2008/9/18 Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.com:
After setup costs I expect income in the first year to be zero or negative. Second year I expect income probably would cover travel expenses but if it did little left over for anything else. Path beyond that is tricky to predict. WMDE has certain advantages (such as the language barrier) that WMUK will not.
That's an extremely pessimistic outlook. Why are you bothering to take part if that's what you think? If we can't make any money in the first year, how will we make it in future years? And if we're not making any money, what's the point in having a chapter? We won't be able to do anything we couldn't do now.
Can be useful by being able to use the name. There are quite a selection of things that can be done on zero budget or by using single event budgets. Money issues should sort themselves as the organization gets bigger but I don't think that is going to be a fast process.
Travel expenses can get considerable very fast dropping them on WMUK would probably be a fairly effective way to kill it.
I would tend to characterise myself as a realist. Sure it would be nice if WMUK took off fast but what are you going to do if it doesn't? Do you have a fall back option to run on near zero budgets? It's about keeping expected costs as low as possible so that you can use what resources you do have to cover absolute necessities and unexpected costs. When WMUK has brought in 1K a year and mean brought in not looks like it is going to bring in but actual money in the bank brought in then things like travel expenses can be considered.
At the moment we have less than 100 people of all types interested at all and that is with the first flush of newness. We are ultimately working from a weak position. As long as we accept that we can succeed but if we fail to accept that and start racking up costs fast we will simply find another way of failing.