The Center has been finding it increasingly difficult in recent months to meet expenses, and we find it necessary now to ask you to increase your membership pledge.
In the fiscal year just ended, we took in $16,173 compared to expenses of $18,332, despite cutbacks in advertising and services. Our members contributed only $4,775 in the last six months compared to $6,050 during the prior six months. As of October 1 our savings account was down to $1,500 from a high of $10,000 a decade ago. Enclosed you will a Treasurer's Report detailing these figures and projecting our losses for the coming year.
During lean times in the past we often dipped into our savings. In December, 1983, however, we took on the responsibility of publishing Paul's works, and since then have spent $5,143 to amass a retail inventory of $18,083 worth of books and monographs. While this is a good long-term investment, it leaves us with less reserves to handle cash-flow fluctuations.
The real problem is not fluctuation but downturn. While the Center's expenses have not risen sharply in recent years, we have had fewer members and decreasing membership donations. The gay community finds our message as important as ever, but perhaps understandably finds it easier to be concerned about survival issues right now.
Paul always said that survival must come first, but that it would be useless to survive a crisis only to face a meaningless future. The Center should not be allowed to fail merely because the importance of our work is temporarily harder to perceive. Will you consider raising your monthly pledge by 25 percent?
As you know, the Ninth Street Center has been growing. We have reoriented our website to more long-term international goals and now call ourselves The Paul Rosenfels Community. People who visit the old website at ninthstreetcenter.org are automatically redirected to the new one at rosenfels.org.
More importantly, we no longer feel that defining ourselves as a business is a useful model for our work because we are more like a movement or a revolution. That doesn't mean that we are against the formation of Rosenfelsian businesses, whatever that might mean. But that is not what we are, even if this doesn't preclude the right we hold as individuals to start businesses of our own that offer psychological and other services.
Since we are no longer a business, we no longer need to be incorporated. And since we no longer need to be incorporated, we will not be burdened by filling out tax and other forms or the expense of legal counsel, nor will we offer you the benefit of tax deductions for your charitable contributions. That doesn't mean that we do not welcome your support, financial and otherwise. But in the future, please send your checks directly to whomever of the persons listed below you wish to help, whenever you feel we've earned your support.
As of June 1, 2009, we will conduct no further business under the name "The Ninth Street Center, Inc." except to disincorporate. As of July 1 all checks addressed to that entity will be returned. Since all our publications are now online, we will slowly liquidate most of our hardcopy stock. If owning any of these interests you, we will for a limited time be glad to supply one or more of most titles for the cost of postage. Any remainder will be kept on hand or donated to universities. Contact Bob Fink for more information.
As of today, The Paul Rosenfels Community will be represented by a self-organizing committee of the three people listed below. For as long as my services are required, I will be its secretary and webmaster. You will no longer receive monthly letters with self-enclosed stamped envelopes, but you can continue to receive periodic news of our activities by subscribing to the Paul Rosenfels Yahoo Group at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/paul-rosenfels.
Please remember that we are not going away. We're just streamlining and simplifying our operations so that we can achieve more on a wider scope in a rapidly changing world. We encourage any and all of you to initiate your own activities and projects in service to the goals we each share. Although the role of our committee will now be more educational and advisory, we see no reason why the world should not eventually be filled with thousands of little Ninth Street Centers in every corner of the Earth, buzzing with activities appropriate to that locality, that language and that culture. It's now your turn to lift that torch.
And don't forget that we are counting on each and every one of you to make unique contributions to our website. To see what we're cooking up visit http://www.rosenfels.org today.