GUFFAWE 9, August 1990, is published by the outgoing Australian GUFF administrator Irwin Hirsh, at 26 Jessamine Avenue, East Prahran, Victoria 3181, AUSTRALIA. European administrator is Roelof Goudriaan, Caan Van Necklaan 63, 2218 BB Rijswijk (ZH), THE NETHERLANDS. For details of who is the new Australian administrator please see below. Continue to support GUFF.
AND THE WINNER IS Roman Orszanski. Roman won by one vote on the final ballot. A total of 123 votes were cast. 107 votes with the Australian administrator and 16 votes with the European administrator. The voting was as follows:
1st Ballot 2nd 3rd Aust Eur Total Ballot Ballot Larry Dunning 27 6 33 34 X Mark Loney &
Michelle Muijsert36 4 40 40 58 Roman Orszanski 40 6 46 46 59 Hold Over Funds 2 2 X Write-in:
Wilson da Silva1 - 1 X No Preference 1 - 1 3 6 107 16 123 123 123 Votes needed to win
on this ballot:
62
61
59X = eliminated Votes for No Preference were not considered when calculating the majority needed to win the vote. To say that this was a close result would be an understatement. Counting the votes proved to be a tense experience with at least three over-the-phone checks as Roelof and I made sure we hadn't made a mistake.
This race may just be the closest three person fan fund race there has been. Looking at the count all sorts of permutations come to mind. Seven more votes and Larry Dunning would have made the final ballot. Twenty more votes and Roman may not have made the final ballot. And if just one of Larry's supporters who directed her/his second preference to Roman went the other way, we'd have a different winner.
AS WINNER Roman will be attending ConFiction, the 48th Worldcon, being held in Den Haag, The Netherlands, in August. When I last spoke to Roman he was planning a six week trip. On his return home Roman will be taking over the administration of GUFF. Roman's address is:
PO Box 131
Marden
SA 5070
AUSTRALIATHE VOTERS The Australia administrator received votes from the following people:
Jenny Ackroyd – Justin Ackroyd – James Allen – P.A. Anderson – Ted Andrews – Joe Aquilina – Sally Beasley – Jenny Blackford Russell Blackford – Stephen Boucher – Peter Burns – Angus Caffrey – Dennis Callegari – Robin Clarke – Cindy Clarkson – Matthew Clarkson – Garry Dalrymple – M.P.Davis – Dianne De Bellis – Stephen Dedman – Terry Dowling – Larry Dunning – Brian Ende – Roy Ferguson – David Ferstat – Brian Forte John Foyster – Judith Freidin – Julian Freidin – Terry Frost – Bruce Gillespie – Michael Goh – Don Griffiths – Michael Hailstone – Michelle Hallett – Carey Handfield – Joanna Handfield – Kerrie Hanlon – Danny Heap – J Hersan – Mandy Herriot – Greg Hills – Gary Hoff – Kim Huett – Ben James – Lesley James – Robin Johnson – Jerry Kaufman – Rod Kearins – Peter Kelly – Cathy Kerrigan – Robert Lichtman – Eric Lindsay – Gordon Lingard – Mark Linneman – Martin Livings – Seth Lockwood – Mark Loney – Dave Luckett – LynC – Ken McCaw – Cath McDonnell – David McDonnell – Kevin Maclean – Mark Manning – Perry Middlemiss – Doug Miles – Lewis Morley – Michelle Muijsert – Andrew Murphy – Janice Murray – Sarah Murray-White – Clive Newall – John Newman – Peter Nicholls – Cath Ortlieb – Marc Ortlieb – Roman Orszanski – Denis Pack – Robin Pen – Marilyn Pride – Blair Ramage – Tim Reddan – Les Robertson – Yvonne Rousseau – Joe Schluter – Gerald Smith – Tara Smith – Lee Smoire – Nick Stathopoulos – Paul Stevens – Alan Stewart – Michael Studte – James Styles – Lucy Sussex – Charlene Taylor – Glen Tilley – Jane Tisell – Greg Turkich – Paul Verdi – Rohan Wallace – Phil Ware – Julian Warner – Karen Warnock – Jean Weber – Roger Weddall – Lucy Zinkiewicz.
