The answer to your question lies in the EC minutes, and the AMA's financial statements which are in the Member's Only Section on the AMA site. If you want to know exactly what it covered, you are going to have to do some digging. About $2,000,000 is related the the HQ building and refurbishing other buildings. Other amounts were from developing the National Flying Site in Muncie. There were several outstanding loans, all at higher interest rates. Doug Holland’s expertise was applied and the loans were all rolled into one at the low interest rates reported.

When RCadmin started this forum, he held a somewhat different view of the AMA than I think he does today. He publicy called for an RCU member, with the expertise necessary, to make an assessment of the financial statement. It was never actually posted on RCU, but was put in a separate section. It still exists today here: http://utopia.rcuniverse.com/amafinancials.html . Although somewhat dated, it will give you an idea of how a “disinterested” third party views the financial statement from the past. He touches on the loan you inquired about.

The statement at the end of the analysis always seemed very "on target" to me. I believe it is the exacty approach being used by Don Koranda. I post that statement here:

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I see two major challenges for the AMA Leadership:

The AMA must be an organization for its members. Members must be first and foremost in every decision made by the leadership. To keep them first, you have to know how they feel and what they are thinking and must do your best to reflect their wishes in your decisions. Survey members, visits clubs, get on the websites, listen. Not to what you want to hear, but to real members with real opinions. Use their input into your decisions. Have integrity in your decision making. Is the decision in the best interests of your membership?

Almost any organization has a natural bias toward establishing a fixed structure. Infrastructure is added as the organization grows and the infrastructure becomes part of the overhead that the organization must support in the future. The national flying site is but one example. Staff levels are another. Proliferation of programs is yet another. In the event that growth slows or stops, these overheads become a burden that will doom an organization. If that happens, higher costs will now be spread across fewer members, so the cost per member becomes much higher. Members who can marginally afford the dues or those that are marginally interested in the hobby quit, leaving an even greater burden for those who remain. In aviation, it’s known as a death spiral.

The opinions contained in this document are my own and were not influenced by anyone else. This entire document is categorized as my personal opinion and in no way should be construed as anything other than that.
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