BOF surcharge?

[Paul Frost]

I've now started a new thread about the finance issues of orienteering.

[EddieH]

Interestingly at Moravian we have totally ignored the £2 differential at our local Saturday League events.

However recently we decided there were a number of people orienteering regularly and NOT joining, so we decided to impose a £1 surcharge on non-members for precisely the reasons that have been made in this thread. (£1 seems more reasonable than £2 bearing in mind the low fee to start with.)

I am sure that we will soon be able to confirm ECKO's increased membership experience - It make absolute sense to me.

Regarding free is not always good, I once organised cross country trail type races outside Birmingham and wrote to every athletic club in the area. The races were free, and one had more marshalls than comp-etitors The attitude was if it costs nought it must be crap!

[RJ]

.....It would be interesting to know how club membership has changed, if at all, for those clubs/areas who don't charge a differential......

I would suggest that almost ALL new membership is achieved at LOCAL level. That is, through a club's specific membership drives, or probably most likely, through the general activity that a club puts on. A club should have a very regular, informal set of events on offer to the club's local population. Through advertising and promotion you take those events to your audience.

That new membership potential needs quite a few opportunities to try the sport before they may be prepared to commit to wholehearted involvement. That applies to SI di**er hire..... just let them borrow them. Big deal, so you have to enter names for helf a dozen people for each event! Why surcharge them at this level. It is counter productive.... be more subtle!.... you want them to try the sport and enjoy it, so invest time and energy in them now. Yes surcharge at level C, B and A.... definitely.

Encourage these new people to join the club. Make them welcome. Find out how they have enjoyed the event. Speak to them. Involve them in post run chatter. Invite them along to the next event. Tell them what the club does.

Reinforce the joining message. We list those people in the results, who have yet to join, as 'No Club'. It works!!

Also, we use a set of prepared registration sheets with all the likely participants listed with their ecard numbers. When you register you merely enter an L for long course, or S for short course in a small box next to your name. New people have to enter their name and hired ecard number at the bottom. It's not long before they get their own ecard! The registration sheets always have names added at the end.... new people are trying the sport all the time!!

The registration sheets achieve several outcomes. They are quick to fill in for the regulars, with space for your time when you download, and therefore instant overall results! New people are easily recognised and plenty of time can be spent with them, as the regulars don't need any organiser input. The four A4 registration sheets have about 200 names on them, which gives a strong message in itself! And they provide an easily accessible safety check on who is still out.

[Paul Frost]

Big deal, so you have to enter names for helf a dozen people for each event!

It was more like 30 out of 45, and it it takes quite a while to go in and edit 30 entries in AutoDownload and reference the written registration sheets for the names to match the SI card.

I'm sure EckO are not alone in that we very rarely put on events other than Local (which for us is within a 2 hour drive and it's 4 hours to get to another Region). So excluding Local events from any rules/guidelines/levies/charges would not be ideal for the sport in general.

If you regularly get entries in the hundreds the economies of scale do cut in, but I suspect that many clubs get less than 100 (possibly less than 50) at most of their events.

[RJ]

Big deal, so you have to enter names for helf a dozen people for each event!

.......it takes quite a while to go in and edit 30 entries in AutoDownload and reference the written registration sheets for the names to match the SI card........

No problem in OE2010 though! Simple edit of the Entries page after download.

[roadrunner]

Big deal, so you have to enter names for helf a dozen people for each event!

.......it takes quite a while to go in and edit 30 entries in AutoDownload and reference the written registration sheets for the names to match the SI card........

No problem in OE2010 though! Simple edit of the Entries page after download.

I had to do entries for a road race once - about 1000 in all and no membership numbers etc to help. The software I used (Race Master I think) remembered the details of anyone who'd ever entered any of my club's races in the past, which meant that all that was necessary was to check that the address and club were still the same (except for the small number of "first timers"). I don't know if the orienteering software already does this, but if not, it would be a useful enhancement. Even better would be access to a national database of anyone who'd entered any UK orienteering event, but perhaps that raises too many data protection issues...

[Paul Frost]

Even better would be access to a national database of anyone who'd entered any UK orienteering event, but perhaps that raises too many data protection issues...

We sort of have one of those, it's called the British Orienteering membership list. It's available for all orienteering results software, but it needs the Membership number and Electronic card number to reference. We just need to get more people into that database, which is the thread of my argument.

Most road races seem to be pre entry mainly, and you said that it was a small number of "first timers", and I suspect most of the others belonged to a club, so they would have had a membership number. That would have been much easier to type in and reference than an address and club, which may change over time.

[SeanC]

I think the main reason why most clubs haven't implemented the BOF surcharge/discount at local events is that it is perceived to make make the headline rate expensive for complete beginners. For example our local events are £4, applying the BOF discount makes £6 to try Orienteering.

However, I do agree, we do need some serious incentives to join a club. If people join they are more likely to become regular Orienteers IMHO.

I think something worth considering might be a scheme to give the first 3 events completely free. This has a number of advantages:

a) We can promote our events as "completely free to newcomers" (but not free normally so still has value).
b) We can still apply the £2 surcharge to people who want to come orienteering, but for whatever reason still don't want to join a club.
c) It encourages people to go more than once, hopefully by their 3rd event they will be more confident and will have met some club members, and be hooked.

For clubs that can offer completely free membership in the first year, this makes it a very attractive proposition for newcomers to join proir to their first event, then give the sport a real go for their 3 free events.

[Sunlit Forres]

I think the main reason why most clubs haven't implemented the BOF surcharge/discount at local events is that it is perceived to make make the headline rate expensive for complete beginners. For example our local events are £4, applying the BOF discount makes £6 to try Orienteering.

