2000 USFSA Budget Summary

by Sandra Loosemore
April 15, 2000

This page summarizes the budget figures that were included with the 2000 USFSA Governing Council meeting book. Visit the USFSA web site for more information about the USFSA.

The "FY 2000" figures given here are the year-end projections for the 1999-2000 season, while the "FY 2001" figures are the recommended budget for the 2000-2001 season. When I cite specific numbers for particular programs, those are the FY 2001 budget numbers.

Revenue

Item	FY 2000	FY 2001
Membership Includes membership and test fees, and club merchandise sales.	1,675,300	1,686,000
Fundraising The big item here is the television rights fee from the USFSA's contract with ABC ($10,500,000). This category also includes non-television sponsorship income ($150,000), the sanction fee from the Tom Collins tour ($500,000), and income from licensed merchandise ($25,000).	10,892,000	11,175,000
USOC Programs This is the money the USFSA receives from the USOC. The extra large amount from FY 2000 includes support for the "Podium 2002" program.	1,038,800	439,000
Championships/Events The USFSA's cut from Nationals, the World Synchronized Skating Championships, and so on. Surprisingly, the big income item here is entry fees from regionals and sectionals ($300,000) -- but this is "funny money" because the USFSA actually covers these expenses for competitors (see the corresponding entry under "Expenses").	1,141,000	1,025,000
Publications Subscriptions and advertising income from "Skating" magazine and other publications.	175,700	181,000
Hall of Fame & Museum Income from admissions, gifts and grants, interest from endowments, and museum gift shop sales.	113,600	115,000
Other Revenue Dividends and interest (from the USFSA's reserve funds).	600,000	38,500
Memorial Fund The Memorial Fund is a charitable fund administered by the USFSA to provide financial assistance to skaters. Memorial Fund income is about evenly divided between gifts received, and interest and dividends from the endowment fund. The Memorial Fund's budget has remained more or less constant for the last few years, but it's been steadily declining as a fraction of the USFSA's total budget, to the point where it now accounts for less than 2% of the total.	315,000	285,000
Total Revenue	15,951,400	14,944,500

Expenses

Item	FY 2000	FY 2001
Governance This category includes expenses for meetings of the Governing Council, Board of Directors, Executive Committee, various committees and task forces, expenses of the ISU and USOC representatives, and the like.	648,200	620,000
Membership Covers such items as liability insurance, funding for the basic skills program, and cost of sales for club merchandise.	557,900	717,200
Fundraising Most of the money in this category goes to "sponsorship & TV commissions".	407,000	432,500
Athlete Programs This category includes $740,300 to cover the costs of sending teams to numerous international competitions, $841,100 in athlete subsidies (see more detail on this below), $56,200 for "team apparel and supplies", $393,800 for athlete development programs, and $139,900 for sports science programs.	3,358,200	2,243,700
Synchronized Skating More or less the same expense categories covered under "Athlete Programs" for the other disciplines of skating.	1,009,400	617,500
Collegiate Skating The major item in this category is the cost of putting on the National Collegiate Championships.	87,500	70,200
Technical Programs This category includes training for judges, referees, accountants, music technicians, ice technicians, and announcers; and maintenance of scoreboards and music equipment.	286,500	288,900
Grass Roots/Development Programs Funding for the promotion of the Basic Skills program, interscholastic team competitions, regional developmental camps, and the like.	107,300	93,300
Championships/Events The big items here are $700,000 for each of the three pro-am events the USFSA produces annually, which goes mostly to pay for appearance fees and/or prize money at these events. There is also an additional $1,500,000 listed as "guarantee for events", which I believe is also appearance fee money specifically allocated by the ABC contract. In other words, almost 25% of the USFSA's total budget is going to pay professional appearance fees for skaters in these cheesy made-for-TV competitions. By contrast, the USFSA budgets only $200,000 for Skate America (to cover the prize money awarded at that event), $216,000 to subsidize regional/sectional competitions, and $368,900 to cover the expenses of regional/sectional entry fees and processing.	4,622,700	4,644,800
Publications/Communications Includes the costs of publishing "Skating" magazine ($474,000), and smaller amounts to cover the media guide and the USFSA's web site. Note that "Skating" magazine loses a big pile of money every year; as far as I know, it has never turned a profit.	516,500	538,700
Hall of Fame & Museum The apparent decrease in the budget is due to there having been an extra allocation for "upgrade & renovation" last year. Allocations for conservation and promotion are actually increasing this year.	303,200	126,100
Operations This includes everything associated with running USFSA headquarters -- staff salaries and benefits, supplies, legal services, utilities, insurance, building maintenance, and so on. Note that the staff salaries are all grouped here instead of under the specific program(s) they're supposed to support.	2,642,600	2,999,500
Other Expenses The big items in this category are "Computer Equipment and Consulting" ($92,400), and "Capital Expenses" ($46,200).	294,000	217,100
Memorial Fund The Memorial Fund is budgeting $210,000 for the Competitive Skater Assistance Program and $40,000 for academic scholarships.	300,000	285,000
Transfer to Reserve (Net Income)	810,400	1,050,000
Total Expenses	15,951,400	14,944,500

Athlete Support

The USFSA's International Commitee uses a system of "team envelopes" to determine the funding levels for athletes who have qualified for the international team. You can see the current list of athletes here and the envelope criteria here.

For the 1999-2000 season, the USFSA received an extra $580,800 from the USOC to fund a program called "Podium 2002", which is supposed to provide aggressive funding for a handful of elite athletes who have been identified as having the potential to medal at the 2002 Olympic Winter Games. Remember that most of these top skaters are already getting paid megabucks to skate in those cheesy pro-ams, so one questions whether this is really a good use of the USOC's money, but....

Because this extra source of money was available to the very top athletes, the International Committee was able to offer significantly higher subsidies to the remaining athletes this season than in past years.

By contrast, for the 1998-99 season, Team A singles skaters received only $6,000.

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