CC/assessment

Financial status assessment

PERC has been experiencing financial instability for the last 5 consecutive years, from 2000/2001 to 2005/2006 fiscal years. The decline in the annual income and increase in expense have contributed to PERC’s four years negative net income from 2000/2001 to 2005/2006, except 2001/2002.

Memberships, Special events and Grants are major resources for PERC’s annual income. The recent drop in the memberships to $24293 in 2005/2006 and $26037 in 2004/2005 from $32281 in 2003/04 has contributed to the decline in PERC’s annual regular income (project exception) for the last two consecutive years. Also, a reduction in grants has been considered another reason that caused the negative trend for the annual income in both 2004/2005and 2005/2006. In 2004/2005, the grant dropped to 9.5% of total annual income and 8.5% in 2005/2006, compared with 15% of the total income in 2000/2001 and 13% in 2003/2004 fiscal years. A significant plunge in these two resources is mainly responsible for the huge drop in PERC’s annual income to $39,616 in 2003/2004 and $38,548 in 2004/2005 from previous $45000 plus. Consequently, the sharp decrease in the annual income and constant increase in expense boosted the annual deficit to the highest in 2004/2005 among the last five years. In 2003/2004, the drop in both special event and advertising income was responsible for the negative net of that year.

The increase in material and service prices, such as printing, postage, rent, etc, has attributed to the increase in PERC’s regular expense. Due to general inflation, especially to the surge in the insurance premium, the General and administration expense has jumped almost 30%, from $7991 in 2000/2001 to $10500 in 2004/2005. In 2005/2006, PERC has had to adopt a survival scenario to offset the rising material and service expense. This included laying off PERC’s coordinator two month from May to June of 2005 and cutting down committee cost to $117 from $ 1027 last year.

PERC’s financial statements indicate that monthly special events income is usually inversed to monthly membership income. This implies that the more effort is put on membership recruitment the less effort is put into fundraising activities, and via the inverse given the limited human resources. In year 2002/2003 and 2004/2005, PERC got two separate projects Bread & Pop Theater and Commuter Challenge while it also had a huge drop in the membership income.