NOTICE OF MOTION - MEMBERSHIP FEES

Notice is hereby given that the following motion will be put at the March General Meeting:

“That Annual Fees for Membership of the Gold Coast Bushwalker’s Club Inc. be raised to $35 per person, commencing with fees due and payable on 1st April 2022.”

Three years or more ago, Club annual fees were $35 per annum. Club reserves were healthy and increasing every year. Club insurance was renegotiated, and the Club magazine went digital resulting in decreased costs. It was therefore proposed and passed that Membership fees reduce to $30 per annum at which level they have remained. It was the right decision at the time.

The Club’s financial position remains healthy, but no-one could have foreseen Covid with its resultant cancellation of the Gold Coast Marathon two years straight as well as the loss of other funds from activities that raised funds indirectly for the Club, such as Kokoda. Interest on our term deposit is virtually nonexistent. Money does not go as far today as it did three years ago. So, our income in real terms, despite increasing membership, is retreating.

At the same time insurance costs are again rising each year and are expected to rise faster as the world emerges from Covid. Going on numbers when insurance was last paid, at least 33% of your Membership fee went on insurance. The cost of room hire for meetings rises every year and we are all familiar with the recent and ongoing sharp increase in the cost of food which will affect the Xmas party bottom line next year. Going on last year’s numbers, the Xmas party accounted for 25% of your Membership fees. First aid training is a cost to which the Club contributes but looking to the future we need to have more Members attend these courses than are currently doing so and to achieve this we may need to subsidise the costs to a greater extent. In general costs are going up and this year inflationary pressures are expected to accelerate that.

The Committee has a responsibility to all Members to look after the finances in a responsible manner. We could let our resources slowly wind down until a time in the future when fees would suddenly have to take a huge jump, no doubt with a resultant loss of membership, or we can go back to what we were paying 3 years ago and keep the Club on an even keel, neither making a loss or a profit. Current membership stands at 349. If everyone renews their membership, the extra $5 per person will bring the Club an additional $1750, a small amount in anyone’s terms but sufficient to maintain the current healthy state of the Club for a number of years to come. I might mention that one expense coming up in the near future is the replacement of the Club computer.

No doubt some will begrudge the Club for having just under $11,000.00 in a term deposit and think that we should use that rather than raising fees. This money is not “profit.” It should be considered a reserve pool for unexpected and as yet unknown contingencies. For example, we rely heavily on Jeff Crane to set up and run the Club webpage as well as FOF, and many younger members have been agitating for digital sign ons. Jeff has done a lot of research on this in his own time. The best solution would have been to set up a modern website and adopted a system similar to the Brisbane Bushwalkers Club but even with our term deposit this would have been beyond our Club’s means. Setting it up would have drained a high proportion of the term deposit and there would have been considerable ongoing fees. So Jeff has been researching and trialing other avenues, most of which have some technical and security concerns, and if we are looking for this Club to be successful long term, eventually the digital part of the Club may be the biggest expense that the Club has and we will need every cent that we have in the term deposit and more.

Overall, there is a pattern of the Club’s financial position decreasing year upon year. In the past, members built up a healthy reserve and we should not fritter that away on the day to day running of the Club. That should be covered by current fees and that is why the motion to increase fees is being put.