Financial Position Of The BGA

British Go Journal No. 55. March 1982. Page 14a.

P.T. Manning, Hon President, BGA

A letter from the President

Faced with a small surplus in 1981, the reader may look somewhat askance at the proposal to be put to the AGM by the Committee that subscriptions for 1983 should double. This article explains the Committees reasoning.

Broadly speaking, the BGAs income comes from four sources: Subscriptions (55%), surplus on sales (35%), interest (5%), and tournament levies (5%). This was balanced, in 1981, by expenditure on the Journal (60%), other printing costs (15%), surplus on the year (10%), and a number of small items.

The Committee has already. adopted two measures which will increase expenditure in 1982. These are the production of a bimonthly newsletter, and an improvement in the quality of the journal. These items alone would have wiped out our surplus in 1981.

In addition our income in 1981 included a large contribution from the sale of magnetic sets, purchased at a bargain price and sold at 100% profit margin (still cheap at £5) instead of our usual 20 or 30%, and this exceptional item may not be repeated.

In the past, the BGA Committee has had a financial policy of making a small surplus each year. This may be an adequate policy in a non-inflationary world, but the Associations assets (about £4000) are being whittled away, and we ought to aim at a surplus of around £400 just to maintain their real value.

The Committee would like to expand services in two areas: The production of a handbook, containing advice on how to run clubs, ladders, tournaments etc,; and an improvement in our publicity material. Our experience of running stalls at events such as games day has identified several deficiencies in this area. Both of these will cost more money.

These factors together imply a doubling of subscriptions, roughly one third of the extra money going towards improved services, one third towards maintaining the real value of our assets, one sixth towards publicity improvement Is, and the remaining sixth covering the effects of inflation on our running costs.