Realm Treasure Chest....

I know Smithy is working on the design of a massive wooden treasure chest to bring out to Realm practice. It will look good and be secure at the same time.

When I was Shepherd Me and Surt had discussed the issue of money for the Realm. Some realms back east do in fact charge a minimum fee of a few dollars for practice. Surt; however, never wanted to charge people for fighting. I would have to agree with that. That being said, however. Realm funds are an important issue.

For instance, Knubbs and Smithy have worked out a deal with the LVRA into which we have been written into their insurance policy. This is an SCA based insurance of about 1,000,000 liability or something like that. It doesn't cover the members of our group, you all signed waivers agreeing to take the risk to play the game. It covers spectators and passerby's.

Insurance is a good thing. The BLM and other site owners are requiring insurance for any kind of event an organization like ours would want to hold. The closer to the city and civilization the event is held, the more spectators will be in the area, and the more stringent the rules for getting permits for such a location.

Without insurance, the city could, if it wanted to, harass our organization or shut down its practices. So its a good thing, but it cost money to maintain every year. The agreement with us and LVRA is that we pay something like $100 a year. That is a super great deal in order to have coverage. It gives us the coverage we need if we hold a weekend event out in the BLM boonies, or a day event at a busy site in the city itself.

The other normal week to week running costs associated with the realm are things like loaner materials, water, general equipment, etc. These have been borne for the most part by volunteers. Kudos to you guys.

Another thing to consider, in so far as realm costs, would be our desire to hold an event. We are two years old and haven't held an official event yet. Fool's raid was foisted upon us and we did admirably. Smithy is planning on us holding our first event in November.

Events garner costs that include, permit fees where applicable, site fees, feast fees, and event tokens and award costs. We are looking at several hundred dollars to be sure.

Right now, we must have at least $100 every year in the treasure chest to cover the insurance. Anything else we can raise will go to events and realm running costs.

How do we do it? I'm not opposed to charging a realm practice fee of a dollar every practice, but I know many of our members are out of work and may just stop coming. So I revert back to Surt's desire of not charging for practices.

However, we definately do need the treasure chest at practice and those who can donate whatever you can, whenever you can, please do. There should be some kind of receipt or envelope so donators can write their names on the donation and recieve credit for it.

There will be times, however, when money must be raised, ie for insurance payment (which month is this due?) and for events. How do we handle that? Still keep it on a volunteer basis and hope for the best? Put someone in charge of raising funds through bake sells, mass blood donations, other crazy schemes? Or make a few months of mandatory practice fee's in order to obtain the minimum neccessary???

Konradr

I'm down for the "hope for the best", and those who want to donate to make our sport better will do so and shine above the ones who choose not to. Lead by example, or make an example in an effort to lead. We covered the cost of Combatcon just fine through volunteer donations, now it's about getting the $70+ dollars per person it will cost to get more than 6 people in...

If we are going to host an event we need to determine way ahead of time what the cost will be and all that jazz. I'm sure it's on the agenda for council discussions.

I think we should avoid charging members petty cash per practice, when we are found wanting new things such as loaners or garb for the group we can have build days (like the one Smithy has planned) for everyone to come together and donate cores or small amounts of money to get yards and yards of foam.

We'll have 4-5 new loaner swords out at practice this weekend, 6 counting Smithy's. Go team go!