With only about 30 members the UK chapter is at a very early stage with a limited internal market. If you had 3,000 members you could get some economy of scale and order say 100 T shirts, but with a market of 30 you can expect the price per item to be exorbitant. Producing ties, mousemats, cufflinks and presumably monogrammed bathrobes for the minority of those 30 who want such things is at best a distraction and at worst a drain on resources. Not least because selling stuff at cost means you have to invest the capital to buy the stuff hoping that if you sell all of them at full price you will recover your capital. That ties up capital and sooner or later you will make a loss when you discover that fewer than ten of your thirty members want a mousemat.
As for recruiting new members, perhaps you would. But you are also putting off prospective members like myself who would not join an organisation that is setting itself up to fail.
WereSpielChequers
2009/9/14 Gordon Joly gordon.joly@pobox.com:
At 23:40 +0100 13/9/09, Andrew Turvey wrote:
Hopefully it will be the kind of perk that will attract people who are already active in the projects to become members. As to selling at above cost, the Foundation wasn't too keen on that - worried that we would develop into some kind of commercial arm of the Foundation, which is not really their idea of the role of chapters.
Andrew
Run that by me, one more time?
Why then seek to gain a tax advantage?
Gordo
-- "Think Feynman"///////// http://pobox.com/~gordo/ gordon.joly@pobox.com///
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