Ways to save money without killing DCI

[supersop]

I think we all now see what the G7's priorities are ... and what it could potentially do to DCI. So let's step back to the original G7 Proposal and look at some of their objections.

1. DCI is bloated and spending too much money.

2. Outsourcing jobs within DCI in order to save money.

3. Use existing platforms run by the corps instead of paying people within DCI to manage it.

Ok ..... On all fronts, I agree. DCI has been a bleeding cash cow for a couple of decades. They spend way too much money on the meetings, food, travel, etc etc etc. I agree.

Using existing platforms to manage things that DCI is paying others to do .... well that is outsourcing by definition. While I agree that it is a money saver, I have strong issues with outsourcing jobs (seeing as I'm a Union man myself). But this does make sense. If Crown can manage the ticketing and that saves DCI 250K a year in salaries and expenses ..... then do it .. but Crown had better be putting the profits back into the DCI coffers!!!!! I'm sure YEA! feels they can do a better job of negotiating contest site contracts since they have their own staff within USSBA that does that already. FINE! Let them .. but the profits had better go back into the DCI coffers AND, there had better be a set rate for payment to all employees who work on these gigs within each corps respectfully. I'm sure BD has their eye on the media end of things .. same thing applies to everything said above. So where do these corps profit from it? On the back end. More money on the end of year balance for DCI means more money going back to the corps ...... ALL OF THEM!!!!

Where else can we save money?

1. Consolidated Housing

2. Investment in seeding corps (you might thing that's crazy but I'll explain)

3. Instituting regional circuits managed by the corps within that region

4. Package deals on fuel rates with major diesel chains

So, let's talk about these and then I"ll leave other ideas to the rest of you.

How would consolidated housing work? How many major universities do we have in this country ... especially in the towns where we normally have shows? Answer: nearly every one of them. If you put 8-12 corps sleeping in the dorms at a major university, also using campus grounds for rehearsal sites ... I'm sure you could work out a deal to save some big bucks in housing. Even if there are only 5 plausible rehearsal sites on the campus, there are plenty of parks in the surrounding area where you can rehearse sufficiently and still go back to the campus and sleep for the night/prep for the show. This saves all the corps from paying multiple schools for their facilities, janitorial staff, insurance etc etc etc. How much would it save? I truly don't know, but to me, it seems like it's worth looking into.

Seeding corps. If a portion of the DCI budget was set aside to seed corps in areas of the country who could use them, this would be the building blocks of having enough corps in each region to re-establish region tours for the first month of the summer. The savings on travel alone would be enough to pay for the addition of 1 corps in each region every year for 10 years. And wouldn't it be nice to see 30 new corps or a mix of some corps coming back to life in the next 10 years? You'd also be saving on travel fees for judges (and that's big bucks). They can rent a car and drive 100 miles to the next show instead of buying a plane ticket to travel 700 miles to the next show. I see nothing wrong with that and it's a big cost savings for DCI .... savings enough to fund the seeding of these corps. I guess I've already tied in the Regional Circuits point ......... these are needed (even if they are within the DCI umbrella ... they are needed). The long travel between shows is out of hand and cost prohibitive for even the G7 to survive in today's economy.

That leads me to packaged fuel purchases. If there are 7 vehicles (on average) with every corps that uses diesel, and another 3 or 4 vehicles that use regular gasoline ... that averages out to about 400+ vehicles in the DCI fleet .. not including vehicles used by DCI themselves at the corporate level. Going to a company like FLying J or others in the same business, I'm sure you could get a nice discount and corporate cards for all the corps. Obviously, there would be some accounting in there handled at the DCI level in order to bill the corps ... or the corps would have to put in to a fuel fund each year before tour started (based on estimates of prior years fuel costs and consumption). Over the course of a 12,000 to 15,000 mile tour with that many vehicles that only get 8 miles to the gallon ....... that's well over 5,000,000 miles in total on the vehicles .... at $3 a gallon doing 8 miles per gallon is (625K gallons x 3) nearly 2 million dollars in fuel costs. If you can save even 5% on a corporate deal that's a savings of $100,000. That might equate to a 10K savings for some corps.. or a 1-3k savings for others ....... but it's money saved non the less. If I were a G7 corps I would certainly want an extra 10K coming back to me at the end of the season to put toward next year.

