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Gantang

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  • Your Drum Corps Experience
    Class A, Open Class, and military
  • Your Favorite Corps
    Madison Scouts, BD, Bridgemen
  • Your Favorite All Time Corps Performance (Any)
    1981 DCI Midwest Encore by Madison
  • Your Favorite Drum Corps Season
    1981
  • Gender
    Male
  • Location
    California

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  1. That is the similarity. Not doing full tours, losing often while being entertaining, etc. JS has been placing in the mid to low 20s for a decade, similar to Pioneer. The goal of winning wasn't pushed at Pioneer. It was a place for kids to cut their teeth in drum corps before they moved on.
  2. Then, they would not be viewing a donation to Cadets as a tax-deductible charitable donation. I make donations despite claiming the Standard Deduction because I know it's a gift (not under the IRS' definition. Those who do itemize and have deductions greater than the Standard do benefit by making additional donations. They usually make SIGNIFICANT donations to reduce the tax burden. Some of us are simply altruistic.
  3. You are rare, especially in this activity. I expect that most of the people on here don't itemize since 90% of taxpayers claim the standard deduction. Thus, 90% of the people would see no tax benefit from donating to a charity, as cixelsyd suggested.
  4. I didn't say they were! Where did you get that idea? cixelsyd wrote that "you can make tax-deductible donations directly." I disputed the ability to use a donation as a tax-deductible donation under the current IRS Code. Since you chimed in, do you take the Standard Deduction or Itemize?
  5. The Standard Deduction of $13,850 for single filers and $27,700 for married filing separately has nearly eliminated the ability to deduct Charitable Donations. Unless those donations combined with every other Itemized Deductions amount to a greater dollar amount than the SD. Is anyone reading this using Itemized versus Standard Deductions and could lend some insight on this??
  6. I wonder if this is the consensus of the alumni.
  7. It's been three weeks since the GoFundMe for the Cadets was started. The ask was for $50,000, but as of now, only $905 has been donated by 16 donors. How do you interpret this? Are people donating directly to the corps? Are people looking at their bank statements and seeing a balance that gives them nothing to spare? Has the IRS Standard Deduction disincentivized charitable donations? Are people holding a grudge against the corps for Hopkin's sins? I know this platform isn't as popular as it once was, but I have to believe that the link to the donation page has been shared in other media besides DCP. If the most ardent drum corps supporters aren't opening their wallets, who will?
  8. Donations are part of a consistent revenue stream IF the corps is good at generating donations AND they can collect the pledged dollars. I don't consider GFM dollars a meaningful donation since it is a one-time commitment.
  9. I may be picking nits here, but I consider a sponsorship to cover the entity's cost. IE Penske Racing. It is possible to secure minor donations, but that requires a FT person working 12 months a year to cobble together $10K at a time. While $180K is nothing to sneeze at, it is a drop in the budgetary bucket for a World Class corps. From a Jeff Ream post from May 2, 2022, referencing an interview with Tim Hinto, "the average cost to house, feed, transport and of course things like insurance is $9800 per kid", for a budget of $1,470,000. With a $5,000 dues, that still leaves $750,000 to operate for a season.
  10. I was shocked, especially since BD has so many opportunities for Concord kids. It just shows how niche the activity is. EDIT: The CEO has been at that financial since 2004. That's almost 20 years IN Concord. It's not like she's a newbie in Concord.
  11. DRUM CORPS IS A NON-ENTITY IN THE GRAND SCHEME* You are clearly passionate, and I will not poo-poo your post, but I have some interesting (I hope) insight into this portion. First of all, there has to be a benefit to the corporation. Bill Cook was an outlier because he became passionate about the activity, AND he could write the check on his own volition. The marketing budgets for most companies are one of the smallest budget lines. If a corps can't demonstrate a strong ROI, the company has no incentive. My wife is a CEO and her marketing department is inundated by organizations with their hands held out looking for donations. The local United Way reached out their hand yesterday, but the 2023 community giving coffers are empty. There can be no more giving until January. There is a finite amount of money to be spread around. *I was at a dinner earlier this year with the CEO of a $1.5 billion financial institution in a city with a DCI corps. I asked her if she was familiar with the organization. She wasn't, and she had never heard of drum corps. I explained the activity a bit and told her that her city arguably has the premier drum corps in the activity. The CEO's financial institution is in Concord. Concord only has 126,000 people and Blue Devils has been on the major drum corps map since 1973. That's 50 years of publicity that the Devils have brought to Concord, yet they are not even a blip on the radar in their home city. Imagine how insignificant corps are to communities around the country. Corporate sponsorship is a pipe dream.
  12. You completely missed my point. Do they have a consistent revenue stream that can fund the corps? Are they confident that the budget can be met from all revenue streams? I don't care where the money goes since I can see that on their 990. I care whether all of the budget lines can be met CONSISTENTLY year after year. Do they have such streams?
  13. How is asking about the reality of them having consistent operating revenue sources sanctimonious? And what other corps are doing has nothing to do with Cadets.
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