Slingerland

Well aware of the concept. Completely misplaced (imho) when it comes to small, scrappy non-profits who have no reason to be trying to grow past the low 7 figures, economically, since they are landlocked in terms of how many kids they can serve. Individual corps are simply too small and their programming too specific to warrant significant investment from local foundations, when those foundations also have a plethora of museums, educational, and youth-at-risk programs asking for their resources. The org who has to worry about large scale donor and sponsor dollars is DCI - not the individual corps. Unlike the member corps, DCI can honestly say that they serve a client base in the thousands and that they have the eyeballs of hundreds of thousands of followers. The fact that they, as an organization, have so utterly failed at successfully landing major tour sponsors is an indictment of the leadership of the org, at both the Board and executive level. If there’s a thing about the new CEO that makes me hopeful, it’s that he appears to have some experience at developing those relationships. I’d argue that the bigger concern for local corps is lack of alumni support from throughout the activity. There are a few corps that do well in that regard (Cadets WERE successful, at one point), but not nearly enough who can say, with some confidence, that their alums can be counted on to provide hundreds of thousands of dollars every year. Those who say it’s a revenue problem are absolutely correct, but the “problem” has to do with the lack of support from the adults who have already benefitted from what the activity did for them. More’s the pity.

Doesn’t bother me in the least. Bingo has nothing to do with BD’s mission, but they use it to support their mission (quite successfully). If it makes the services for the members more affordable, then it’s a win.

It’s a pretty smart fundraiser, when you think about it, since it has a broad appeal that has nothing to do with marching band or drum corps. More corps should be looking for those types of opportunities.

Gas in May, 2011 - $3.96 a gallon Gas in October, 2023 - $3.96 a gallon Inflation is at 3.7%. Higher than the Fed's target, but not out of control. None of those are the reason drum corps is more expensive now. Biggest change in the last 10 years has to do with (ironically enough) member safety, in the form of chartered, professionally driven busses rather than volunteer or part time drivers driving old, rickety busses down the road. What was $120k for a summer in the 2010s is now a $300k expense. But what's the alternative? Go back to school busses for the weekend, staying in mom's house during the week, and eating at McDonald's on your own 2 out of 3 times a day? The midwestern corps already have embraced the regional model for the first 3 weeks of tour. It probably helps them keep some costs down, but it's not going to shave $500k off the summer expenses. The challenge facing the new DCI CEO and the DCI Board will be to get aggressive about finding funding outside of the activity to help offset the costs of being on the road for the corps. In the meantime, condolences to the Cadets family on what has to feel like a really crappy night.

He never ran a good financial ship there. It was surprising when it was sexual assault that took him down, only because it was assumed that financial mismanagement would be his undoing. He put YEA in a crap position thru robbing Peter to pay Paul, and their weak-### Board (at the time) had no idea of what their financial position was. While that BOD's successors did what they could, they also gave away the one valuable asset Cadets had (US Bands) for a bowl of pottage from Blue Devils. So yes, the sins of Hopkins' foul financial management has more than a little role to play in today's announcement.

My recollection is that they were not able to apply for the SVOG grants that other corps did because they were technically not in business as the current 501(c)(3) in 2020/2021, having left YEA in that window. Still, it seemed like they were finding their way - this is very sad news.

Jersey Surf is doing 11 or 12, but that's normal for them. Most of the WC corps are doing 17-22 shows (still a lot less than ten years ago).

I get the smell of patchouli loud and clear, no worries. 5% of the annual budget is a relatively small portion of the most successful corps' annual revenues. It's just math. They've also invested in their infrastructure, they've made an effort to recruit and train staff and members to perform at a high level for a 40 or 50 or 60 year period. They literally built and founded DCI. It's how the world works. Sorry if that upsets the utopianians. As noted, they're welcome to form their own league with their own rules. Let's see how it goes.

About the same if a baseball team decided that their highest salary should go to their least proven player. Rewarding accomplishment is ok. BD or PR or Cavaliers or Cadets, corps with 45+ Finals appearances, built the brand; So yes, it's not a lot of money, and yes, it's at least some way of providing the benefit that DCI was originally designed to provide. Those who want to complain can always form their own league. 😎

Yes, there's the split of the net, following a formula that has a lot of factors, but primarily rewards those with the greatest number of Finals appearances (that info might be a little out of date, as DCI has adjusted a few financial policies in recent years, including performance fees). That said, no corps makes much more than $130-160k from their combined performance fees and DCI split, making it a relatively small portion of the overall revenues.

