That we are currently surviving at all is a testament to the outrageously fine management of the club over the past years. Through the wisdom and leadership of people like Tony Barcellos, Milt Hull, Rick Hellewell, Larry Clark and Ken Hopkins (just to name a few), we have money set aside to help us through hard times. Well folks, the hard times are here and that money is going fast. One does not need a calculator to figure that we have but two years (or so) left before we go under completely and cease to exist. We exceeded 3,000 members about three years ago and now have less than 1,200 members. I am hoping membership will level out for a while.

The two biggest club expenditures are Sacra Blue (about $2,000 monthly) and our meeting hall (about $500 monthly). It seems we need to attack one or both of these expenditures very soon. It will not be possible to make cuts in our services and keep all members happy. Unfortunately, we stand to lose members over most any change we make.

Numerous suggestions have been made. Among some of the suggestions is to make Sacra Blue a downloadable PDF file available from our Web site. Current estimates are that this file would take a standard modem about five minutes (or less) to download. Of course, we need to consider what would become of Sacra Blue advertisers should we decide to make the newsletter only a virtual commodity. I suspect we might lose most (if not all) of our advertisers. Any further loss of revenue is unthinkable. There seem to be no easy answers. Advertising revenue is very important to us. The smaller the newsletter and the smaller our circulation, the less we have to market and the fewer advertisers we will have.

One suggestion that I find particularly attractive is cutting back Sacra Blue to a quarterly magazine. We could either snail mail or email a monthly report that would keep members up-to-date on club activities.

I was taken aback at this last meeting when I asked for a show of hands of those who did not find Sacra Blue important to them. The vast majority in attendance were clear on the subject: We could seriously cut back or even abolish Sacra Blue without loosing support from the membership. Maybe I'm out of touch, but I would never have guessed this might be the member's sentiment. Of course, this is only a sampling of the club's membership-and, for that matter, a rather biased sampling in that the folks who depend entirely on Sacra Blue for club information have yet to be heard from. All the more reason for members (you!) to make needs and views known.

Look for changes very soon. Some changes have already happened. For instance, you no longer need a password to get into eBlue. Also, a downloadable file is currently available to you. I am sure that that file will change in content and format very soon. Again, your input is needed.

A new, less costly (or possibly free) meeting place is another idea we could implement. We were fortunate to find our current meeting hall, a large, comfortable space with coffee, stage and sound system. Any change in a less costly venue would certainly lack many of the features we take for granted now.

Some of you may not be aware that we send $7 of your $35 membership fee to the chapter of your choice. We only do this for those who have marked that option on their application or renewal forms. We may have to change this policy, although I suspect the total amount of funds involved in this matter is very small.

Raising the annual dues from $25 to $35 was an important move, albeit a year or two late (in hindsight). We lost a few members over that, as I recall. We have already cut expenses in a number of areas. Our BBS, Sacra Bytes, has been shut down, thus saving about $150 a month. We moved the General Meeting from the Masonic Temple, saving about $200 a month. We also made drastic changes to Sacra Blue, making it the Sacra Blue newsletter. All this has helped to defray expenses. Unfortunately, more changes are necessary.

Input Needed
Your input on this subject (or any club business) is more than welcome. Remember, we have a wonderful new tool for sharing information: the SPCUG Discussion Group (listserv). Already, members have posted some useful suggestions and insights. You can subscribe by sending a message to listar@calweb.com with the following two lines as the first and only lines in the message:

subscribe sacpcug percy@fud.com
end

The Subject line of the message is ignored. You'll need to replace the fictitious "Percy" Internet email address with your own email address. From this point on (until you unsubscribe) you'll receive messages sent to the discussion group in a digest format. That is, at 3 a.m. each day, any messages sent to the discussion group would be gathered and sent to your email address in one message. If no messages were sent to the discussion group, then no messages are sent out. Some members have expressed a concern that they will be overwhelmed with messages in their email box. Currently we see about three or four messages a week on the listserv. In order to participate in the discussion group, you'll need to send a message to sacpcug@calweb.com. Please do not send messages to the listar@calweb.com address. That address is used just to subscribe and to unsubscribe. By the way, you would unsubscribe in the exact same fashion as subscribing, except the word "unsubscribe" would be used in place of the word "subscribe."