How should we finance orienteering

[IanD]

I keep asking myself if each new 'thing' needs professional support.
Should we pay for commentary, radio controls, gps tracking, big screen tv's etc.
All these areas only have a few volunteer 'experts'
....
When and how much do you pay?
But the precedent is then set and that makes it hard to expect people to do it for free next time.

The last sentence hints at a real problem.

For example, I know of a club with an excellent amateur mapper, who makes almost all of the club's maps. Unfortunately, this mapper takes on too much work, sometimes resulting in late delivery of maps and rushed planning.

Many in the club would like to employ a professional mapper some of the time, but this would then be regarded as unfair on the current unpaid amateur.

Mixing paid professionals with unpaid amateurs is fraught with difficulty, especially if the amateur can do the job as well as the professional!

[Gnitworp]

.......or better.

[Clive Coles]

Between the newcomers thread and the thread regarding Students and the levy we have uncovered a complex set of discounts and subsidies which clubs apply to their event fee structures. To try to get the BOF membership structure and levy system to reflect all these schemes is a tall order.

The levy/ membership type mapping may not currently working properly but to try to accommodate all these ideas (and those that someone adopts next year) will guarentee to keep BOF IT in the state of continual development.

I think we need to step back from advocating more change to the IT support systems.

Let's accept that clubs know best when it comes to fixing fees and discounts for their leagues and events. Let them do this for themselves to support the needs of the types of folk their event attracts. If they want to give discounts to newcomers, post graduates, the unwaged let them. Let the costs of these discounts be met from the event proceeds at which these discounts apply.

Let's just simplify the BOF membership fee structure by having just 2 levels of Membership. A junior/student level up to age 25 and a senior level. BOF Levy should only be payable on Senior entries.

Let's scrap Local and National membership rates ~ just have a BOF rate fixed somewhere betweeen the current Local and National levels.

Let's aim to recover the remaining club running costs from event revenue.

If you keep IT simple it generally works ~ the problems and inconsistances arise when you try to be clever and accommodate every shade of discount and subsidy.

[SeanC]

Mixing paid professionals with unpaid amateurs is fraught with difficulty, especially if the amateur can do the job as well as the professional!

Perhaps the source of the problem is deeper than this? Lots of clubs will have or have had the same mapping problem, some will have found good solutions - but how does a club get access to this information and advice? Perhaps Ian will get lucky and someone reading this will PM him? Or maybe his club will go through the same learning curve as other clubs, creating unnecessary work and grey hairs and maybe an unsuccessful approach in the end?

Lots of club development seems like this - random. It's not surprising therefore that some are doing well and some not so.

Clubs really need help them with their specific problems and barriers to growth. I'm really thinking about development officers who have a wider remit than the current BOF development officers (who are government funded and therefore must stick to the remit of the funding conditions). People with the experience, contacts and time to find out the solutions that other clubs have used, and the interpersonal skills to make things happen - that seems something worth paying good money for, though I'm not sure if there are enough people who agree with me to ever make it happen?

[The Loofa]

However, Sean, as all the BOF development officers are getting made redundant, there may be opportunities for wider roles