Group-Analytic Contexts, Issue 80, June 2018

Newsletter – Summer 2018 43
registrations until the early bird deadline in January 2017 went in
dripping. Not too many, around new year 2016/17 there were less than
100 participants. We had calculated (also a very rough estimate, how
could we know?) 100 early bird registrations for members and nonmembers
of GASi each. The year 2017 started with a huge wave of
registrations up to 320 registrations at the end of the early bird
deadline. The worry now was whether we would have enough later
registrations at the higher prices because the early bird fee would not
cover all our cost. We again had a “dripping” period of registrations
until the next fee increase at the end of April 2017. At that time, we
had 530 registrations but 70 of them had in part high fee reductions by
bursaries. They were decided by the bursary committee, a very good
experience and reliable, I also think, fair procedure explained in the
other reports especially by Gerda. From December 2016 I knew that
we were expected to pay back the bursary support to GASi in the end
which was guaranteed from donations to GASi of 15.000€. So, this
made a different “break even” situation given that the budget had been
planned for 470 fully paying registrants. So, 530 registrations by the
end of April 2017 meant only 460 full paying registrants. Additional
registrations would be needed to cover the bursary amount to be paid
back to the GASi Fund. It is important for me to say that there still
remained a risk to reach the target of breaking even in April and until
July 2017. At the same time, we needed a budget addition because we
also needed to take care for higher cost because of higher number of
participants. As Sarah pointed out there were really some risks which
turned to be real: cost for graphic design, printing of the program and
the abstract booklet and the Gala Dinner. All the time we were
controlling strictly income and expenses, sometimes postponing
decisions which had to be taken in the later process especially in these
fields.
Some discussion and reflections afterwards – finances
as a “silent partner” and the missing spreadsheet
Firstly, I need to say that it was very important to have a fixed budget
in the beginning and to be explicit about who can be paid for work and
to what extent and that most of group analyst's contributions and also
cost will be honorary. The structure of these agreements was fixed in
the budget and also the structure of the budget items which had only
slightly to be corrected later. In general, they carried on and held until
the final budget. I much recommend starting from this structure and
only moderately think about modifications and corrections for
differing situations. Most of this structure has been there implicitly