Membership and Levy proposal Feb 2012

[Gross]

Not sure that Dave Peel and Helen Errington for 2 could be described as non-orienteers Gross

OK.... with some exceptions

[Clive Coles]

Share your overall conclusion Gross i.e a debate on costs and buget will not happen. But not your reasoning. Madmike is right

Not sure that Dave Peel and Helen Errington for 2 could be described as non-orienteers Gross

But democracy within the BOF set-up has as good as been extinguished. In theory the directly elected Board can claim a mandate but with so few members coming forward to stand for election this is hardly a keenly contested contest. In practice the Executive and the chosen few control the budget and programme. They don't want another AGM reversal to their plans like they had over event level restructuring.

We will only get to debate real options and alternatives at the AGM if enough folk sponsor a suitable motion.

[Paul Frost]

How do you propose this is done when regional levies have not been proposed yet?

I don't see the relevance of regional levies in this debate.
Why should they need to change from what they are today unless the region wants them too ?

It's also not just the levies.
Some regions/associations need income from membership fees and/or levies to provide services to it's members and clubs.
The Scottish Orienteering Association currently employes 2 people full time (one is half funded by the Scottish 6 Day Company) to provide/manage services that are unique to Scotland. Partly due to legal differences, one being access legislation, others to do with location and maybe even choice by members. But the key factor is that money is needed to pay them, whilst other regions/associations may not employ anyone or even have any significant costs to cover.

So the BOF membership and levy can't be made in isolation, it needs joined up thinking as to how it will work across the UK.

[Gross]

Some regions/associations need income from membership fees and/or levies to provide services to it's members and clubs.
The Scottish Orienteering Association currently employes 2 people full time

That should have zero impact on the level of BOF Membership... it's the SOA's problem how to fund it's staff... not BOF or SEOA or whoever....

[Clive Coles]

In EA land we make no Association charge via the BOF membership collection system. Orienteers just pay a club and a BOF membership fee. Nice and simple to explain and justify ~ you join your local club and contribute to the running of the National Body..

EAOA do of course need to have some income which they raise direct from the clubs. It's a capitation fee based on a clubs overall membership statistics from the previous year. The bigger the club the more they pay. So for us the need to directly factor a regional levy into the event fee does not apply.

The regional income requirements fluctuate year on year depending on expenditure on replacement SI kit ( which the region loans out to clubs), junior squad expenses, room hire for meetings and training courses etc..

It's the clubs who stage almost all the events in the region: they therefore hold on to any event profits after deducting BOF levy, land access fees, mapping costs etc.. Their regional capitation fee therefore is drawn from their reserves. The region does retain any surplus profit from the Compassport Cup regional qualifyer. So there tends to be a boost to association funds every two years. Needless to say the region covers all tasks with volunteers.

I should think the last thing we would want is for BOF to become involved in collecting a regional association levy. We are well used to not charging orienteers a regional association membership fee.

As you see a very different system to that running in Scotland where you seem to have clubs who don't charge a club membership fee. Hardly surprising SOA needs a paid financial officer.

[Gross]

Hardly surprising SOA needs a paid financial officer.

don't think they have one of those... mostly they seem to deal with things to do with forests or towns & cities.... along with loads of c**p from various organisational type bodies... but I could of course be wrong

[smf]

Hardly surprising SOA needs a paid financial officer.

don't think they have one of those... mostly they seem to deal with things to do with forests or towns & cities.... along with loads of c**p from various organisational type bodies... but I could of course be wrong

The SOA treasurer is a volunteer and elected into the position at AGM's, as per club treasurers.

[SeanC]

I think perhaps the proposals could "sell" themselves a bit better. The main justification for the changes is that time and money will be available for services that most of us want BOF to provide but they can't currently afford - such as supporting club publicity and more support for coaching. I wonder how much the saving will be? There is the big shopping list of publicity initiatives that were discussed by the development committee many of which need help from BOF - these are unlikely to happen with volunteers only and we know that BOF don't really have much in the way of spare cash or staff time. We've all seen how BOF staff have helped support recent appearances of O on TV. The positive benefits of new publicity initiatives could outway the negative of such things as the loss of the first year free membership offer.

I think people should get their thinking caps on and see how the proposals can be made to work. Such changes give clubs a chance to review their strategy and come up with something that could work better. OK so I would expect most clubs charging £2 for local events to have to charge more. Don't hang me for saying this but you could bump it up to £4 or even more and it still won't deter most newcomers (who I think are less price sensitive than the regulars who have to pay every week and value local events relative to regionals). An option is to put them up to £5 a run but make them much cheaper or completely free for the whole series for anyone organising an event in the series. That would really reward the organisers who take on the most stressful part of the operation and give an incentive for people to organise. Lots of people would prefer to pay more and not have the feeling that you must organise if you start being a regular, so such a model could increase participation. Further possibilities are that clubs could give out vouchers for X free runs in the next X months to new members - giving them an incentive to join and motivating them to keep coming back and get their skill levels up to the point where they can get beyond the easy yellows and oranges.

I suspect most people posting here are amazing volunteers who work incredibly hard and major changes such as this cause a big headache as they disrupt carefully laid plans and long standing routines. It's not surprizing that people get a bit angry. But I think we can all stand back and look at the opportunities for individuals, clubs and the sport. It would be nice to read what opportunities people think there are from these proposed changes as well as the problems.

[awk]

Then you need to go and find a club and join that for another £25 (2 scottish clubs I looked at).
My personal opinion is that British Cycling have an even more complicated system than we have, it makes ours look simple, and it isn't. Go and look at it.
There are many reasons why cycling is top of the pops at the moment, and it's not because their membership scheme is attractive.

