News and Announcements

State of the Alliance - September 24, 2026

(09/24/2026)

This is the third in a series of weekly informal updates from the PLA President. Originally, I planned these to go out every Tuesday, aligned with Board meetings; perhaps I'll embrace the timing that's worked the last few weeks and commit to publishing them on Thursdays instead.

Following from the financial findings from last week, much of my work this week has been focused on budgeting. The PLA doesn't have a Board-approved budget for the current fiscal year (July 2026 - June 2027), which has made it difficult to identify financial risks or plan appropriately for new expenses. My goal is to present a FY27 budget at the October board meeting in two weeks to rectify that. In particular, the PLA's accounts are lower now than in recent years, so providing a balanced-to-profitable budget for FY27 is a necessity. I'd like see the PLA on a path that will allow it to rebuild enough cash on hand to absorb another major disruption like we experienced in 2020 without bankrupting the organization.

To support that, I've been working with the major committees to do financial planning for the fiscal year. Most of the Special Events Committee's work is done for the year, but Community Education, Kinkfest, and the PLA Space all have significant expenses. Of these, the Community Education committee has very predictable costs, and Carslyle and I have been collaborating on the Kinkfest 27 budget based on figures from previous years and quotes from the venue and other major partners for this year. I'm working with the PLA Space team to identify which of our improvements are likely to happen this budget year and attach estimates for those expenses, as well as forecasting income from renting the space. 

This weekend, the PLA Space committee also met to do some overall planning and do some work in the space. This included @Blank101 finishing installation of a better-than-new leg for a pew that's part of our seating in the space, and the committee working together to remove part of an interior threshold making our space less accessible to wheelchair users. We also discussed a lot of the logistics of rentals, bills, and maintaining the space as we look to having it operating regularly.

On the Community Education front, we finished rescheduling Christina B. Dynamite's Sanguineous Scene Safety class at Sanctuary, from August to October 11th. Details on that can be found on Fetlife and Forbidden Tickets. We've also booked two classes from BIPOC presenters on social justice and conflict resolution in the scene, both scheduled for November. More details on those will come when our promotional materials are ready.

We are also still working to process the feedback we received at our listening session last week, as well as through our feedback survey. That survey remains open here for anything you'd like to pass onto the Board:

https://www.portlandleather.org/survey.php?menu=showsurvey&surveyid=4

And as always, my inbox is open at president@portlandleather.org, and the Board as a whole can be reached at board@portlandleather.org. Feel free to reach out to either with any questions or concerns for the Board.

Yours in Leather,
Andy, PLA President