A Bleak Future

I know some people. Some time back, they formed an organization. While this group isn't perfect, it does some important things that no other group does as well.

Anyway, this organization has gotten itself into a bit of debt problem.

Right now, there are about 33 people in the group, and the organization has debts of about $2.2 million. The group keeps pretty good records and are remarkably open, so they happen to know that, collectively, they earn about $1.96 million per year.

Their budget for the current year is to spend about $400,000 on various projects. Unfortunately, they are only going to collect about $318,000 in dues from their members. Pretty clearly something is going to have to be done to resolve this.

Last week, some of the leaders of the group suggested that perhaps some of the spending could be cut back a bit. As I understand it, it went something like this:

"Take a look at this $1.76 that we spend on this charity. I'm not saying that it isn't a good charity; it is. It does great work. But we are $2.2 million in debt and will add another $70,000+ this year, so this seems like something we should look at. This cut is only 0.0004% of the current budget."

Unfortunately, the membership of the group did not react... how can I put this... rationally to this suggestion.

I worry about the long-term future for this group.