Tracking Attend-Only Points

originally published in August, 2002, written by Elizabath Pidgeon, President Adrian Empire, Inc (aka Elisabeth Imperatrix)

Why do people have to sign in when they aren't going to do anything?

Tracking event attendance for game purposes is secondary to the mundane reason we track attendance. As a 501.C.3 non-profit educational organization we have a responsibility to the federal government to track, record, and maintain for a minimum of 7 years the participation of our members - or anyone else - who might declare a charitable cash or non-cash deduction on their taxes related to their attendance at an event (of any kind).

If you are a "short form" person you probably won't know whereof I speak, but persons who itemize their deductions may choose to write off their unreimbursed travel costs (cash) and/or their mileage (non-cash) pertaining to our official events if they are members or if they are non-members who helped out. One of the primary requirements to maintain 501.C.3 status is tracking, recording, and keeping records the IRS can use to verify those deductions if they audit the individual's (or business) tax return. To give you an example of how big an issue this can be, I wrote off in my previous year's Imperial reign over three thousand dollars directly expended on the behalf of Adria between travel costs and phone calls.

Additionally, we have to track attendance for insurance purposes. If an individual files a claim we have to be able to verify whether they were ever at the event to begin with. This is also why we do need to track individual medical incidents with names, though the names should be not given out in public reporting.Thus you can see why we track attendance with sign-in sheets, and why substitute sign-in sheets could actually constitute fraud... which kind of makes altering sign-in sheets more than just an in-game issue... doesn't it?