Business Office:
(310) 510-4020

FAX:
(310) 510-1364

E-mail:
chamber@usc.edu

The USC Catalina Hyperbaric Chamber is set up as an extension of the Los Angeles County/USC Medical Center - Department of Emergency Medicine and is part of the countywide Medical Alert Center (MAC). Los Angeles County provides USC with a contract of a little over $108,000 a year to fund the operation of the Chamber. In order for L.A. County to recoup these funds L.A. County Medical Center bills the divers who are treated at the Chamber. In essence, the County Contract is a loan against future treatments.

The County Contract is administered by USC, which, as most major universities do, extracts overhead from the use of these funds. The USC overhead on the County Contract is 62.5% (for every $1.00 spent, USC moves $0.625 to the USC General Fund). This leaves about $66,500 from the grant for Chamber operating expenses. However, the salary for the Chamber's employees alone requires over $80,000 a year plus an additional $26,000 for benefits. How does the Chamber cover the remaining personnel, maintenance, equipment, gas, and other expenses? Where does the rest of this funding come from? Some of it comes from salary support from the USC Wrigley Institute for Environmental Studies, but most of the rest of it comes from the generosity of the diving community.

The Catalina Hyperbaric Chamber depends upon the diving community for these operating funds. The overall budget for the Chamber is over $185,000 a year (including overhead expenses). This means that over 40% of the Chamber's operating budget must come from other sources, such as, fund raisers, donations, promotional items, and tuition from accident management and chamber operation courses.

About $80,000 needs to be raised from these sources each year to insure the continued operation of the Catalina Hyperbaric Chamber. There are many sources of these contributions including the Avalon Harbor Underwater Clean-Up, Two-Harbors Underwater Clean-Up and our major fund raiser, Chamber Day & Chamber Evening.  

Chamber Day brings in a majority of the non-L.A. County funds for the Chamber. Chamber Day was conceived by members of the Southern California Diving Community as a way for recreational divers to have fun diving while at the same time making a financial contribution to the USC Catalina Hyperbaric Chamber. Dive-charter boats graciously donate their time and services for the day, and divers pay to dive Catalina Island aboard one of the participating boats. All of the funds raised from the event go to support the Chamber. Chamber Evening is a fund raising dinner at the Aquarium of the Pacific in Long Beach for those people unable to get away for a day of diving.

What the Chamber Program receives from USC's Overhead Charges

The funds collected from Chamber Day and the other sources are put into the USC Chamber Gift Account which has an overhead of 15%. The overhead is only taken out when the money is spent, it is not taken off the top. This means a 15% overhead works out to be 13% of all the moneys spent out of the Gift Account (including the overhead).

For example, in Fiscal Year 2004/2005 the Chamber used about $60,000 from the Chamber Gift Account on operational expenses. USC's General Fund then received about $9,000 in overhead from those expenses. The overhead that the USC General Fund receives from the County Contract is about $41,500, making the total overhead charges about $50,500 for Chamber operations.

Since this seems like a lot of Chamber money going to the USC General Fund a commonly asked question is,

 "What does the Chamber Program get from USC for these overhead expenses?"

First and foremost it gets the Chamber, which belongs to USC! In addition it receives the administrative support and benefits of belonging to USC, as well as USC's non-profit status. For example, all the volunteers who work at the chamber are considered "employees" while they are here and are covered by USC Workman's Comp. In terms of specifics, the following are some of the items provided by USC to the Chamber program without additional charge:

• USC Main Campus Business Office support
• Housing for Volunteer Chamber Crew (Apartment + electricity + water)
• Free transportation for volunteers on School Boats
• Use of University vehicles on the island
• Office Space for Chamber Office (including electricity)
• Telephone System with no charge for USC's local coverage calls (whereas normally any calls off island are long distance, even to the same 310 area code)
• Computer System and support
• Internet connectivity (e-mail, web server, e-mail list server, etc.)
• Chamber Hanger space
• Medical Trailer space
• Electricity for Office, Chamber Hanger, Medical Trailer, and COMPRESSORS!
• and finally, the CHAMBER! 

There are a whole lot of other little things that if you add up the time and effort it would take to deal with them would be a major cost in personnel and expense. 

Is all of this worth the approximately $50,500 in overhead that USC receives annually from the Chamber's accounts ($9,000 from the Gift Account and $41,000 from the County Chamber Account in FY04/05)? ABSOLUTLEY!

If the Chamber Program were to gain this additional $50,500 and lose the benefits listed above, it would require more money and effort to operate the Chamber Program. Not only would we have to start paying for the items and services listed above, but additional personnel would have to be hired by the Chamber Program to take on all the additional work that is now done by USC services.

In conclusion, even though at first glance it may look like USC is just receiving funds raised for the Chamber, in reality USC is providing many services for the Chamber Program at a very reasonable rate. Therefore, all the funds raised for the Chamber, including the overhead funds sent to the USC General Fund, find their way back to benefit the Catalina Hyperbaric Chamber Program.