They're not members, and the rules for being non-members competing in WC is that they'll go on before the members do until they earn a spot in the rankings at San Antonio. It's not to make an example of them.

Occam's Razor would indicate that the most likely explanation for anything having to do with SCV's management the last number of years is...(checks notes) - "incompetence."

Wearing superfine green velour jackets and big old floppy hats. It was definitely a look that screamed "mid 70s".

It was borrowed from the name VW gave to a new vehicle just a year or so before - The VW Thing

DCI, as a business, has more or less stuck around the same size for most of the last 15 or 18 years. Big enough to pay the bills, not bigger enougher to start paying the corps anything close to what they have to spend in order to provide the product. So the focus now has to be on someone who knows how to generate additional revenue sources and build stronger alliances. Full stop. Looking through who’s on the Board right now, there are no big dogs (no offense to Board members, since we know you do pay attention here). That means that the new CEO, if they have the drive to push big initiatives forward, shouldn’t face that much opposition, as long as they’ve got the numbers to back up the proposal. One hopes that the Board, having made their choice, respect them enough to let them push ahead, since same old same old ain’t cutting it anymore.

https://x.com/ZachRunsThings/status/1699131351037886867?s=20

Reportedly the train has left the station, and an announcement should be coming soon. It would be a nice change of pace if the drum corps activity could start getting a lot more aggressive about promoting open searches for key leadership roles across the spectrum of the activity. How many Program Coordinator or Designer roles are ever openly searched? None, that I'm aware of. The corps just keep doing the same insider discussions with established names, and while you could say that professional baseball and football engage in the same practice (head coach of the Nets isn't going to be an open process), as organizations that are supposed to be providing opportunities to grow and develop talent, drum corps should be doing this better than they are. That's how the activity could grow a more inclusive generation of leaders. Tell them they have a shot to access the controls at the corps level. If DCI was engaging in that type of search, they were really quiet about it (not saying they didn't find a qualified candidate, but the process seemed little underwhelming in its aggression). Will be interesting to see if Cavaliers take a low and quiet approach to hiring their next CEO or whether they do an actual national search. It's promising that they announced that the position will be open early on; hoping they can follow up with an intentional search for a wide array of talent.

Current Board President was the Treasurer during 2021/2022 - the person nominally in charge of oversight of everything related to financial reporting, including managing the annual audit, and (with the Secretary at most Boards), making sure all annual forms are filed. The jokes write themselves.

Agreed if we're talking about small, local NPOs (less than $500k in annual revenues). Those orgs have small staffs, usually part time, and are run by less experienced executives and Boards. Vanguard is a 60 year old org with $12 million+ in revenues, full time staff, and (in theory) an experienced Board. The level of organizational ineptitude on display should give anyone pause, and the fact that many of those same people are still there, now thumping their chests and saying "We're Back!", as if they weren't the ones who ___ed the thing up in the first place is a little galling.

Their charitable status would be the one thing that allowed Bingo to be a thing for them. Not aware of for-profit Bingo operations. The tribal casinos would be after anyone trying to profit from gambling in a heartbeat, in most states.

"When a charitable organization fails to submit complete filings for each fiscal year, its status on the Attorney General's Registry of Charitable Trusts will be listed as Delinquent. If the delinquency is not remedied, the Registry status will be further changed to Suspended, and/or Revoked. A charitable organization that is not in good standing with the Registry of Charitable Trusts may not operate or solicit donations in California. (Cal. Code of Regs., ###. 11, § 999.9.4.) " https://oag.ca.gov/charities/delinquency#:~:text=A charitable organization that is not in good standing because,donations through charitable fundraising platforms. The "may not operate" thing is what should make everyone involved blanch. They have been operating while under suspension (running Bingo? Congratulations, you're 'operating').

Their Board chair is a CPA. Unlikely they'll be able to claim ignorance.

Board voted last week. Membership meets end of the month. Not clear whether allowing them to be on tour is a membership or a Board decision (and I say that as in "they don't seem to know themselves").

In cases where Bingo revenues are involved and where the state/county requires that Bingo payroll expenses do not come from Bingo proceeds, they would almost certainly need to show separate accounts with some sort of firewall between them. In Vanguard's case, it's entirely likely that the member fees will be needed to feed the Bingo beast, and while Bingo revenues can be used to pay corps expenses, a question remains whether California will decide that the organization has operated in bad faith the last few years (because they have) and assess taxes on Bingo funds. If that happens, it'll likely be lights out.