Should Wings etc siphon money away from squadron sub collections?
Squadron Committees are expected to raise money for their squadrons and yet Wings etc just get money.
Should they have to raise their own funds, rather than just getting handout?
I am aware that the formations above sqn committees don’t operate in the same way.
Every Squadron pays a proportion of their cadet subscriptions to their Wing based on their Cadet numbers declared on SMS, and the Squadrons retain the remainder Wings have no other call on funds from Squadrons. Not sure what you’re getting at…
That’s exactly what I’m getting at, the per capita siphoning.
I think they should be responsible for getting their own money.
Who will end up doing the fundraising?
… the squadrons. Don’t see the difference
I think the point question was should Wings source funds from other means, and not draw money from Squadrons?
If the Wing committee organise bag packs, sponsored walks/runs/swims, obtained corporate funding etc, then they wouldn’t need to take money off of a Squadron, and Squadrons could use the money to increase the activities offered to cadets.
Presumably, the funraising activities should be carried out by WSOs and CWOs, rather than expecting squadrons to support wing efforts.
I completely get the sentiment. We raise money to help our cadets. Wings are largely paid for by the MOD (buildings, wages, post). With the exception of items which the cadets will definitely see / have a tangible benefit for, why are we paying Wing?
Some squadrons aren’t allowed to spend a penny unless they have agreement in triplicate from their committee but Wings just have the money given to them without much accountability (that I can see at least).
We have been and are looking at doing more to try and keep the cadets interested, BUT these have a cost attached and the fact we are passing £x’s to Wing etc each year, is becoming more and more irritating.
The committee (like the majority of committees) put a lot of effort into fundraising and support the cadets and pay for social activities.
We can ask parents to contribute and they have been OK. But the parents support us with sponsored events and an annual raffle, plus subs, so it seems a bit much to keep asking them to dip into their pockets, when we are handing enough money over to cover a lot of these costs.
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Pretty sure the wing committee does the oversight job at that level?
But the wing committee doesn’t have a hand in raising the money. Unlike the civ com who raise it and have a large governance over their part.
From what I’ve seen, the day to day running of our wing committee is performed by the chair and the treasurer. They collect and pay in cheques on a weekly basis, and write cheques for small payments that need to be made quickly.
The approval of yearly budgets for the wing is always done at full committee meetings.
In may ways, it runs pretty much as as my own sqn committee.
I do get what your saying though! I think the sqn committee are much more likely to be emotionally invested in what they’re paying out, due to the effort put in whilst fund raising. Signing a £4000 cheque for venue hire for a wing event is much easier to do if the money just appears in the account (and will do so again in every six months…), and you haven’t spent the last 4 weekends backpacking to raise it!
I may be misssing something here, but we’re talking about subs - just collected as a matter of course, not fundraising activity.
It’s not like wings skim a percentage off of a bag-packing take (or at least mine doesn’t!).
Not only are the committee emotionally linked so are squadron staff. We support the committee doing things and look to get the cadets involved.
Maybe if Wing Staff were expected to support the Wing Committee in fund raising etc, they wouldn’t be as disconnected from the day to day life of the Corps.
I think we need to move away from this model. Like HQAC could do, Wings could tap into corporate money as it’s supporting a wider base and use this, rather than tapping into money as you say earned the hard way, with no ‘ownership’ of that money.
How many squadrons ring fence subscriptions?
In an ideal world they probably would, but like road tax should be for roads, it’s not, it just gets subsumed into the govts tax pot, as do subs go into the squadron fund like all money raised and committees have to keep an eye on things to ensure they have enough to pay the subs bill.
It is about time that the model for Corps NP finance changes and each level takes responsibility for its own fund raising.
Currently Wing Committees comprise a Chairman, Treasurer and perhaps a Secretary. Why shouldn’t they be a proper committee in their own right? Similarly Regional Committees (or rather the grandiose Council)? With responsibility for raising their own money.
No such thing
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Alright then VED which was originally Road Tax designed to be used for the road system.
NI, insurance tax, VAT, VED 
, fuel duty, alcohol duty, tobacco duty, and all levies, taxes and duties we pay, some should be ring fenced for specific things, but just go into the pot to be frittered away by govt depts.
I think the bigger issue is that you are not benefitting from equipment or money spent from your contribution. Have you spoken to your Wing committee to pick out what they spent money on recently?
I bet the units that have had money spent on them aren’t complaining?
Certainly the Wings I have been involved with have always had other sources of funding as the Cadet subscription isn’t really that much cash and would not support some of the big spends on equipment required to support centralised purchasing of things like fieldcraft equipment or AT equipment.
I’m still lost as to how this money is hard-earned.
If you can’t keep on top of charging a suitable level of subs such as you can afford the wing contribution and then managing not to accidentally spend it, then I can’t see how that’s somehow the wing’s fault.
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I think the original sentiment was that any money raised by charging subs should stay at unit level, where it could be used to directly benefit those that had paid the money in the first place.
Our subs bill last year was over £2000. We could do quite a lot with that money!*
That said, in a Wing of 1000 cadets, it would take an annual fund raising effort of around £30,000 to replace the income generated by subs, not to mention the contribution to HQAC (say 30,000 cadets(for ease of maths) at £30 per cadet per year = £900,000), plus the Regional contribution…
That’s a lot of fundraising to be done!
*Such as cut down on the bag packs and such that we do to raise money, and use that time to deliver actual Air Cadet training!
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Whatever is raised at squadrons with possibly the exception of subs, comes via doing some work, which varies in how hard it is. Apart from one instance nearly 30 years ago have our Wing got money (sponsorship for an overseas exped) from anywhere other than subs and a few bequeaths. Then as I understood it was the Wg Cdr ‘chatting up’ a cadet’s dad who ran a company, so the Wing Committee had to do little or nothing.
It’s not just a case of committees of managing money to ensure it’s there to pay the bill, as MVL says in their instance £2K and c£1.8K in ours, disappearing into a black hole, could be put to much, much, much better use locally. With just admin costs that HQAC have shrugged off, our costs before ‘stepping out of the door’ are c£900 pa and we don’t have an SOV, I know speaking to mates with SOVs their basic costs are 2½-3 times that, if the bus needs fixing.
I think that Wings and above would be more in tune with squadron life if they had to raise the money they need. Imagine the staff at these levels (they have sod all to do wrt the Corps) having to stand around bag packing, on a fund raising stall, doing a sponsored activity, filling out forms for grants etc, it would mean that disappearing onto Wing, Region or HQAC would lose some of its appeal. They are like dole scroungers waiting for their giro.
What exactly do you think it’s used for at Wing? It’s there to benefit the people who paid for it in the first place.
Which is where the part that wings demand come from. So what exactly is the problem?