Seeking co-sponsors: 2026 Convention Budget

[AaronRamos]

@Joe Burnes from my understanding you're okay with the total budget but want to reword the motion? Do you have a substitute wording?

 

[Billy Pierce]

I wish I was more clear on how ticket sales and sponsorship income will be handled in this process. There's still enough ambiguity in there to make me uneasy. Can someone confirm for me that convention ticket sales revenue goes straight into the Convention Fund? What about sponsorship revenue?

 

[Joe Burnes]

SLEC gets reports of how much we get in ticket sales, sponsorships and everything else after convention. He asked if we should wait to hold off on spending decisions until we have that information. We get that information after convention.

Just because you misunderstood what I was saying, doesn't mean it was inaccurate. And that is the last personal attack from you that I'm going to acknowledge.

While SLEC gets the FINAL report after convention, that in no way means they are blind until that point and have no way of evaluating where we are as it relates to income and expenses. I've made it clear that I have an open door policy when it comes to our financial data. Beyond that, if we start bringing in income and spending money this quarter, the body will receive Q3 financials that will show where the convention stands. They will also receive Q4 financials showing convention finances. There will be plenty of time to evaluate the performance of the convention as it relates to its income and expenses prior to us spending down the 70k currently in the account. So even if you were only talking about the financial reporting, the statement was still inaccurate.

I found your statements to be inaccurate on their face. It is your choice to see that as a personal attack, but I assure you it was not. Facts, when presented inaccurately, can be misleading. Only the person presenting them knows if they were doing so on purpose or accidentally. As I said, this body deserves objective facts, especially when it relates to financial matters. If I feel like those facts are being misstated or misrepresented, by either you or anyone else, I will speak up and clarify.

Fwiw, "That comes after convention" is a statement that chose to use a pronoun "that", leaving it up to the reader to determine what you meant and since Mike's statement you were replying to was about seeing where we were on income before authorizing further expense, I assumed you were speaking of income. You further clarified by stating "If we aren't raising funds for convention, which we currently aren't, then that is accurate". This clarification made it clear you weren't talking about the after convention report, but rather about actual income. But regardless of whether you were speaking about the report or actual income, the statement was inaccurate either way.

 

[Joe Burnes]

@Joe Burnes from my understanding you're okay with the total budget but want to reword the motion? Do you have a substitute wording?

I'm not even saying we need a new motion. If we get clarification here, as Treasurer, I'd be okay with this motion passing if that is what the body wants. My preference would be that we address the additional expense beyond what is in the Convention Fund Account at a time when and if the Convention Fund Account approaches zero. But, like I said, if we track as we did last convention, this won't become an issue so I'd be okay if this passes as it is, with some clarification in the comments.

As a voting member of this body, I would prefer the total expenses amount be adjusted for the AV line item change based on the availability of better pricing than what was projected in the report. But I also trust that no matter what amount we limit the total expenses too, everybody is going to do their best to be financially prudent and spend less than the amount authorized where possible.

 

[Joe Burnes]

I wish I was more clear on how ticket sales and sponsorship income will be handled in this process. There's still enough ambiguity in there to make me uneasy. Can someone confirm for me that convention ticket sales revenue goes straight into the Convention Fund? What about sponsorship revenue?

Last convention, ticket sales flowed into the General Fund initially and that eventually got changed to the ticket sales flowing directly into the Convention Fund. I do not remember specifically how the sponsorships were received and am not in front of my computer. @Austen Hoogen may have a better grasp on this as he was instrumental in ensuring that ticket sales / donations via our website flowed into the correct accounts.

What I can say is regardless of where the money initially entered our various bank accounts, transfers were made to ensure that monies ended up in the accounts they belonged in. All related AJEs in QuickBooks have detailed explanations such that any audit could confirm the accuracy of the account balances. Any member of this body wishing to see how that works can get with me and we can arrange a zoom meeting so you can see how the sausage is made.

