NORTH Melbourne has announced a $1 million operating surplus just a year after rejecting a plan to relocate to the Gold Coast.

Chief executive Eugene Arocca confirmed the profit was a club record and is the result of membership growth and sponsorship deals.

He described the surplus as "one step in a fairly long journey", and called on Kangaroos members to stick with the club in 2009 and beyond to ensure it remains financially viable.

"With a good business model in place, the club can achieve an ongoing profit for years to come, provided we maintain strong membership," he said from Arden Street on Monday.

"In real terms, this is an outstanding turnaround for the club but, unmistakably, a combination of both sponsorship and primarily membership has got us across the line."

The record figure comes in at $1,088,941 – eclipsing last year's profit by more than $800,000 – and decreases the Kangaroos' debt by $1 million.

The club's total profit for 2008 surpassed the $6 million mark, but $5 million was received from the State and Federal Governments for the Arden Street redevelopment.

Arocca said the club is confident it can increase membership again in 2009, after making the biggest single increase by any Victorian club when it jumped from 22,000 in 2007 to more than 34,000 this year.

"For a club that's won two premierships in the last 12 years, there is a fair degree of residual, underlying support there, and what we did this year was scratch the surface from an emotional point of view," he said.

"To have an extra 12,000 members in the space of 12 months is a pretty good endorsement.

"We do believe that we're a 30,000-member club going forward.

"We've got one of the largest groups of a young supporters, we've got a solid older demographic, and the challenge for us is the 25 to 45-year age group, who seem to have become disassociated with the club over the last few years.

"We are planning a number of initiatives to shore up the 34,000 members and, if anything, try and increase."

Arocca added the Kangaroos will need to push beyond 40,000 members in order to make up for the $1.2 million they will no longer receive from playing games on the Gold Coast.

"You can only keep hoping that the members stay. There is a standard membership of $160 for 11 games, but there are lots of upgrading options," he said.

"The fear of recession and a bad economy is people will drop down from higher levels to the basic levels, so there are challenges within the numbers as it is.

"But I would think that if we don't stay above 30,000 on a regular basis and run a tight business model, we'd be making losses."

He conceded the Kangaroos "have a long way to go" before they are financially secure, and said they must also secure a beneficial stadium deal next year.

"We'd love to think it's a three to five-year strategy for us to be debt free and strong financially, but underpinning that is the stadium deals," he said.

"One of the key figures to come out of this year was we generated $1.7 million from match returns, of which $1.2 million were Gold Coast-related.

"To turn a $400-500,000 net out of our matches in Melbourne is an ongoing battle for a number of other clubs.

"Until we get that part of it right, our financial models are always going to be, to a large degree, heavily reliant upon membership."