Treasurer’s Report

Greetings from your Eliot Board Treasurer!  With robust camp attendance at our three summer camps and a good response to the 2023 Eliot fundraising campaign, Eliot’s fiscal health continues to improve.  To wit:

• FY22 was the first year since the pandemic that we didn’t lose money.

• FY23 will be the first year since the pandemic when we not only won’t lose money -- we also will be able to balance our books solely from camper registrations (i.e., we hopefully will no longer need to rely upon camper donations to balance our books).  YA-HOO!!!

We still have Winter Eliot to go before we close the books on FY23, but as of right now it looks like our net income will be in the neighborhood of $13,000 (for perspective, our FY22 net income was $15,360, in contrast to a loss of $11,800 in FY21 and a whopping $52,687 loss in FY20).  That is no small feat, given that the FY23 budget included a one-time increase in our staffing expenses due to the year-long onboarding of our fabulous soon-to-be Registrar, Calyn McLeod, while our fabulous soon-to-be-former Registrar, Bev Hesterberg, continued to serve Eliot as the primary Registrar.  

I can’t tell you how huge a relief it is to see 2 CONSECUTIVE YEARS of financial green-ness.  This is due in no small part to donations received from Elioteers in 2020-2023.  During those four years we received a little more than $95,000 in donations.  That is a huge, huge number -- full stop, we owe our current increasingly decent financial situation to those donors.  Many, many thanks to each and every one of you. 

With all that said, you should also know that we still have a ways to go before our finances are back to where they were pre-COVID.  In 2019 our reserves (funds which can be used for any purpose) were around $157,000.  At the end of FY 2022 they were at $108,000 – higher than where they were at the end of FY 2021 ($93,000), but way, way lower than where we were in the before times.  IMHO, we need to get our reserves back to 2019 levels to consider ourselves truly financially healthy again.  2019 levels would give us a buffer to absorb a really bad year (fire, flood, pandemic, earthquake – that’s me, always looking on the bright side of life), plus some room to consider making new strategic investments either with Seabeck or within our community.   How do we get there?  Four magic words:  Increased Participation In Camps (IPIC for short)!  So, if you’ve not yet signed up for Winter Eliot 2023 or a 2024 camp, think IPIC & go sign up for one now!  You know it will be awesome. 

Three other things to highlight:

Thing 1:  We tapped our Scholarship Fund pretty hard this year; it went from $14.6K at the start of the year to $5.7K following our three summer camps.  The good news is that it is being used for its intended purpose.  The bad news is, at present it isn’t big enough to withstand another 2023-like year of people asking for and receiving scholarships to attend camp.  Recent generous donations have brought it back up to $7.5K.  If you are able, please consider contributing some quanta of $$ to this fund before the year is out – every little bit counts!

Thing 2:  I want to take this opportunity to profusely thank Bev Hesterberg for her many years of service to our community.  During my time as Treasurer I have been highly dependent on her superb bookkeeping skills to provide the eagle’s-eye view of our financial picture that is required to assess how we are doing, and her fount of institutional knowledge has proven hugely important when it’s time to put together annual budgets.  I can’t tell you how lucky we are that Bev has offered to stay in the Bookkeeping role as a volunteer for the next several years.  Okay, I can tell you – we are really, really lucky.  Thank you so, so much, Bev.  And, to quote your traditional e-mail sign off, “See you at camp!”

Thing 3:  This is my last newsletter contribution as the Eliot Treasurer.  The next time you see a Treasurer’s Report in an Eliot newsletter, it will be written by Xander Simmons, our incoming Board Treasurer.  Xander comes to the Treasurer position with superbly relevant job experience, including working as a Revenue Agent for the Compliance Division of the Washington State Department of Revenue.   To put it as succinctly as possible, with Xander, Eliot’s finances are in great hands.  From the bottom of my heart, thank you, Xander, for agreeing to take over as Treasurer – I hope you find it as rewarding as I have!

Looking forward to seeing you all at camp!

Seth Moran, Treasurer