I'm sure there are 100's of other ideas out there on ways DCI could save money by consolidating their efforts and streamlining the business. What are yours?

[BOBSMYTH]

1. DCI is bloated and spending too much money.

...

DCI has been a bleeding cash cow for a couple of decades. They spend way too much money on the meetings, food, travel, etc etc etc. I agree...

Those are pretty serious allegations. Can you cite your source(s) or give specific examples?

I sure hope that you have a lot more information than a G7 powerpoint with an obvious agenda.

[supersop]

Those are pretty serious allegations. Can you cite your source(s) or give specific examples?

I sure hope that you have a lot more information than a G7 powerpoint with an obvious agenda.

I'll respond in 2 ways:

1. The G7 are saying so, not me.

2. I've read the 990 forms for DCI over the past 20 years, every year. I've been to their meetings. I've worked with their staff on the business side of things. I've seen some very wasteful practices in my time. Just looking at the 990 from 2007 and 2008, some lines stick out easily:

Program services (charge offs) - Conferences, Conventions and Meetings = $289,181 - 2007

Program services (charge offs) - Conferences, Conventions and Meetings = $288,366 - 2008

Salaries and wages of employees not included in lines 25a, b and c: $984,043 - 2007

Salaries and wages of employees not included in lines 25a, b and c: $1,089,832 - 2008

CEO and CFO salaries $197,171 - 2007

CEO and CFO salaries $190,896 - 2008

Judges training ... clinics and workshops for judges training in 2007 = $744,202 (ReALLY?)

Judges training ... clinics and workshops for judges training in 2008 = $616,794 (ReALLY?)

Equipment costs = $760,293 ... depreciation = 679,710 ... final value of $80,583 (RED FLAG) - 2008

Btw .. just stopping there, that's a payroll of 1.2 million dollars on a budget of 8.8 million dollars = 14% of budget

The expenses for the shin digs that are called meetings are GROSS expenditures. I'm sure the G7 were looking to cut 500K worth of salaries and payroll to add to the DCI coffers (and wanted to take over those tasks and keep those profits for themselves as well). The cost of judges training is spelled out, but the cost of paying judges is lumped into Show expenses which were over $4.28 million in 2008 (nearly 50% of the budget). There simply has to be a better way.

Looking back to 1994 990 forms ... given the inflation that has taken place since, the numbers are about on average except for payroll expenses and show production expenses. DCI has added alot to their plate on the business side of things in order to stay current with technology .. and it is eating away at their budget.

So to answer your question, no I'm not basing my "allegations" on a power point presentation. I've followed the numbers for almost 2 decades (when the internet became accessible). There's hardly a major corporation on the planet these days that allows double digit payrolls. (Except for GM until they went bankrupt and had to reorganize at the cost of 100's of billions of dollars to taxpayers). In fact, I've followed most of the big corps numbers for a long time ..... and they just don't ever seem to quite add up. The Executive BoD of DCI has full access to the accounting of DCI, internal memo's, balance ledgers, true cost expenses ....... these things can not be reported accurately on a 990 without the proper notes and attachments ... which a fair amount of corps flub to make things jibe.

Bottom line is that DCI on the business side of things, has a ton of excess GROSS expenditures. If we have to spend that much money on judges training seminars every year ...... they should be getting a Doctorate degree from DCI on full scholarship. Those expenses are excessive to say the least. It's no wonder why, during our economic downturn and pinch, the corps that were on the Executive Board were calling for change and shrinkage ........ but trying to get rid of Acheson was not the answer. Had they framed THEIR allegations of "Acheson's mismanagement" as excessive spending that needed to stop and here's how ... I think alot of people would have listened a little harder to what they had to say. But they didn't handle it that way. They looked internally and what they could do themselves and profit from ... then eliminate Acheson and crew and bank the cake. Once again, GREEDY!

