Sunday

 

The Relationship of Costs to Membership

Dear Friends,

In leaving you with a final epistle in this series, I ask you to ultimately examine not my words, but the data behind what I've stated. My hypotheses on the state of one dying Quaker Society did not come out of nowhere; they came from the evidence, from the data.

Here below, two Eastern U.S. Yearly Meetings which have drawn steeply increasing financial resources (adjusted for inflation to compare real spending over decades) up and out of Monthly Meetings have also suffered steep membership losses over a 50 year period. Two Eastern U.S. Yearly Meetings which have only slightly increased real costs to members over that period, have grown steadily.

In other words, the steeply increasing and or large total cost of a Quaker Yearly Meeting is proportional with steep total membership loss in that Quaker Yearly Meeting. How is this relationship explained? Is one the cause or the effect of the other? How does this phenomenon affect the expression of the Eternal Life in your Society?

As Yearly Meetings become centralized hierarchies, and take on more and more responsibility, activity and cost for the life of Monthly Meetings in your part of the Quaker world, does total membership in your wider body decline proportionally? I continue to ask Friends to consider these questions.

For those who have borne tales that I have an agenda or an axe to grind - so have been their unfortunate and untrue whispers. I am sanguine in my faith. My uncomfortable openings in this series will be to the benefit of true Quakerism.

Blessings,
Glenn R.
Membership Gain / Loss
1980
1990
2000
2005

declining membership

New York
- 19.1%
- 18.2%
- 16.7%
- 9.3%
Philadelphia
- 18.0%
- 5.0%
- 8.0%
0.0%

growing membership

Baltimore
2.3%
18.2%
14.3%
- 1.8%

New England

5.6%
12.0%
2.0%
0.0%

Financial Contributions per Member to Yearly Meetings*

1956
1970
1980
1990
2000
2005

Increasing More

New York
26
60
57
94
107
140
Philadelphia
23
81
65
86
88
91

Increasing Less

Baltimore
0
0
47
61
69
74

New England

40
52
39
65
63
63

Yearly Meeting Total Operating Budgets*

1956
1970
1980
1990
2000
2005

Spending More

New York
238,000
420,000
293,000
451,000
429,000
545,000
Philadelphia**
2,436,000
2,062,000
3,024,000
2,764,000

Spending Less

Baltimore***
166,000
257,000
403,000
437,000

New England

123,000
205,000
150,000
298,000
342,000
353,000

* Adjusted for inflation - all costs in 2005 U.S. Dollars

** portion of total operating budget not including grants

*** portion of total operating budget not including camping income and expense

Full Time Employees
1980
1990
2000
2005
New York
2
2
3
Baltimore
3
3
4
5

New England

3
4
4.5

See also – The Costs to Attend Three Annual Sessions

Financial Contributions to Wider Friends Bodies

Honesty and the Religious Society of Friends

4-Year Timeline of NYYM Malfeasance – including prediction for near and long term


 

A Photograph of NYYM Annual Sessions


83 people at a 2004* NYYM business session
(while the other 600 are outside enjoying the luxury destination)

(Click on Image to Enlarge)

Questions (not rhetorical):
More Important Questions NYYM Friends might ask their 'leaders'

1. Why is the NYYM Advancement Committee again using its $12,000 budget to give scholarships to the vacation at Annual Sessions, when it pledged to
take this gravy train out of service
and use those funds to help Monthly Meetings grow?


2. Why are these tired 83 people - the 'Yearly Meeting Friends' - the perennial core group of attenders at the nice destination - allowed to make decisions for the published number of 3,500 NYYM Friends,
concerning key proposals which affect the further

drawing up of resources out of the Monthly Meetings
and
into the centralized NYYM government?

3. Isn't the Alternatives to Violence Project (AVP), featured in the latest NYYM newsletter, evolved into something different than its Quaker founder, Larry Apsey, envisoned? Isn't AVP now an 'Alternatives to Conflict' mechanism which is how NYYM truly deals with conflict, by avoiding it and denying it?

A Simple Answer to all three questions is:

Friends in NEW YORK YEARLY MEETING
have stopped being honest
.

NYYM has stopped living within the physical and spiritual means of their declining membership. New York constituents can no longer honestly oversee the wider body and its paid employees.

* 2004 Annual Session was the first year of the three year probationary term of General Secretary, and who was in attendance that year. The above photograph was of the 'Witness Section' annual business session. The 'General Services Section' business session where less 'sexy' but critical internal decisions are made included many fewer people than in this photograph.


 

The Costs: Three Yearly Meeting Annual Sessions

The destination where NYYM holds its Annual Sessions.

Three Yearly Meetings

2007 Annual Sessions Costs / per day*

5 Nights
6 Nights
6 Nights
NEYM
BaltYM
NYYM
$
$
$
Additional Gratuity
-
-
5 %

Average Registration Fee**

3.00
0.00
6.00
Adult/Single
-
92.00
70-190
Adult/Double
66.00
76.00
95.00
Adult/Camp***
49.00
50.00
47.00
Adult/Commute
49.00
56.00
47.00
Adult/Commute/NoMeals
25.00
38.00
20.00
Youth/Camp/Commute
-
-
37.00
Youth/Bed
66.00
76.00
35-165
Child/Bed
-
37.00
35-165
Child/Floor/Camp****
24.00
22.00
37.00
Child/Meals/Only
8.00
22.00
-
Child/NoMeals
10.00
-
10.00
Toddler
0.00
0.00
0.00

* pre-registration costs based on full session

** NYYM - complex fee schedule for ages / early / late registration

*** Closest Campground - 10 miles with additional costs to camp

**** NYYM does not give discount for child on floor

Youth
Adult
Capacity
Dbl. Occ.
Dbl. Occ.
Hall
Persons
95.00
120.00
Trinity
24
2,880
85.00
110.00
The Inn
296
32,560
75.00
100.00
Bayview
81
8,100
57.50
82.50
Hilltop
51
4,208
52.50
77.50
Hemlock
72
5,580
45.00
70.00
Hepbron
110
7,700
35.00
60.00
Overlook
24
1,440

NYYM Avg. Cost / Adult

$94.94

NYYM Total Capacity

658

1 out of 5 of all Adult NYYM attenders

can spend the same or less than NEYM and BaltYM attenders

1 out of 3 of all Youth NYYM attenders

can spend the same or less than NEYM and BaltYM attenders

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