The breakdown, on a state-by-state basis, is:
ACT 4 NSW 18 SA 4 Tas 1 Vic 48 NA 27 USA 5 A WORD OF WARNING In the current fan-scene environment it is not possible to know everyone in fandom, even if you've reached the prominence of being a fan fund winner. If fan fund administrators felt they knew everyone in fandom they wouldn't be adding that bit allowing voters to cite people who can support the voter's fannish credentials. The intention of that section is to include people who have the fannish bona fides but just happen to not know the administrator, not to exclude them.
Some people seem to treat that section of the ballot as a joke. When the voter knows the administrator the joke is nothing more than harmless, but when the voter does not know the administrator I fail to see the humour, I received a vote from someone whose name I didn't recognise. In the testimonial section this person didn't name anyone, but wrote "Gosh, just about anyone who matters I guess." I asked Wendy, who is the person who matters the most to me, if she knew this person, She said she didn't.
I don't see the administrators job to include chasing up the voting credentials of people who didn't avail themselves of the opportunity to provide them in the first place, ao I decided to disqualify the vote. Fortunately for this person sometime over the next week I recognised her/his name and the vote ended up being counted. The point is, however, if you think a fan fund administrator doesn't know you do your best to make sure your vote is counted, not your worst. As I've pointed out above, this race came down to just one vote. Not every race is so close but at the time people vote no-one knows that.
THANKS GO TO John Foyster, John Harvey, Jack Herman, LynC and Clive Newall, Janice Murray, Lee Smoire, Martin Tudor, the Melbourne Science Fiction Club, and Carol Wood for distributing GUFF ballots. If I've missed anyone on this list it is because I never saw a copy of the ballot they produced.
Swancon XV committee for their donation of $100 to GUFF and their programming of an auction at their convention. $54 was raised for GUFF at the auction. Thanks go to Larry Dunning who took along material for GUFF, and whoever ran the auction.
The committee of the World Fantasy Convention 1989, held in Seattle in October, 1989. The committee made a donation of $125 out of the convention surplus and two copies of the Souvenir Book to GUFF.
Justin Ackroyd, Kim Huett, Cath Ortlieb, and Jean Weber and Eric Lindsay, who made substantial donations of auctionable material.
Angus Caffrey, who continues to support the fan funds in strange and wondrous ways. Angus incurred expenses on behalf of Danse Macabre and rather than be reimbursed he asked that $40 of the money go to GUFF. GUFF also benefited from a dare he put to Danse Macabre's de-facto chair Roger Weddall for the latter to pull down his pants. Roger took up the bet, and GUFF became another $35 richer. Thanks Angus.
Peter Burns, for the use of his electrostencil machine.
The committee of Danse Macabre, for the programme time and programme book space they gave to GUFF. The auction at DM saw GUFF $452 richer. Thanks also go to the various people who helped out at the auction: Justin Ackroyd, Jack Herman, Joe Schuller, Clive Newall, Roy Ferguson, Cath McDonnell, Terry Dowling and John Casper.
And finally, the three candidates and their nominators.
FINANCIAL REPORT, as at June 1990.
Balance, at December 1988 $2647.32 Add: Voting fees 578.46 Donations 354.00 Auction income 1087.96 Fanzine sales 108.00 Bank interest 517.73 2646.15 5293.47 Less: Postage 113.46 Sundry 405.78 519.24 Balance, at June 1990 4774.23 Not included in the above is auction income of about $230, which is owed to GUFF as a result of the recently completed 3rd postal auction. Nor have I included donations which the Swancon XIV and Danse Macabre committees announced will be made to GUFF.
Included in the sundry expenses are an $80 transfer to the European GUFF accounts,. $237 to pay for Roelof's hotel room at Swancon XIV, various bank charges, telephone calls, the costs of producing GUFFAWE, etc.
Looking at the financial report the main observation is that fundraising has been extremely successful over the past few years. As a result it is now possible to start to bring GUFF into some sort of equal footing with DUFF. In the past GUFF has only been able to provide the winner with a airplane ticket to the airport nearest to the convention hotel, transfer to the hotel and a room at the hotel. DUFF provides all this and a sum of money for the winner's internal travel on The Other Continent Terry Dowling and John Berry, the two most recent DUFF winners, each got about $700 for such travel.
On a financial level DUFF recognises that the winner meets and visits fans in their fans, while GUFF doesn't. Up until now the main reason for this is because as a newer fund GUFF hasn't had the time to build up the bank. Now we have the bank to start subsidising a small amount of the winner's other travel costs, and will be making it retrospective back to the first race. From the Australian end that means making four payments, to John Foyster, Justin Ackroyd, Roman and myself. The payments will be made after GUFF'S .initial commitment to Roman has been met. At this stage I envisage that each payment will be $200.
