From time to time the club has a business type meeting instead of a speaker. July 14th was such a meeting, where Treasurer, Peter Merkley, provided the membership with a spreadsheet overview of the 2022-23 proposed budget.
Merkley began by explaining the Club has two separate corporate accounts: one which manages the club’s affairs called the “Club Account” and a second known as the “Service Account” which manages the affairs of our charity foundation account which has a charitable tax number and upon which tax receipts are issued.
The Club account is the money we use to fund our club, pay our District 7040 dues, and our Rotary International dues; both of which are our two biggest expenses. Our dues for the 2022-23 year will be $275.00.
Our 2022-2023 executive committee has been working on reviewing the previous year’s budget and building the budget over many weeks. One of the biggest issues they tackled was what to do with a surplus of $31,000 in the “Club Account” which had over four decades been allowed to accumulate. The committee’s recommendation was to allocate $10,000 to each of International and Community service projects.
Peter’s presentation was divided into four parts, principles upon which the budget was created, the assumptions upon which Club business items were built, the assumptions upon which the Service account was based and the details of the Club Accounts expenses.
The most important assumption for the “Services Account” is something called the “slip funding model”. For example, the money used to fund fundraising activities in the 2022-23 year was raised in the 2021-22 year and the funding raising this year will be used to fund activities in the 23-24 year. This way we know ahead of time how much money we can spend rather than guessing and trying to play catch up through the year.
In summary, Merkley explained that over 10 iterations of the budget were considered and as Rotarian Hugh Segal, who sat through the proceedings, commented, “I thought the amount of diligence, hard work, review, consideration, reflection, balancing, and reconsideration was probably greater than goes into the Federal budget.”
For those members who did not attend the meeting or for those who did and want to review the presentation you may be do so by requesting permission to access it. It is housed on The Rotary Club of Kingston’s YouTube channel. However, it is housed in a privacy vault and only available to those members who have been given access to it. To request access contact either Rtns John Borst or Matt Hawksley.
Members with questions should contact treasurer Peter Merkley before next week’s meeting as there will NOT be a question period before the club votes on the budget on July 21st.