Unfortunately there is no one ‘silver bullet’ to keep AMSA finically secure. The key to maintaining a strong and viable organisation now and into the future lies in a combination of strategies and long-term planning.

In the short term, further incremental cost reductions are a must. Our team has identified many things we can eliminate or reduce in our budget with minimal functional loss. These areas include internal, secretarial and relocation costs and cumulatively, amount to significant savings when implemented. Our projects and plans are fully costed and budgeted and are ready to roll.

Furthermore, we have to re-evaluate how we relate to one of our most important sources of income: our sponsors. This has both a short and a long term element to it.

In the short term, we need to be offering sponsors opportunities to invest with us where they see value. Our current sponsorship prospectus is outdated and inappropriately values much of what we have to offer – some things are priced far too high, and some items we are giving away too cheaply. We will re-work our entire sponsorship regime so that we aren’t losing out, and maximise the value we get from what we already have.

We will also bring a longer term outlook to sponsorship. By negotiating longer-term contracts, financial instead of calendar year deals and getting better feedback from our sponsors, we will bring stability to AMSA longer than the one year term of any given executive.

Furthermore, AMSA’s previous attempts to secure lucrative government and private sector grants have met with mixed success. While we have received some specific-purpose payments in the past, particularly for events like Convention and GHC, our team have looked into the reasons for AMSA being knocked back in the past, and are perfectly placed to see future applications meet with success.

We are always on the hunt for new sponsors and sources of revenue, but we are also mindful of the economic and political place AMSA inhabits at the moment. These are tough times, and AMSA has already demonstrated it has the capacity to pull through them, but the key to ongoing prosperity isn’t found in the hype of a flash new proposition – it will be through the continued hard work of the many medical students that keep contributing to our national body.