 

[Jacob Bradley]

I wish I was more clear on how ticket sales and sponsorship income will be handled in this process. There's still enough ambiguity in there to make me uneasy. Can someone confirm for me that convention ticket sales revenue goes straight into the Convention Fund? What about sponsorship revenue?

Per the policy manual:
All proceeds from each State Convention must be deposited into this Convention Fund.

 

[Mike Coogan]

That comes after convention and the bills come due before convention. We need to start signing contracts now or the cost of the convention will only go up.

This is effectively asking us to *potentially* spend out of the general fund ~$1,000 per month from the general fund between now and convention.

As for getting funds coming in, the sooner we get a contract signed with @Kate Prather, the better because all waiting is doing is delaying fundraising opportunities.

We can spend out of Convention for anything we need to do now. We aren't going to spend all 81K now (or more correctly, if we are planning on that, something is horribly wrong...). So, why don't we hold on that decision? ~1K/month until convention presumes a lot. It's just math. Joe did a great job reporting on it, and he is right.

 

[Mike Coogan]

How was the number $81,827 arrived at? Is there an actual budget that you are working from even if you don't want to have a motion tie you directly to it? If so, may we see it? I am very interested to see income predictions (including projected ticket prices and sales) as well as expenditure line item totals budgeted. To be clear, this motion, as is, isn't approving a budget, it is approving only the "Total Expenses" amount in a budget and setting that as a cap. I don't have an issue with only setting the total expenses cap, I would just like to see the overall budget you guys are shooting for.

When you say that funds received from event sponsors are authorized "outside of this amount".... Are you meaning to say that all event sponsorship income received is also authorized to be expended and the total amount of event sponsorship income will be added to the approved expenditure amount of $81,827? Effectively making the total expenses budgeted for the convention to be $81,827 plus any and all event sponsorship income? And to be clear, that only the event sponsorship income actually received (not pledged or agreed to) is then authorized to be expended?

"Further, that the funds for expenditures shall be drawn first from the Convention Fund, and any remaining balance required shall be drawn from the General Fund."

Here, are you meaning to say that the Convention Fund shall be spent down to $0 first and any remaining expenditures owed up to the total above shall be "paid" from the general fund? Drawn implies taken but does not necessarily imply a transfer. It also indirectly implies "paid". I think I know what you mean here, but I want to be extremely clear about what this motion expects of the Treasurer.

For clarification to the body, convention expenditures rarely get spent directly from the Convention Fund. In fact, the only way that is possible is through ACH or wire. Where possible, we would pay those expenses via ACH directly from the Convention Fund. The credit / debit cards we have are tied to the General Fund only. So, the typical practice is to pay the expense from the General Fund and then transfer money into the General Fund from the Convention Fund to keep the balances in the respective funds accurate. Often times, my practice has been to make these transfers take place around a financial reporting date. Instead of cluttering up the bank statements as well as QuickBooks with a bunch of transfers, I can run a report showing me all of the expenses related to the convention that also shows me which account they were paid from. I can then take the necessary total and make the necessary transfer between accounts while creating an AJE (adjusting journal entry) in QuickBooks to account for it. Last convention, this even had to be done for income as our ticket income initially started out being deposited into the General Fund before the website could deposit it into the Convention Fund directly.

This process works similarly for all other Funds. The Legislative Action Fund has been able to pay the majority of its expenses via ACH, directly from the fund (Kevin gets paid and reimbursed via ACH as does Mrs. Hasket who is our HQ landlord). This is why a transfer of funds from the General was an easier solution to the possible problem of spending more money than an account has.

While this isn't a hill I remotely want to die on, I do not like planning via motion on draining an account. While it may seem efficient now, I find it to be financially irresponsible (albeit only slightly) on the part of the body as a whole. If I were not the treasurer and simply sitting on this body as district rep, I would want to know when we start having to pull money from the general fund because the convention fund is drained and I'd want to know exactly why we reached that point, before voting to approve being bailed out. If we were to get close to emptying an account, we could make a motion to solve that problem at that time, as we did with the LAF. Looking at last convention, though, I don't think that will be an issue as we started bringing in quite a bit of ticket income before any major expenditures. If we track similar to last convention, this won't be an issue and the clause in this motion won't have been necessary. If we don't track similarly to last convention, this will be an issue. And if this motion passes, this body won't even really be alerted to the fact that it is happening unless the bookkeeper or treasurer informs the body.