Acheson did his job the way he was instructed to do it. The expenses on the 990's are just as much his responsibility as it is for those who oversee his leadership .. and the numbers haven't changed in a long time. So who is to blame? I don't think it was Acheson ... it was those who were trying to get rid of him for their own personal gain. They laid the groundwork for how DCI was supposed to run from a business standpoint. They read the balance sheets from the ED's reports ... they never blinked until now. Why is that? Because the economy went to crap and they needed a way to get a new piece of the pie without making themselves look bad .......... but once again, they shot themselves in the foot and mismanaged the situation. Bravo G7!!!

Is that enough hard evidence to support my "Allegations" in my original post? I hope so. The point of my original post was not to sling mud ... but to find solutions. I know there are many many great minds with a wealth of experience and knowledge on these boards. Rather than picking apart where I'm coming from ... let's focus on where this ship (DCI) is headed .. and figure out how to bilge out the water before the ship sinks.

Edited August 23, 2010 by supersop

[Tez]

I wasn't aware that Drum Corps currently paid for their housing sites. Do they?

[Jeff Ream]

more and more corps pay for housing or they don't get any housing.

i think that you have to balance paying for meetings with maybe not going to opulent places. but know that renting conference rooms etc is a lot more expensive as is travel...and IMO, you dont pay for people to come, they won't.

I'd say maybe use more web services for meetings, conference calls etc.

[supersop]

I wasn't aware that Drum Corps currently paid for their housing sites. Do they?

Yes they do. In part, that's rolled into the show expenses on the 990. .. the 50% of the budget portion that DCI spends on shows. I'm not sure if ANY of the TEP's cover some of those expenses but I highly doubt it. They do however assist in finding locations and securing them on behalf of DCI.

Again, save where you can and that leaves more profit sharing funds back to the corps at the end of the season. However, those funds are not clearly defined on the 990, you need the attachments and notes for that.

[supersop]

more and more corps pay for housing or they don't get any housing.

i think that you have to balance paying for meetings with maybe not going to opulent places. but know that renting conference rooms etc is a lot more expensive as is travel...and IMO, you dont pay for people to come, they won't.

I'd say maybe use more web services for meetings, conference calls etc.

True and True. I know I've never been comped for a room or travel by DCI. In fact, you have to pay to enter the conference and pay for your own rooms ... so where the expenses come from is beyond me. The hotels were definitely top notch at neaerly $200 a night and that was the "discounted" rate. The part about housing is very mysterious. I know some corps pay and some corps don't.

Going back to the top 25 schedule .. it was pretty clear that member corps (top 25) were getting reimbursements for fuel expenses ........ now all the lines are blurred and you can't tell who is getting what and for what.

Edited August 23, 2010 by supersop

[garfield]

Post deleted by author

Edited August 23, 2010 by garfield

[JimF-LowBari]

more and more corps pay for housing or they don't get any housing.

i think that you have to balance paying for meetings with maybe not going to opulent places. but know that renting conference rooms etc is a lot more expensive as is travel...and IMO, you dont pay for people to come, they won't.

I'd say maybe use more web services for meetings, conference calls etc.

Yep, Uncle Sammy (at least my part of it) has finally gotten their act together on this and saves times and effort for the participants also. When travel time eats up my time than the actually meeting it's time to rethink, especially when the season starts.

Would just add video conferencing to the above, ya probably thought of it Jeff but let's spell it out for everyone.

Also no way to tell if the conference charges are out of hand or not with the given info. No mention of number of participants, meetings, number of days and what is covered (travel, lodging, food, sundrey(sp) expenses, etc). Did enough work related travel to know this crap can add up with a group.

Edited August 23, 2010 by JimF-LowBari

[audiodb]

I think we all now see what the G7's priorities are ... and what it could potentially do to DCI. So let's step back to the original G7 Proposal and look at some of their objections.

1. DCI is bloated and spending too much money.

2. Outsourcing jobs within DCI in order to save money.

3. Use existing platforms run by the corps instead of paying people within DCI to manage it.

Ok ..... On all fronts, I agree. DCI has been a bleeding cash cow for a couple of decades. They spend way too much money on the meetings, food, travel, etc etc etc. I agree.

Who hacked supersop's account?