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Generally speaking, what are the basic ins and outs of running an open class corps? I've heard that the biggest expenses are gasoline, housing, and food, but I have no clue what the rough dollar amounts for those tend to be among OC corps. And then buses and instruments are capital expenses (up front) that you can maintain for years - correct me if I'm wrong.

I'd just like some clarification and discussion.

EDIT: this is not me trying to start a corps. This is solely for the purpose of wanting to know for my own interest.

Edited by Agogobell28
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I don't think there's a real cut and dry answer to this. Every corps situation and tour schedule is different.

I do know that with security being an issue in the last several years few schools are free to corps usage now. So I'm going to guess that during the camps, housing, and food are the largest expenses.

If they already own their own buses, trailers, horns, drums, etc... then the largest cost on the road is going to be again, fuel, and then housing & practice space, and then food, and then uniforms, followed by insurance.

Largest up front costs probably are instruments and trailers. But most horns get pretty beat up after three seasons. Heck, one season is tough on a horn. I think many are rented horns with the expectation that they will sell them after the end of each season. If you think of a full 68 horn line is probably about $200,000 that's a large chunk of change. I've no idea what drums cost but you can look those up and do the math. Heck even if there's a significant discount and a 40 person horn line gets outfitted its still probably $100,000. (for new horns)

I would say do a little homework. Start with looking up the costs of horns, multiply by the number of horns in each section. Do the same for drums. Go to one of the band catalog pages and look up the cost for a uniform, multiply by members... get the idea?

Meals, figure out what it costs to feed you for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, then again multiply that by the number of members...

Research how much gas buses holds... etc etc etc. Figure out how many miles a tour is, multiply that by the number of vehicles traveling...

its a lot of numbers so I don't think anyone wants to do the math and simply give away the answer. But it is indeed a large bag of money required to run even a small corps.

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No kidding. Members do need food, and lots of it.

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