This, all of this.

 

[Mike Coogan]

The moment we start selling tickets, it will prove your statement inaccurate. You stated "that comes after convention". Feel free to show me one convention in our past where we spent our budget of expenses prior to receiving income. Your statement is inaccurate on its face and completely unnecessary.


Yes, your description was breaking down the expense over time, something that does not happen. Which is exactly why it was highly inaccurate. It was misleading. This body deserves the facts.

I am not particularly opposed to using General to smooth over cash flow issues, but to Joe's points, we don't seem to have a solid idea of inflows/outflows. Several statements are subject to interpretation (right or wrong) and others are simply inaccurate (like we don't know what income we have until after convention). All I am suggesting is authorize the total amount in Convention, and come back with another request if/when we have any cash flow issues, which are unlikely. It would be unreasonable to expect 0 tickets sold and 0 sponsorships. We just don't know how many. And it will likely work out as we onboard @Kate Prather to fix other issues. I have total confidence in her.

 

[Anastasia Wilford]

We can spend out of Convention for anything we need to do now. We aren't going to spend all 81K now (or more correctly, if we are planning on that, something is horribly wrong...). So, why don't we hold on that decision? ~1K/month until convention presumes a lot. It's just math. Joe did a great job reporting on it, and he is right.

The convention committee needs authorization to start spending anything, so the way it looks to me is that they're trying to get authorization for the full amount that they expect to spend. I'm not of the opinion that we need to micromanage every transaction when they've already laid out for us what they expect various different items to cost.

 

[RJ Pase]

If I were not the treasurer and simply sitting on this body as district rep, I would want to know when we start having to pull money from the general fund because the convention fund is drained and I'd want to know exactly why we reached that point, before voting to approve being bailed out.

I’m not on the committee so I can’t speak on their behalf but for the ones I know on the committee they would be upfront and transparent. I expect them to notify the body of when major expenses were drawn out and/or we reaching the convention fund’s 0 balance.

 

[Mike Coogan]

I'm not even saying we need a new motion. If we get clarification here, as Treasurer, I'd be okay with this motion passing if that is what the body wants. My preference would be that we address the additional expense beyond what is in the Convention Fund Account at a time when and if the Convention Fund Account approaches zero. But, like I said, if we track as we did last convention, this won't become an issue so I'd be okay if this passes as it is, with some clarification in the comments.

As a voting member of this body, I would prefer the total expenses amount be adjusted for the AV line item change based on the availability of better pricing than what was projected in the report. But I also trust that no matter what amount we limit the total expenses too, everybody is going to do their best to be financially prudent and spend less than the amount authorized where possible.

@Joe Burnes captured my concern perfectly (far better than I did) with "My preference would be that we address the additional expense beyond what is in the Convention Fund Account at a time when and if the Convention Fund Account approaches zero."

That is the core of my vote. And to his further point, it is unlikely we will get there based on common sales and subsequently accounting practices that are common with any business.

Nothing more, nothing less.

 

[Kate Prather]

Last convention, ticket sales flowed into the General Fund initially and that eventually got changed to the ticket sales flowing directly into the Convention Fund. I do not remember specifically how the sponsorships were received and am not in front of my computer. @Austen Hoogen may have a better grasp on this as he was instrumental in ensuring that ticket sales / donations via our website flowed into the correct accounts.

What I can say is regardless of where the money initially entered our various bank accounts, transfers were made to ensure that monies ended up in the accounts they belonged in. All related AJEs in QuickBooks have detailed explanations such that any audit could confirm the accuracy of the account balances. Any member of this body wishing to see how that works can get with me and we can arrange a zoom meeting so you can see how the sausage is made.

