Here’s a full copy of a file given to the Finance Committee (and which may not have been given to the rest of the board). It shows the past few years’ experience, and the budget for 2023.
One thing that leaps out, from p. 9. Revenues, especially member dues, have been falling for the last four years, from $350-360 million to $207 million overall. But the budget projects that in 2023 revenues will go up, from $205 to $230 million, and member dues will go up, from $110 to $134 million. It also projects that legal expenses (OGC) will in 2023 fall from $53 to 34 million. All this isn’t budgeting, it’s wishful thinking. Why would member dues suddenly rise instead of declining, when nothing has been done to address the reasons for the decline? Why would legal expenses drop, when the New York case will go to trial in 2023, a trial that might last months, with NRA paying for at least three teams of attorneys (for itself, LaPierre, and Frazer)? A trial that will generate tons of publicity about the corruption and thus make more members quit in disgust? The budget is wishful thinking, or perhaps a fiction to convince the rest of the board that happy days are here again.
Let’s make some assumptions that are wildly optimistic but not fiction. Membership dues don’t decline even farther, but somehow remain at 2022 levels. Legal expenses also remain at those levels.
With the budgeted expenses, NRA will in 2023 run a $43 million deficit, coming atop a 2022 deficit of $11 million. This is the most wildly optimistic case; reality will certainly be worse. It’s hard to see how NRA survives 2023.
NRA in Danger 
In any budget minded standard mid sized company, these type of projections would come with explanations of there methodology. Monthly meetings would be held to discuss each miscalculation and peoples feet would be held to the fire to correct or explain the/any erroneous projection.
I’m not sure this will happen here.
Actually, correction. I am very sure this won’t happen here.
Nero is fiddling!
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budgets are nothing more than smoke and mirrors designed for those NRA senior leadership who wish to project their ‘perspectives’ and who are presenting behaviour(s) similar to Melville’s monomaniacal Capt Ahab….
Sad part this tyrannical power and control behaviour is affecting other pertinent sub-divisions, e.g., E & T who are faltering serving the good citizens of this country, beside ILA, within the organization.
Only question now is when will the ashes cool?
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In a normal organization, someone would be asking the hard questions, like why in the hell have revenues fallen in only 4 years by nearly half? And if the responsible parties are the Executive VP and his leadership team, they would be gone in a heartbeat. Period.
That the board has not acted in such a manner, is both inexcusable and telling. And when the whole thing is truly and finally finished, and the buzzards come to pick the carcass, and the criminal cases begin to get filed, if I were a board member, I would hope that I had enough money to pay for a vigorous defense or a very good lawyer to get the best plea deal possible, for my mishandling of my position as a board member of the largest gun rights group in America.
That WLP and company will be charged is to me a given, but who knows? And the other thing that concerns me is, are they stowing money away from the NRA, in order to pay for their legal defense? Or are they paying for it in advance with these inordinate amounts of money that the NRA is paying now in legal fees? These would be good questions that the board should be asking, if they were concerned with doing their jobs.
I am actually just a former common foundry worker, so I have no real idea of how these things work aside from what I have seen or read. But I am really glad that in the 35 years that I spent making steel, I was the best at it there was, and I always made certain that I acted in the best interests of those who depended on me. If you bought a gun with my steel in it or flew in a jet with my steel in the engine, you can rest assured that you are safe. I just wish that WLP could say something similar to all of the member of the NRA. He should be ashamed of himself.
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Do the NRA Board of Directors believe they have zero fiduciary obligations and thus will not be held accountable for the actions of the leadership?
I don’t know..is the NRA Board structured so the Directors are immune from prosecution and/or civil suits as a result of known, ongoing illegal, questionable acts by the executives that the Board failed to stop?
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