As you know, there are no MEMBER FEES associated with your club OzSTOC. Your free Membership covers attending any club related events participating in the social and information gained from the online forum or anything else for that matter - and that’s the way we want to keep it
In saying that - there are costs that OzSTOC has to (and wants to) bare each year as outlined below:
- Website and Forum hosting costs. ($600 pa and just paid today 15/6/15)
- Website updates and bandwidth costs
- search engine optimisation upgrade
- Paypal fees (varies with Shop sales)
- Printing and distribution costs for OzSTOC business cards ($200 pa)
- Ozstoc banners & various state club flags (2 New Flags this year incl the NZ OzSTOC Flag) ($220)
- subsidising the OzSTOC shop productions (products, embroidery, patch and despatch) etc
- subsidising the costs borne by members for OzSTOC business
- OzSTOC RAN & Admin phone and member SMS prepaid package ($90 pa)
- covering the cost of annual State by State OzSTOC Xmas BBQs and unplanned function costs.
- National Rally cost (trophies,awards, Venue costs, Guest Speaker, Meet and greet food) ($640)
- Brock’s ENORMOUS remuneration package & salary
- other associated OzSTOC costs (ie Postage for Rally pins $140)
We also have a number of unexpected costs over the last 12 months that needed to be borne by the club. Ie we had a number of members that completed NatRally registration for 2015 that didn't attend or advise that they wouldn't be attending.....yet still we needed to supply numbers to the catering venue, this left the club an outstanding balance required to be paid to the venue of $400. Naturally NatRally registration for the future will be modified to cover this potential outcome.
We are fortunate in our club to have members with not just skills but the passion to assist their club with their expertise.....we have the OzSTOC shop keepers that don't charge travel or phone expenses, members with graphics design abilities to just mention a few.....and a Moderation and Leadership team who don't claim for club related expenditure......(Telstra made a fortune from me from the Jacket exchange
) We are also very fortunate that we have Hip Pocket as our main supplier to many of the OzSTOC shop items who dont demand payment of our monthly OzSTOC shop accounts in a timely manner but will hold us over.
We don't want or wish to keep a bank account with excessive funds particularly as we intentionally don't have a formal committee to manage the funds, but we do have a proven formula to manage the limited funds we do hold on hand, but now that we have paid our annual web hosting fee's we are in need of a charge up of our account......
The way we keep OzSTOC online and progressive is to once a year, hand the hat around to Members to see if they’ve got a lazy $20 or more to contribute to help with these essential club costs.
We don’t expect anything - but it is fantastic that Members have been only too willing to help “keep the lights on” with the website and the club.
It is all anonymous and non-compulsory, but if you reckon you’ve got a few bucks worth of laughs, knowledge, fantastic outings, or great links to businesses and suppliers - then this is the opportunity to help out.
For the 2014 Annual member contributions we received a total of $995 from 37 of our 870 members
to each and every contributor, it obviously makes a very real difference. But to be fair.... 37/870
or am I just a little to cynical
.......and yes I acknowledge that the real users is perhaps half this number......remember you don't need to log in to "read only" our forum.
We are non-profit, so all the $$$ goes back to OzSTOC in various ways to keep the club healthy and progressive.
OzSTOC Bank Account Details (this account was setup specifically for OzSTOC)Acc Nickname: OzSTOC Riders
BSB: 064429 ACC: 10138445
PayPal: shop@ozstoc.com
Thanks to all for keeping this the place to be.
Cheers, The OzSTOC Team.
