Obligatory First Post

ou're right, a travel assistance system would be fantastic; travel and rooms are generally the biggest expense for most attendees to any con, from what i can see, and rooms are a lot easier to fudge than travel, especially if you're going a long way. Certainly there are some gathers i've passed on because i wasn't sure i was up to covering travel costs.

Right now, i have no reason to believe that a travel assistance system is on the horizon, probably because of sheer logistics. The board could consider whether putting up a travel assistance section in the forums (basically a place to say 'i need money, please help') at some point, though certainly not for this year. The hcallenge i can see is that if you gave money to it you would, essentially, be sending money over the 'net to someone you know nothing about and that most likely no one you know can vouch for. That's a bit sketchy, to be honest, and just opens the door for a lot of ppl to abuse it.

The other way i could see it happening is that the board could someday decide to set up a separate fund that furs can donate to on their registration forms, with the understanding that the money will be doled out to others who apply to it for scholarship assistance. That would be seven kinds of nifty, but... *sighs* ...the challenge i can see is person power. Something like that would require one or more people to check the balance at one particular time each year, read all of those scholarship requests, make decisions about who should get how much, send out acceptance or rejection letters (i'm positive that AC would receive more requests than they could answer), receive travel confirmations, write and send out reimbursement checks, and then record the whole thing for tax purposes. If furs want a receipt for the tax deduction, then that's even more that needs to be done. That's a huge job, and one that requires access to whatever bank account that fund money goes into, so you'd almost certainly need someone who served or could serve on the board that they trusted to handle that kind of money, and i don't know who that could necessarily be. I don't know if anyone has access to the AC account(s) other than our chairman himself, and i am *positive* that he doesn't have the time to administer a fund like this on top of his other duties.

So as much as i adore this idea, i think it's something we may have to think about for a while longer until we can find some reasonable way to make it happen.

Sorry if i've gone on a bit too long about this--i love the concept, but i work for the finance department of a nonprofit, right next to the grants coordinator no less, so i know way too much about this stuff.