Should Individual Committee Members Of Gurdwaras Financially Benefit From Tournaments Supported By The Gurdwara?

[Improving Gurdwaras]

Should individual committee members of Gurdwaras financially benefit from tournaments supported by the Gurdwara?

Some Gurdwaras financially support tournaments. For example, a prominent Gurdwara recently donated 5k, plus trophies, plus adverts, plus extensive coverage in newspapers etc.

Tournaments often have many money generating activities, which is what you would expect.

However, where tournaments make a large profit should they return the Sangat's money and any other costs incurred by the Gurdwara?

Where the organisers are running the tournament as a 'business venture' and the Gurdwara agrees to provide financial support the organisers may say they made a profit due to their own hard work so the Sangat should not get any money back unless there was a 'GOODWILL' gesture on the part of the organisers.

However, if the main organiser also happens to be a committee member of the Gurdwara what should happen? There appear to be three options:

1) The entire 'profit' from the tournament should go to the Gurdwara as the Gurdwara provided financial and other support and a member of the committee agreed to be the main organiser. This happens with some tournaments as the main organisers are part of the Gurdwara committee.

2) The main organiser (who happens to be a committee member) may have put in a lot of personal time, effort and resources so may be entitled to a part of the 'profit'. For example, in the tournament in question - the number of attendees, gate receipts, sponsorship, costs of stalls etc. suggests the 'profit' may have been as much as 20k. Perhaps the 'profit' should be divided equally between the main organiser and the Gurdwara. This way the support provided by the Gurdwara and Sangat to the tournament would be recouped from the charges at the tournament and the individual on the Gurdwara committee would not be seen as unfairly benefiting from his position.

3) The main organiser (who happens to be a committee member) keeps the entire 'profit' of 20k. This would appear an unacceptable situation as it could easily be assumed the committee member has financially benefited from his position on the Gurdwara Committee and part of his 'profit' is the Sangat's money and other donations.

It will be interesting to see how this situation is resolved in the next few days by the Gurdwara Committee.

If option 1 or 2 are not followed the name of the Gurdwara involved, the name and contact details of the committee member in question and the contact details of the main 'office holders' of the Gurdwara Committee that agreed to this approach should be made publicly available for the Sadh Sangat to contact the individuals concerned.

In future all Gurdwara committees that financially support tournaments should insist on option 1 if the main organiser in on the Gurdwara committee or split of profits with the organisers - option 2 - if the main organiser is not on the Gurdwara committee. Only in this way are the resources of the Sangat/Gurdwara properly protected.

[fortunate]

why not return, just the money that was lent by the gurdwara? The 5K should be returned and the rest is profit for this tournament for the organizers

[Improving Gurdwaras]

why not return, just the money that was lent by the gurdwara? The 5K should be returned and the rest is profit for this tournament for the organizers

If the main organiser was NOT in the Gurdwara committee this would be a reasonable conclusion. The Gurdwara may have donated close to 8k - 5k financial support, trophies (around 1.5k), adverts and media coverage (around 1k) etc.

However, how much of the committee members' 'sewa' was on behalf of the Gurdwara and Sangat and how much was not 'sewa' but a business venture to make money.

This is messy but Option 2 - Profit less ALL costs incurred by the Gurdwara may be the only solution in this case.

In future Option 1 should be the case if a committee member is the main organiser, if the main organisers are outside the committee Option 2 - Profit less costs incurred by the Gurdwara would probably be the best solution.

[Carpe Diem]

Jo karey... so parey...