LA Throwback 2018 budget summary

One of the principles of LA Throwback is financial transparency, which we feel is important to be sure that the interests of event participants, event organizers, and the community remain aligned over time.  

The table and charts presented here summarize the finances for Throwback 2018. We should note that these numbers have not been audited yet, and we may make slight adjustments to categories after our accountant reviews them fully.  Also, we are still waiting to find out from our fiscal sponsor, the ABUA, the extent of any banking and accounting fees they incurred that we will need to cover. We will add these in once we get them.

 

Budget notes:

STAFFING

As you can see, we spent a fair amount on staffing for the tournament. We feel it’s important, both for fairness and for the level of service that we want to provide, to pay people rather than to use volunteers for tasks that require accountability and consistent effort (if they want to donate what they earn to causes they believe in, that’s their choice), and wherever possible to pay ultimate players or people from the community who need and deserve support.  In all, we paid 35 people between $12.50-$20/hr for their time and effort, in addition to the six members of the core organizing team, to serve our 900 tourney participants and 64 teams.

• Med staff

The medical staffing expenses went to five EMT’s (three each day, one worked both days). Four of the EMT’s were from an EMT program at LMU and one was a community college student who works as an EMT to fund her education.  We also hired a licensed athletic trainer and two acupuncturists (one per day). Additionally, we’d like to thank longtime ultimate player and all-around great guy Dr. Dan Hyslop, who volunteered to oversee the med staff at the event.

Next year, in response to your feedback, we will make a point of bringing on massage therapists as well.

• Tourney staff

The paid tourney staff consisted of ten people. This number does not count the tournament organizers, who were paid under a separate category.  These are the folks who helped with the organization, took pictures and videos, humped water jugs out onto the sand, set up fields, helped provide child-care, etc etc. We were pleased to be able to support four players from a local area high school ultimate team, Rip Tide. We’d like to thank Mike Zurer and Galen Graham who played in the event, but donated their time to help rep the tourney. We’d also like to thank a number of volunteers, including Mike Mendoza, John Purdie, Ari Marken, and others (who need to hit us up and remind us) who helped with field set up, tear down, and a variety of other tasks. We’d particularly like to thank Bev Barnum of the ABUA for all her work and help, including getting the bagels and oranges, arranging for the field lines, and a host of other contributions. We could not (and would not) have had field lines without the ABUA, who purchased the field lines and let us use them for the event. Thanks also to the ABUA for sending Robert Bolton along to help with tourney operations.

Next year we hope to be able to do a better job of providing child-care options, and we plan to put more resources into photography and videography to capture all the great action. We hope to be able to involve more local area teams and players in this effort and to make donations to their teams in thanks.

• Party staff

The party organizer and eight of the party servers were from BLU, the women’s ultimate club at UCLA. In addition to paying them, we were also able to make a small donation ($270) to BLU itself (more on donations later), and our apparel partner, Savage, will also be providing them with discounts on team gear and other support for the upcoming season in thanks. We also paid two DJ’s (thanks MUSE!), a licensed bartender, and a couple of people who transported the kegs to and from the Three Weavers Brewery in Inglewood.  

Party security was provided by five homies from Homeboy Industries, one of the largest, most comprehensive and most successful gang intervention, rehabilitation and re-entry programs in the country, founded by Father Greg Boyle here in Los Angeles (if you don’t know his book, Tattoos on the Heart, make a point of reading it, or listening to the audiobook version).

• Organizing team

As we’ve noted above, paying everyone fairly for their time and work was a top priority for us. This year, the six members of the core event organizing team donated most of their time. We were paid just over $6K total, with about half that going to the Tournament Director.  This comes nowhere close to the $12.50-$20 hour we paid staff, given the amount of time spent over the course of the preceding year. It was a labor of love and principle for us, and we’re delighted to have been able to put on an event that, from all accounts, the players enjoyed. Going forward it is a priority of ours to be able to pay the event organizers fairly for their time as well, so that the effort is sustainable in the long run.  More about this later, but we have set up a structure that we hope will allow us to add new people to the mix year after year to keep the event thriving.

 

OTHER BUDGET NOTES

• Donations

We’d like to thank all those who donated to our ultimate Community Support Fund. We were able to raise $1085 from donations. A quarter of this went to BLU, as noted above. The remaining three-quarters are going to a youth coaching initiative that we are working on (more on that as it develops) and in addition Savage will be making a donation of another $170 not listed above to the coaching initiative.  While we are very grateful to those who did donate, the amount raised fell short of what we had hoped, probably because we needed to do a better job organizing and promoting donations. For this coming year’s event, we have decided to incorporate a certain minimum amount for the ultimate Community Support Fund into the entry fee, while still maintaining an affordable event. We will of course let you know how much that contribution will be and where it goes.

• Apparel Income

One of the reasons we’re very grateful to our apparel sponsor, Savage, is that they were able to handle a lot of logistical complexities resulting from City of Santa Monica rules and regs re: selling on the beach. They also provided us a number of shirts for tourney and party staff, and they printed the beautiful field flags. The net income shown on the budget chart above was the net amount we received from them, after we paid for a large number of additional staff shirts (due to the size of the total staff), as well as for reprinting a number of field flags to replace those that mysteriously vanished after the event (some of you scored some cool ultimate wall art, but you should know it cost us).

• Insurance

We think it is important to note that we feel that we underinsured the event. The $315 we spent on liability insurance should have been more like $1800, and this coming year we will be insuring at the higher level.

• City fees

Our fees to the city for the use of the beaches and for waste handling/recycling were (and are) incredibly modest, and we are grateful to the city for use of these incredible facilities. Due to our clear emphasis of their No Alcohol policy, we were not required to pay for extra police staffing for the event, which would have cost several thousand additional dollars.

• American Beach Ultimate Association (ABUA)

We’d like to thank our fiscal sponsor the American Beach Ultimate Association, the great folks who also put on Wildwood, the largest beach ultimate tournament in the world. As noted above, they provided us with the field lines for the event, sent out one of the their experienced tourney hands, Robert Bolton, to help with tourney ops, and provided key administrative support.  Special thanks to Bev Barnum of ABUA for her numerous contributions. While we have incorporated as a separate entity to run the event going forward, we look forward to partnering with them in the long run as they work to promote and support beach ultimate around the country.

• Sponsors and partners

Lastly, we’d like to thank all our sponsors and partners for their support, including all the local businesses who donated gift cards we were able to give out.  We hope to be able to do more of that in the future. In particular, we’d like to give a shout out to Lindsey Stratton and Clif Bar & Co, for the kind contribution of 800 Clif bars that went into the team goodie packs. We hope you enjoyed them. We also want to thank Ultimate Central for their great service and support. We could not have done it without them. And we also want to thank Patrick van der Valk and BULA for advice and support and for all they have done for the sport of beach ultimate. Lastly, thanks to Canada Gordon, Alex David, Rich Hart and all the crew who had the idea back in 1999 that there should be a beach ultimate tournament in Southern California, and acted on that idea to create and run Lei-out for the first five years of its existence, basically gratis. They set this whole thing in motion.

And most of all, of course, thanks to all of you who believed in what we were trying to do, and supported and participated in the maiden voyage of LA Throwback.

We’ll be running it back MLK Weekend, Jan 19 & 20, 2019, here in Santa Monica. We look forward to seeing you out here.