As a guide, I spent at least $1800 on internal travel (car-hire and a Eurorail ticket) when I travelled around Europe on ay GUFF trip, and more then two-thirds of my four months away was spent meeting with and staying with science fiction fans.
VOTING FEES Back in 1984 John Foyster, the then out-going GUFF administrator, recommended that $2 as a minimum vote wasn't "very appropriate ... although it may have been back in the old times." John suggested that the minimum "be raised to $5 or $10, given the large proportion of voters who only give the minimum." During the next two races Justin Ackroyd went against John's advice, keeping the minimum voting fee at $2. I've partly gone with John's advice; making the minimum $3 in the 1989 race and $4 in this race.
In view of these increases perhaps it is appropriate to present some statistics regarding the voting fees and voting fee revenue for the past two races:
Race: 1989 1990 Minimum voting fee $3.00 $4,00 Average voting fee $4.44 $5.41 Number giving minimum 22 46 Number giving more than the minimum 28 61 The last item can be broken up in the following way:
Number giving between minimum and $5 9 0 Number giving $5 12 43 Number giving > $5 7 18 33 people voted in both races. Comparing their voting fees in the two races gives the following table.
1989 race Number giving Min > the min 1990 race: Min 10 2 > the min 5 16 Discussion about the effect of these increases is hard to determine. Ail sorts of variables come into play, like whether people voted in person or fey mail, whether they paid by cheque or by cash – information I didn't keep. My estimate is that about 85% vote in person, with a slightly larger percentage paying by cash. The only conclusion I can determine comes out of the last table – that there are a large number of people who will give just the minimum and an equally large number of people who will make the effort to give more than the minimum voting fee.
THIS ISSUE OF GUFFAWE is my sixth and last administrator's report. Throughout the three years that I have been administrator people have often wondered why I have bothered with the reports given that their production consume much of my time and much of GUFF'S money. Mainly I bothered with the administrator's report format because I think it was worth the money and effort.
I think it is important to do things such as publishing the list of voters, the people and organisations which help out and a financial report. The people who vote and help deserve some form of public thank-you, and doing so reminds us that the success of a fan fund does not rest solely on the shoulders of the current administrator, nor can an administrator do a good job without the help of other people. The financial report is important in order to reassure people that the money they give is being spent in the way it was intended and that the fund is meeting its financial aim. Another reason for publishing this information is because some people like to have it. This was brought home to me when I published GUFFAWE 4, my first report. After sending out the issue one person wrote to me to thank me. Among the items included in the issue were the list of people who voted in the race which I won. The list was given to me by my predecessor, Justin Ackroyd, That person had twice written to Justin asking for just that information and had twice had her/his letter ignored.
All this is not to say that a fan fund administrator has to publish reports. With good use of a 'press release' sent to newszines the same information can be aa widely distributed to fandom, However, there are problems with this method, such as relying on the newszine editor's good sense; In reporting the results of the most recent DUFF race Thyme declined to list the Australian voters, for a lack of space. There is nothing wrong with that, but they also neglected to tell people how they could get a copy of the list. Meanwhile, it is three months since I sent the GUFF results to Jack Herman and he still hasn't published another issue of his monthly fanzine.
By publishing GUFFAWE I was able to put out GUFF information and ensure that it was sent to as many of its current supporters as possible. My mailing list for any issue included the people who voted in the most recent race, meaning that each of those voters (except for those people who moved without leaving a CoA) got to see at least one copy of the ballot for the next race.
Having decided to spend some of GUFF'S money on putting out GUFFAWE I decided to use its pages as a fundraising venture, through the running of three postal auctions. By offering up rare fanzines GUFF benefited by about $800. Had I placed the same items in a convention auction I doubt more than $300 would have been raised. In this way I was able to use GUFFAWE to both keep the fund in people's minds and to meet the fund's financial aims. Thanks must go to John Foyster, David Grigg and Walt Willis, who donated items to GUFF specifically for inclusion in the postal auctions,
AND AT THAT POINT It is time for me to sign off. Thanks, once again, to all the people who have supported GUFF, in any way, during the three years that I've been administrator. And congratulations, again, to Roman – GUFF hopes you have a great trip and a productive stint as administrator! Cheers all.
PRINTED MATTER
If undeliverable please return to:
26 Jessamine Ave, East Prahran,
Victoria 3181, AUSTRALIA.