To clarify how we've done it in the past. The way our payment processing system was set up EVERYTHING went into the general ACCOUNT. Separate tracking was done, as it should always be, to know how much of what got brought in by Convention should go to the convention account. In the past ALL ticket sales, sponsors, and gala fundraising was always going back to convention fund. DAPR, Lifetime, and directed donations were kept either in general fund OR transferred to their appropriate account.

I assume this will be done again as it has been done the last 3 terms I was involved in the Convention finances.

 

[Kate Prather]

I'd also like to point out, not many people in this body KNOWS what all goes into planning a convention. It is so much more involved than people assume. Now that we have a location we can start studying menu costs, compare a/v costs, decoration costs, and speaker/entertainment costs, credit card processing fees; just as a base, then calculate service fees, gratuity and taxes. ALL of that and then some goes into figuring ticket, exhibit, and sponsor prices. We hope to have that figured out no later than October, and hope to launch early bird sales 1st of November- the end of the year. Then prices go up slightly closing up to convention.
Keep in mind since we CANNOT charge our delegates to attend business, but we are still subject to venue costs through f&b, ticket sales and sponsorships must cover all base costs associated with the convention.
If any of you find this time frame to be too late I encourage you to volunteer to assist the committee in exploring speaker options, finding sponsors, and helping with entertainment. We are all available to take suggestions and keep you informed on our progress. We don't want anyone on this body to feel they don't have access.
Please create excitement for this convention so we can be successful. Encourage attendance. Let's make this the event that puts us back where we should be!

 

[Susan Barney]

When you say that funds received from event sponsors are authorized "outside of this amount".... Are you meaning to say that all event sponsorship income received is also authorized to be expended and the total amount of event sponsorship income will be added to the approved expenditure amount of $81,827? Effectively making the total expenses budgeted for the convention to be $81,827 plus any and all event sponsorship income? And to be clear, that only the event sponsorship income actually received (not pledged or agreed to) is then authorized to be expended?

The wording on the motion here is also unclear to me. Do we spend all event sponsorship before moving to General Fund, is that the expectation. Are we automatically authorizing the spending of sponsorship income even when it exceeds the voted on total budget or do we need to revisit that to approve spending above the $81,827?

 

[RJ Pase]

Added thought- we could pass this motion so they can not have their hands tied and should we need to present a new motion to make any adjustments we could easily do this. These aren’t strangers spending this money we voted these people to the committee. Let them get to work!

 

[Kate Prather]

The wording on the motion here is also unclear to me. Do we spend all event sponsorship before moving to General Fund, is that the expectation. Are we automatically authorizing the spending of sponsorship income even when it exceeds the voted on total budget or do we need to revisit that to approve spending above the $81,827?

Yes. That is the intent. If a vetted sponsor wants to give us $80k for the whole of convention then we spend that first, then convention fund, then general. But sponsors are typically covering specific costs associated with their sponsorship. Therefore the additional funds are directed and does not effect the budget. The sponsor authorizes those funds to be used by the party for the use on convention not slec.

 

[Jessi Cowart]

After the extended conversation we had about A/V costs and the $30k of additional costs (which applied to every venue), I am disappointed that the committee came back with the exact same number for authorization as was in their convention report.

I expected that the conversation would have prompted more due diligence in those areas prior to approaching this body with an expense authorization. That was precisely why I requested the the motion at the meeting be clear that it was just selecting the venue, not the expense authorization.

I cannot support this motion, given that we have done little to no fundraising this term (beyond our targeted legislative efforts).

 

[Jessi Cowart]

Also, don’t like that sponsorships aren’t included in the authorized amount. Unless we magically get a sponsor who wants to drop upwards of 10k just on the convention (which is unlikely), sponsorships should OFFSET costs (and increase revenue), not justify additional spending.

 

[Billy Pierce]

Why does the authorization for expenditure include the $25,000 in F&B Minimum? Is that amount due upfront? Or is it a case of the hotel confirming that the F&B minimum was met (at the end of the convention) or else the difference is then due?

***Please read this as a question, not an accusation. This question is not rhetorical, and I do not already know the answer.