That is exactly the attitude I came into this with in October (it's not that much money). However, at that time, our numbers were in the $7,000 to $10,000 range, and have changed considerably since then (according to the team that did the research).
Having said that, even at the lower numbers, no one was ever able to pull this money together in the past, which is why the H/J fund was getting tapped to the tune of $7,000 per year for the past few cycles.
(... JW, feel free to refrain from adding a lament of past sponsor issues here...)
In 2011, the rules changed for sponsorship (as reported by Jack, Liz, Shannon and backed up by Jill, the doors are open to whatever we want to do, barring direct conflicts), but again, no one has come forward with big bucks to pull this off.
There's always hope for 2013, but someone needs to step up right away to make that happen.
And, even if we did pull that off, it doesn't solve the problem of raising attendance and being more inclusive, which are major goals of US Sailing, and supported by our survey.
Fortunately, we have some pretty open-minded folks on the committee, or we wouldn't have gotten this far for 2012...
