When I give a dollar to CESA, what do they spend it on?

It's a question that a lot of people wonder about. After all, while CESA is operated as a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization, that doesn't explain what is done with the revenue of the club.

The chart to the right of this text depicts the categories and percentages of those categories associated with the expenses of CESA.

As you'd expect, the majority (53%) of our expenses are associated with delivering services to players. These are expenses such as coaching salaries, coach licensing, tournament entry fees, insurance, and the like. The other major expenses we have are tournament expenses (17%) and field/building expenses (14%). Tournament expenses include trophies, program brochure printing, referees fees, referee lodging, advertising, club and league affiliation fees, medical insurance, medical supplies, and the like. Field and building expenses are associated with our debt service on our loan to pay for our fields, the maintenance of those fields, and the like.

Our other expense categories are SCYSA fees (5%), fundraising expenses (4%), camp expenses (3%), G&A (2%), and the ever-present category-defying miscellaneous (2%). Our expenses associated with the SCYSA are for all of the players registered in the club with the SCYSA (and thus the USYSA) and for a variety of other SCYSA-related expenses. Our fundraising expenses are those associated with our efforts to raise funds and include our spending on events such as our golf tournament and on printed material. Our camp expenses are those expenses directly associated with the CESA camps while our G&A (General and Administrative) expenses are those primarily associated with running our office. G&A and miscellaneous expenses are those that we look at continuously to try to reduce; after all, while we'll always have some of these types of expenses we want to minimize them as much as possible in order to focus our spending on delivering the most value to our players.

Of course, all of this talk of expenses leads to the next question, to wit...

How does CESA get the money to pay for all of these expenses?

Okay...the answer to this question will take one more chart. But we promise you this will be the last one!

The chart to the left of this text depicts the categories and percentages of those categories associated with the revenue of CESA.

The majority of our revenue comes from the fees that parents pay for their children to learn and play soccer at CESA. Please note that these are not all of the fees that a parent pays their team; instead, these are the fees that the teams pay the club. For more information on that, talk to your team's treasurer. If you notice, there is a 6 point difference between the expenses associated with these player fees and the revenue associated with those fees. That 6 point difference is used to pay the SCYSA fees and our G&A expenses, which for the mathematically inclined among you adds up to 7 points -- or to put it simply we spend more delivering services to players than we get back in fees.

Our other major sources of revenue include tournaments (21%) and fundraising (11%). We are working hard to increase our revenue from both sources. We are working with a number of clubs to build partnership agreements with them regarding our tournaments in order to increase the number of teams that attend; our other major challenge in this regard is simply getting enough volunteers and resources to help us hold larger tournaments. We continue to work on increasing our fundraising revenue as well.

Other sources of revenue include camps (6%) and miscellaneous (3%).

Now that you've taken the time to learn a bit more about our expense and revenue structure, what's next?

We Need Your Help!

We are continuously looking for ways to increase our revenues from sources other than the fees that parents must pay for their children to learn and play soccer at CESA. Please consider giving to CESA and volunteering at CESA. Also please consider sponsoring CESA. If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to contact us.

18 Boland Court, Greenville, SC 29615
Phone: (864) 329-1113
Fax: (864) 329-1103
Open 9:00 AM - 3:30 PM, Monday - Friday