OK, this is a much better tone, and some interesting ideas.
To Jake's point, 50% of the respondents said they wouldn't attend an Alter Cup regardless of any changes that were made. I don't really know what to do with that; I don't think you throw away their feedback, because as others have mentioned, this is viewed as a benefit to all of our members, and they would like to have a say in what they want to see done.
Running it every two years has been brought up a few times, and could help offset the costs. However, it's been noted by US Sailing and from the survey responses that 10 boats on the water is not a significant event. So, if we tried to get 20 provided boats every two years, the dollars come out to be the same.
If we ran qualifiers every year, take the 20 teams from there only (10 per year from qualifiers, no petitions or invitations), that could make the qualifiers relevant once again. Of course, we'd need to come up with a plan to make people want to attend, or we'll go back to where we've just come from.
If we use the qualifiers as fundraisers, we might be able to make this work. $20,000 sounds like a lot until you break it down. Here's a random sampling:
$1,000 each times 20 provided boats = $20,000 $20,000 needed every 2 years = $10,000 per year $10,000 per year to be raised at 10 qualifier events = $1,000 per qualifier event
That's it. We need $1,000 from each area, each year.
That's really not hard to do; it's a $50 donation per person for a 10-boat qualifier.
So, what realistic chance do we have of getting 10 area qualifiers run every year with at least 10 boats, with an entry fee of $200 per boat ($100 for the regatta, $100 towards the finals)? Yes, all other requirements will be unchanged (pay for your membership now and it won't be related to attending the event).
There are other ways to get there. We could have clinics, where we charge $50 per person to attend, all proceeds go to providing boats for the finals.
The more boats at the qualifier, the less money would need to be raised per person. We could augment with raffles, sail-a-thons, bake sales, etc. We all buy stuff (Girl Scout cookies, etc.) or donate towards walk-a-thons, etc. at the office, we could raise money that way.
Obviously, we have some areas without qualifiers, and would need to address that. Also, if the costs are more than $1,000 per boat, all of the pricing goes up; we'd just need to get more boats to the qualifiers.
