franklin_m

I too want to congratulate Echo. Very well said.

As with many things in life, "Follow the money."

AMA is a membership based organization, and the overwhelming majority of its revenue comes from membership dues, club fees, event sanctions, and magazine revenue. As such, that's a very good measure of base level of support. Based on their public IRS 990 filings and adjusted for inflation, over the last 20 years (2020-2000) that revenue is down 38%. Over the last 10 years its down 18%. Over the 5 years it's down 25%.

In the face of that kind of performance, they've clearly had to look to other means to boost the amount of money coming in the door. Yes, they've had good years and bad years with investments, but that's dependent on factors beyond their control. So I think it's entirely reasonable that they took a look around and saw compulsory membership as a way to juice their income. Thus 336 was born with the "and" language. Thankfully that didn't last, as the FAA explicitly said they did not interpret it to compel membership. It was fixed once and for all by changing that "and" to an "or" - thus ending the prospect of compulsory membership. This plus aging demographics and reduced interest in these types of organizations at all provide considerable downward pressure on their principal sources of revenue.

Then came RemoteID and the possibility that the only place to fly recreational sUAS without a module were FRIAs - the vast majority of which will be AMA fields, where AMA dues and club dues are required. But AMA was again too cute by half, and they soon realized that not all fields would be approved for FRIAs, therefore they MUST support development and production of modules for their members that won't have a FRIA at their field. As others have noted, with every module produced, that's one less individual that truly "needs" AMA. This then becomes another downward pressure on revenue.

I think their financial stress is evident in the decreasing time between their dues hikes: 16 years (2002 - 2016) to the most recent 6 years (2016-2022). Thus the desperate search for non-dues revenue we read about in their EC notes. But even if some of that comes to pass, under IRS rules there's a limit to how much non-dues revenue a 501c3 can earn and remain a 501c3. So the EC is clearly gambling again. Think about what happens if the current trends continue (dues revenue continues to drop while non-dues revenue increases). It's the perfect storm for the end of their 501c3 status.

I've spoken with Mr. Egan and he's clued into the AMA financial solvency as it relates to their actions. While some may say there's other motivations for their actions, I think it's hard to look at the numbers and say what I've postulate isn't plausible.