[Rfu-station] Tough Financial News, Inspiration for Fundraising

[Mike Lehman]

I don't believe that I've seen a post with the minutes from last 
Tuesday's meeting yet. That is probably a good thing, as I thought I'd 
been pessimistic enough about the adjustments that would be made to the 
RFU account to reflect the capitalized cost of the equipment adjustment 
made by the auditor. So everyone who was at the meeting, please consider 
what I have to say is not going to be particularly good news. Those who 
weren't there will not have to deal with the small bit of optimism, but 
can like we all should, start thinking about what we need to do to start 
doing some very much needed fundraising.

That said, before I go into details, let me give some background. When 
we set up RFU,. we decided that the RFU membership fees should cover the 
basic station expenses. We would only do fundraising for specific 
equipment needs in order to avoid the need to do regular fund drives on 
the air. We did raise the RFU membership from $10/year to $20/year at 
the beginning of 2007, in hopes that this would relieve some of the 
financial pressures we knew were coming and maybe have some left over to 
finance the streaming expenses.

Your RFU membership expires at the end of one year since you last paid 
it. If anyone needs to know when that is individually, please let me 
know. I will be able to tell you the last time you paid. That way you 
will know that it's time to give us your $20 for the next year's 
membership. We have not actually requested formally that people renew, 
because we haven't been organized enough to do so. However, what I will 
tell you below will show you just how vital it is that we get everyone 
to renew ASAP -- and maybe give a little extra if you are able.

Our main issue at this point is that our auditor made a decision that 
equipment purchased to start the station should be capitalized. I won't 
even try here to explain what that means, other than that it reflects a 
legitimate need to show those items as an asset on the books and to 
write off a small part of that asset every year as it got older. The 
problem came in how this adjustment was made. Instead of deducting the 
funds to cover this cost from the RFU account, it was deducted from the 
IMC general fund. This made it seem like those funds were still in the 
RFU account, when in fact they should've been transferred to cover those 
costs instead of having the IMC as a whole pay for them.

The items involved include our transmitter, antenna, audio processor, 
cavity filter, and EAS box. The other night I estimated that to be 
around $5000 when I spoke at the meeting. However, I underestimated what 
these had cost. In fact, this charge comes to $10,202. Ouch!

So here's the rundown on approximately what is in our account. After 
subtracting this charge, we have only $4074.60 in the RFU account. That 
total includes $1633.33 that is dedicated to buying audio production 
equipment, such as an audio production workstation and portable audio 
recording gear, which was transferred to us from the old IMC Radio 
group. So the total that is actually in the RFU account and is available 
for general station expenses and equipment purchases (other than the old 
IMC Radio group dedicated funds) is just $2441.27.

We did identify some cases in which funds paid to cover both IMC and RFU 
membership were instead credited entirely to the IMC account. Those will 
be corrected, but I expect those adjustments to add no more than $500 to 
the RFU account. So once those are made, we're still in pretty bad shape.

The total amount in our account includes $150 that is dedicated to pay 
for streaming. The anticipated regular station expenses until Jan. 1, 
2008 are these:
$500 studio overhead ($100/month for 5 months)
$105 phone ($35/month for 5 months)
$600 broadcast copyright licensing (estimated, due on Jan. 1, 2008)

Subtracting those expenses leaves us with just $1086.27, all of which is 
dedicated to the new permanent tower fund.

To say the least, this is discouraging news. However, it should be 
remembered that we have done practically NO fundraising since we went on 
the air in November 2005, so it's not really as surprising as it might 
be. We have done a couple of small events and sent out one letter, but 
we have no organized fundraising group. We need to correct that error 
and we need to use this news as inspiration to get ourselves back on a 
healthy financial track. This is the responsibility of everyone, just as 
all other station operations are.

This is one of the main reasons we ask people to participate in station 
meetings -- and not simply do your show. We really need your help to 
keep the lights on! Please start showing up and participating, if you're 
among the approximately half of the station membership that we never see 
at meetings. This is an obligation and eventually, when we get organized 
enough to do so, we'll probably start canceling programming groups and 
shows that don't attend meetings.

A number of ideas were discussed the other evening at the meeting, 
before we knew just how bad of shape we are in financially. We need the 
permanent tower ASAP in order to serve the thousands of listeners we 
could reach in our community, but aren't yet able to. I know there are 
those who want streaming, but this also requires a solid funding source 
to pay for it before we devote anymore of our limited resources to gain 
those listeners, who cost us on an individual basis, unlike those who 
listen to us via the tower do. We also need better equipment, but that 
will have to wait until we can fund replacements. We don't even have the 
emergency fund that I had hoped we could set aside that I described the 
other evening. If something breaks, we simply can't afford to replace it 
right now. Let's hope there's nothing vital that does!

WRFU has many supporters in the community. I know, because I raised the 
first $15,000 that it took to put us on the air myself with the help of 
a few others. But it is now time for the station as an organization to 
step up and take on this task. We couldn't be in much worse shape, so 
all the arguments I've heard about what to spend money on first are 
largely irrelevant. We don't have any money to spend (except for the 
Radio group funds for audio production gear). We need to raise it and we 
need to start ASAP. We need to start thinking of the station as a whole, 
not just about our own shows. Let the discussion begin, but more 
importantly let's start the work and coordination that it will take 
among EVERYONE at WRFU to solve this problem.
Mike Lehman