Quote:
Originally Posted by sanddrag
I don't have the data on how many teams compete at multiple events, but if you did some quick math on 3000 teams each paying a $5000 registration fee for their first regional, 400 teams paying $5000 for championship, and say 1000 teams paying $4000 for a second regional, that's $21 million.
Their 2013 financial audit report indicates a total program registration fee income of $19 million.
Now, I don't know how many people FIRST has on staff and but I could estimate salary and benefits costing somewhere in the neighborhood of $10 million per year for a staff of 90ish.
What gets me is the FRC operating cost of over $33 million. What the report shows is that as much as we pay, that only covers about 50% of FIRST's costs, with approximately the other half being covered by grants.
So, to me, what the audit report looks like, is that it costs FIRST about $10,000 per team per year to operate this program. That seems rather costly for them.
One last note on the reason they want to keep $24 million cash on hand. It must provide great interest payments! |
High quality interest income is squat these days. Still, it's more than 0.
My back of the eyeball computation shows a return on net assets in excess of 20%. Did I miss something? The encumbered assets are an accounting challenge. Net assets did go up, a lot.
Those FIRST results are a wonderful example of effective, efficient business operations and management. Maybe even worthy of inclusion in how the organization educates the students about the real world. Maybe teams should operate like businesses, with double entry accounting systems, P&L and balance sheet reporting. There's just a little problem in how non- (or not for)-profit organizations keep their books, compared to the commercial world (governments are even worse). But is the goal of FIRST monetary RONA?