Great 2024 National Convention News!
As many of you may remember, just over 3 months ago, The Southwest Model A’s, along with the Model A Ford Club of America, were forced to cancel the 2024 National Convention due to the natural disasters that devastated the Ruidoso community.
At the time of cancellation, our first priority was to ensure the safety of our attendees and the families in the area. Once we got everyone safely notified, we began the process of identifying how to go about “unwinding” the first national convention MAFCA has ever been forced to cancel.
Both organizations committed to refunding fees paid by attendees to the Southwest Model A’s for the National Convention if requested. We knew this could be a substantial financial burden, estimated at the time to be over $85,000.00 more than the current, available cash balance. Even though this was a huge dollar amount, MAFCA stood ready, willing and able to back up The Southwest Model A’s to completely meet all their financial obligations, as we do with any chapter that hosts a national event.
In addition, the incredible generosity and caring by our MAFCA members resulted in just over 25% of the registration fees being donated to help the Southwest Model A’s meet expenses. What GREAT people MAFCA members are!!!
MAFCA offered to develop and facilitate an online auction to raise money from all the wonderful gifts donated to the Pick-A-Prize room. Once again, MAFCA members came through with incredible generosity in bidding on these items. The auction exceeded all expectations!
The bottom line is that with the original unspent monies The Southwest Model A’s had at the time of cancellation, vendor refunds, over $36,000.00 in donations from registrants, and over $16,000.00 raised through the auction, the Southwest Model A’s was able to pay all requests for refunds, all financial outstanding obligations and have turned a possible $85,000.00 deficit into a profit of just over $7,500.00!!!!!!!
This could absolutely not have been done without much hard work by many individuals and the outpouring of generosity of MAFCA members and suppliers!
Early on in this process, we stated: In the very unlikely event that there are more funds available than expenses after all the refunds and accounting has been completed, the plan is to donate remaining money to a fire relief charity in the Ruidoso community.
That is exactly what the Southwest Model A’s and MAFCA will do. 100% of the profit from this event will be donated by the Southwest Model A’s to bona fide charities in helping the devastated residents of the Ruidoso area. This will be at least $7,539.16 as of today and, if any additional funds are identified, this number can only go up!
The Southwest Model A’s and MAFCA will not retain a penny of the money you have so generously provided through your contributions. Again, the hard work of many made this miracle happen and are too numerous to acknowledge here, but the real heroes of this miracle are you, the generous members of MAFCA. Thank you one and all!
Robert Bullard
MAFCA National President – 2024
Ray Gabaldon
Chair – 2024 National Convention