[Jessica Boucher]

Well.....

Here, give my attachment a look. It's the financials from the FIRST Annual Report, made into a working Excel spreadsheet. The first tab is your raw numbers, with all the working calculations, and the 2nd tab is the same stuff thrown into percentages of their sum, with a 3rd column added to denote changes from the last year.

What's the largest change in operating expenses? The Championship Event!!! Up 14% from 2002. If I remember correctly, 2002 was the last time that Nationals was held in Epcot. Switching over to something that is less-cost inclusive than Disney is (aka, Houston), means there's going to be added cost. If you play with the numbers a little, and take out the expense of the championship, FIRST would be pulling a profit of $2,104,567, a 54% increase from last year as opposed to a loss of $65,070, a 6% decrease.

Side note: It will be interesting to see where FIRST goes with Nationals placing....I'd love to look in on the cost analysis of settling Nationals in one city as opposed to this city-jumping thing they're doing now.

Plus, the money coming in is worth less than it has been. Though they have more revenue, they have even more expenses (because of the championship), and their cash-on-hand is also lower. As it was said in the annual report thread, Dean didn't give money directly to FIRST and there was no auction (FIRST had an auction?). Thus, to compensate for future costs, the next step should be to increase the money coming in, and reduce the costs dealing with the Championship.

Also, you're sending your $90 to THS, not to FIRST....thus, I wouldn't be surprised if THS was adding a premium onto the actual costs for "the trouble of putting it all together", because that is how they make their money.

So to conclude, I'm not saying that the $90 is cheap, or expensive...but I hope I shed some light on what's going on with FIRST financially (from what I could dig up). I know that I feel better once I see the breakdown of it all.