Treasurer’s Report

Greetings from your Eliot Board Treasurer!  Our 2022 fiscal year ended on January 31, 2023, and we now have the complete, finalized picture of how we fared last year, financially speaking.  And the result?  For the first time since 2019, we didn’t lose money!   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.  It is such a relief to see solid evidence that we’ve stopped the bleeding and are slowly moving back to where our finances were pre-COVID.  

This result is due in no small part to donations received from Elioteers in 2020-2022.  During those three years we received a little more $82,000 in donations.  That is a huge, huge number -- full stop, we owe our current moderately-decent financial situation to those donors.  Many, many thanks to each and every one of you. 

We still have a ways to go to get our finances 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 (you know, we do live in earthquake country – just saying!) plus room to consider making new strategic investments, either in Seabeck or in our community.   

As we did in 2022, the Board passed a fiscal year 2023 budget that required camper donations to balance the books ($21,000, give or take).  This is not ideal, as it puts our finances at risk if we aren’t able to raise what’s called for in the budget and arguably also limits our ability to raise funds for other initiatives.  The reason we had to do this is because although we’re projecting our camp attendance to be higher than 2022, we’re still projecting attendance to be below our break-even point (roughly 220 campers at July & August, 110 campers at CAE, and 125 at Winter).  The best path to returning to full financial health is to have full camps – so, if you’ve not yet signed up for one of our awesome 2023 camps, consider doing it now!   You know it will be a great way to spend a week.  And if you’ve already signed up, then refer a friend! (Psst! If you tell Bev you’ve referred someone who winds up attending camp, she’ll take $50 off your registration! Talk about a win-win-win situation…).  

Looking forward to seeing you at camp!

Seth Moran, Treasurer