Sean - why not try charging the junior rate to adults doing orange/TD3 or below.

[seabird]

why not try charging the junior rate to adults doing orange/TD3 or below.

Absolutely. We have been doing this for a few years now.

[roadrunner]

Most road races seem to be pre entry mainly, and you said that it was a small number of "first timers", and I suspect most of the others belonged to a club, so they would have had a membership number. That would have been much easier to type in and reference than an address and club, which may change over time.

Yes and no - as with many others the race I did the entries for was pre-entry only (it filled up long before the date in any case), but club members don't generally quote membership numbers when entering races. (Just recently we've all been given UK Athletics Competition Licences which are numbered, and some entry forms ask for these numbers, but I don't know if clubs can access that data to get name and address.) As for how many non-members entered, my guess would be 10-20%, but it varies a lot from race to race. Quite a few people race regularly but aren't club members (I was in that situation myself for several years): as with orienteering, for many it's down to whether the membership fee is worth the saving of £2 per race through being a member.

[Paul Frost]

club members don't generally quote membership numbers when entering races. (Just recently we've all been given UK Athletics Competition Licences which are numbered, and some entry forms ask for these numbers, but I don't know if clubs can access that data to get name and address.)

So the orienteering membership database being available to all organisers actually sets a leading example to running entry systems rather than us needing to learn from them.

... for many it's down to whether the membership fee is worth the saving of £2 per race through being a member.

Which is exactly my point, the membership fee needs to be low enough to make it attractive financially.

Plus when you have contact details of members/participants you can keep them informed and they feel part of a community.

[RJ]

Plus when you have contact details of members/participants you can keep them informed and they feel part of a community.

I really feel that the desire for club membership doesn't have anything to do with fees or whether or not a surcharge is made at events. If the club is worth joining, if it is active, if it has something to offer new participants, if it has a strong local profile, if it has a strong local programme of events, if it has some good role models..... then selling the membership to new people is a doddle.

Have a critical look at yourselves.... as a club.... and set some targets for 2011. How to improve and make the club more attractive??!!

The activities that your club puts on.... are you 100% with them??? Do you personally really enjoy being part of your club??? Is there anythning you can do to improve the situation, or simply to increase your contribution to its wellbeing?

[roadrunner]

I think there's some truth in what both RJ and Paul Frost say. Some people join clubs on purely financial grounds (i.e. it saves them the non-member surcharge), others do so for what the club has to offer. It's just the same in road running: my club has around 500 members, of whom about 1/3 attend club activities with any regularity - so the other 2/3 are presumably either former active members who like to keep in touch, or people who join purely for the discount on entries.

One difference between orienteering and road running is that, while the annual cost of club membership (at least for my two clubs) is of the same order (£20 for running, £26-50 for orienteering), in orienteering the lion's share goes to the NGB, whereas in road running it's the reverse. It's a lot easier for a club to do more for it's members with £15 than with £5! Given the state of national funding for sport, perhaps this is something we have to live with, but it will still have an effect.

Another factor that I've found in the past is that orienteers sometimes don't want much from their club. My club used to run evening training in the summer, but attendance was poor; the events were changed to low-key competition, and I believe numbers increased only slightly. For a short time a long while ago we had indoor training in the winter, but numbers there were even lower. You might have thought that newcomers to the sport would have been keen to learn the techniques, but that didn't seem to be the case: those who did turn up, by and large, were regular competitors. I'm sure some other clubs have been more successful in this area, and one can only hope that new initiatives like club nights will be more successful.

Interestingly, some of the ideas mentioned in this thread are not so different from the way the sport was when I started orienteering in the 80s. At that time, there was no non-member surcharge, but after going to three events you were expected to join a club (though I doubt any check was made). As you could join a club without also joining BOF, the cost was low, and I guess that most people did so. This seemed to me a good scheme, giving a low-cost way into the sport, with progression to full BOF membership (there was no intermediate option) being up to the competitor as and when they chose to do so.

[SeanC]

Sean - why not try charging the junior rate to adults doing orange/TD3 or below.

It's something we've thought of, but we do a lot of local score events with a mixture of TD2/3 and 4 standard controls.

No-one seems very enthusiastic about the idea of 3 free runs when you become a member? Let me explain my thinking. I expect 20 or 30 newcomers at our next local event in Greenwich Park, even without the support of the local commercial press But only 1 or 2 will join and become members. What can we do about this terrible conversion rate? We could gather email addresses and add them to a mailing list to encourage them to come again... but this is time consuming. We are busy enough as it is. Really I want them to become members before their first event so that the BOF supercomputer can help us like so:

- send them helpful joining information
- send them a voucher for their first free run ... with their name on it (which will help the helpers make them feel welcome)
- encourage them to come again by sending them more free vouchers and by reminding them about future events. Hopefully by 3 events more of them will see Orienteering as a regular activity rather than a one off experience.
- if they don't take up the sport ... find out why by sending them a link to an online questionaire.

This would be in addition to the normal club emails/newsletters etc.

3 free runs is a significantly more attractive offer than £2 off. £2 will only get you over the Darford Crossing soon (but not back again).

I think the big growth potential in the sport is the person who wants to go Orienteering 2 or 3 times a year, locally, probably not as their main sport. Many of these will never become members even with a £2 discount, because membership of a club is perceived as being for the committed only. However if we dont have any way of promoting our events other than relying on them visiting our websites, the likelyhood is that many will never become the regular irregular Orienteers that they could do... if you see what I mean.