I know it well - I'm a member. That was my point: British Cycling has a more complex scheme, and it hasn't exactly stopped them recruiting. The whole simplicity issue is a red herring.
I know that the numbers are not solely down to the membership package, but actually, part of the reason their membership is booming is that the scheme IS attractive. According to the staff I spoke to at Manchester, the biggest growth is with the Ride scheme - primarily aimed at cyclists who don't need to join British Cycling, but find the package attractive.
BTW my club membership fees are £10 individual or £15 family. Bear in mind though that most clubs earn their income from membership - they don't put on events like orienteering clubs do.
The question is will dropping the membership fee and raising the price of events attract people to the sport and to British Orienteering? I would say no, just the opposite. But then, I suppose, what are they actually offering, and how is that offering being improved other than cutting the price?

[Red Adder]

Lots of comments here - most it appears have problems with the BOF proposal, have you taken advantage of BOFs invite to send comments back to them ? Gives them a chance to listen, and if they don't appear to do so more grist to the mill at the AGM.

[mike g]

I like this proposal and am surprised the reaction is so negative. I wouldn't be a member of BOF if I had any choice and, being compelled to join it in order to be a member of my club, I resent having to pay a membership fee of £20+ a year. At least one active member of my club decided not to rejoin this year solely because of the BOF membership fee. Reducing it to £5 a year would be a big step in the right direction.

I don't think active orienteers who enter a typical mix of different sized events would be worse off as a result of the levy changes, as RJ and others have suggested, since the extra levy to be paid on small events would be offset by the levy on larger events being reduced. In my club's case, the increased levy on our 15-20 small events each year would be fully offset by the reduction in levy on our two main events, so we would have no need to increase entry fees for the small events.

I agree with Clive though that BOF ought to give members a say in the size of their budget, rather than simply telling us how much they need to raise. It would be nice if the board could put to each year's AGM a choice of three proposals designed to raise different amounts, together with an explanation of what effect each proposal would have on the services that BOF would be able to provide.

[Angry Haggis]

I support this proposal.

If you are a member of a running club, then being an "affiliated member", i.e. also becoming a member of England Athletics which puts you on the national ranking list and gives you a £2 "affliated member" discount at most club-organised races, costs £5 extra to your club membership.

Sounds familiar?

if it works well for running, why not try it for orienteering?

Of course "we" (long time orienteers who are sufficiently involved in the sport that we know about NopeSport) can see some problems, particularly because we probably attend a lot more events than most of BOF's members. But British Orienteering needs to be looking at the majority of members who are more casual, and the 99.95% of the public who are not members, and a £5 fee is considerably more attractive than a £30+ fee for them. They would never be thinking of running 15 races in a year (until they get hooked) and so would never be able to recoup the fee, so for them, £30 is a big obstacle.

For the same reason I think that regional associations should be funded through the clubs rather than through the members. After all, you can't be a member of an association and not a club, so why should members even need to see the separate association fee when joining a club? It reminds me of Ryanair highlighting the "airport charges and taxes" part of your flight cost.

EAOA have the right idea.

New members don't want to worry about three levels of organisations and associated fees for each. They probably just want to join their local club and do a bit of orienteering.

(In an ideal world, the BOF membership would be totally free, and clubs be charged an additional £5 per-member levy from BOF, which would give clubs the power to offer completely free membership in certain cases, for difficult-to-target demographics.)

Re increased charging for local events to counter an increased levy. We need to be braver and cross-subsidise our events. We should not be desperate to always make a profit from every event, no matter how small. As long as your club organises one big event each year, then the anticipated profit from that event should aim to counter losses made from the smaller events. Put the fees up here - not at the local events. Going from £2 to £3 will I think stop a lot of tentative orienteers from turning up to a local park event. Increasing your Level B from £10 to £12 is not going to stop the committed orienteer (i.e. us), which these events are mainly for anyway.

Finally, I think the £2 discount/insurance surcharge should definitely stay. This makes the £5 membership even more of a no-brainer. You get your money back after 3 events. Indeed, I joined the cheapest running club in my city a few years ago, even though they were based 20 miles away, because they were only £5 to join and £5 extra to join EA. So, for £10, I saved £2 at every running event. This is the only reason I joined. But once I'm in, and saving £2 here and there, and starting to see my results appear on the various running stats websites, that's how to get me hooked on the sport.

In summary, BOF isn't proposing this for us. We are already members. It's everybody else that they are thinking about here. This can be only good for increased participation, surely?

[Big Jon]

mike g:
"the increased levy on our 15-20 small events each year would be fully offset by the reduction in levy on our two main events"

Interesting that the 2 big events are regarded as "our main events" (my italics). That means other events are less important. I feel strongly that the main events a club puts on are the weekly/fortnightly ones that provide the bulk of orienteers with local orienteering. The big events are important to the whole sport but locally the many small events and training sessions etc are the aspect that will attract and hold newcomers.

[Red Adder]

The gist of my reply to BOF is that I support the policy of reducing membership fees whilst increasing the levy (its only fair that the more you orienteer the more you pay). However I strongly oppose the flat rate levy. I can see no justification for the one-man-and-his-dog event on a marginal area attracting the same levy as a multi-course event one premier terrain with all the electronic bells and whistles. I think the levy should be graduated with higher levies as you go up the scale D-C-B-A.

[SJC]

I think the levy should be graduated with higher levies as you go up the scale D-C-B-A.

As already stated, this approach is doomed to failure as the majority of events would then simply be re-registered at level D.
The only way to get more levy from the larger events is to have a graduated levy based on the number of competitors.
But this idea doesn't seem popular either, which is presumably why the proposal is for a flat rate levy regardless of event level or number of competitors.