lot of fun.

This is why, by the way, that it is important to have a realistic expectation as to what you can raise where. Otherwise, you'll just get disgruntled because you'll think the local body membership is just failing to meet what you think are "reasonable standards", when in reality your standards--perhaps reasonable to you--are outside the willingness of your local body to support.

And this is why, by the way, having a compelling (and non-negative!) story is important: it is easier to convince someone to give you money if you have a compelling and positive thing to say than "because we should" or "because garages suck."

(5) Find a few deep pockets and keep them in your back pocket.

Finally, the reality is that no matter how well oiled your fund-raising machine is, something unexpected and out of your control will happen which throws everything for a loop. A couple has a flaming breakup, causing a half dozen members to unexpectedly resign in protest. Someone drops or accidently breaks a vital piece of mass equipment. The airconditioner gets overused by an overzealous member causing a sudden $300 electric bill to come in.

And in those cases, all the best laid plans and the "should dos" and "will dos" go out the window: you need $300 and you have $0 in the bank.

This is when it's good to have a few people around from whom you can ask for $300 to close an unexpected gap.


I will say that from my perspective the reason why local dues was never all that important was because it was just one dimension of several--and one of the most logistically difficult to fulfill. Local dues involves collecting small amounts of money from large numbers of people--and thus requires a dedicated treasurer or fundraiser who can track everyone down each month and collect from them, or else it requires some technical saavy with PayPal or other collection and data tracking policies in order to track membership information. And an over-reliance upon local dues--or worse, an ill conceived notion as to what you can raise from the majority of your membership to the exclusion of other potential sources of revenue--means you may be leaving money on the table that could otherwise be relatively easy to collect.