Dear Member
Current financial Position
You will find attached financial statements in relation to the 2017-18 Financial Year.
We wanted to highlight the financial position for the year, which shows a deficit of £56,421. This reduces the reserves held by the association to £7,128.
Background to current position
There are a number of reason for the projected deficit.
Firstly, there was an overspend in relation to the Senior Men taking part in the Commonwealth Games. This was mainly due to the need to provide support services to the athletes, and latterly by late changes which resulted in unanticipated costs.
Secondly, the Board took a decision to proactively back the development of Women’s Basketball and agreed to fund a tour to Thailand and Malaysia for the Senior Women in an effort to maximise their chances of securing an invite to the Commonwealth Games. While this decision didn’t result in a Commonwealth Games place, the Board believe that backing our Senior Women was the right thing to do and gave the players an important development opportunity.
Thirdly, like other sporting organisations, we have not been immune to the difficult financial climate for funding and sponsorship. In this area, we’ve had mixed fortunes in achieving our commercial revenue targets. Over the course of the year, we didn’t meet the commercial income target we had set. Although the current financial climate for attracting commercial sponsorship is challenging, we continue to believe in the merits of developing ventures such as Caledonia Pride in order to further develop the women’s game in Scotland.
However, more positively, since the financial year end we have invested greater energy and expertise into our commercial pursuits and this has resulted in us being able to increase our current partnerships and securing new relationships with major brands that we will announce in the coming weeks. We continue to focus on building more diverse income streams for our sport.
Next steps
We have always been proud of our ability to manage our finances effectively. To ensure that this continues, we have established a robust plan to ensure that we build reserves back up over the next 3 years. To help this, we have overhauled our finance system and increased our finance staff, so that our governance and ability to manage financial risk is the best it can be.
Due to the fact that we are actively making savings in other areas to ensure that we’re set up to achieve the strategic priorities established for the year ahead, we are confident that the need to make savings will not impact significantly on the services we provide to clubs.
We project a small surplus in the 18-19 current financial year as these reductions are realised and with a more significant surplus being generated in 2019-20.
Over the next year we would like to do more to explain to you the membership exactly how your money is spent, so that there is greater transparency about our goals and how the money you contribute helps to achieve them.
We will be available to answer any questions in relation to the financial position at the AGM.
Financial Statements, Income and expenditure account 2017-18
To view basketballscotland’s Financial Statements, Income and expenditure account for 2017-18, please click HERE.
