New Levy proposals

[DM]

Nots Outlaw;
Please can you elaborate on the other ideas you suggest could be used to cover levies for juniors, I'm interested to know what people are trying and if it works in one place it stands a good chance elsewhere.

We already sell maps to local authorities for POCs
We already support the NWJS with at least monthly cake making

Regarding increasing from £1 to £2, I agree that no-one is likely to have the evidence that such an increase will affect numbers. Most people are risk averse and fear what the consequences will be, which could be to reduced participation.

The schools festivals sound great for exposing people to the sport. How many of the participants join up immediately or some time later? It would be good to see some figures.

I tend to agree with Mrs H that targetting whole families is more likely to gain paid up/hooked members, recent efforts made up here are starting to show results. If some way to encourage kids at the school events to get their parents out could be found maybe we would get more people overall and develop the sport.

Coming back to a previous question, how are junior numbers compiled, still waiting for an answer. If all these things are going on across the country, it's even more strange that numbers have dropped in 2007. Can anyone answer this?

[SeanC]

Scanning through these posts, the most durable argument against the proposal is where a club has a comparatively large schools league relative to its size. In this case if the club were to pay the junior levy instead of the juniors, adult entry fees might have to rise considerably in order to balence the books. RJ, what would be the effect on your clubs average entry fee if you were to adopt this policy?

Measuring the positive and negative effect of entry fees is a difficult one. BOF need money in order to spend on things like schools development! An increase in levies from the proposed might actually increase participation in the long run, or maybe not. Who knows. Maybe we could commission a study - but that would have to be paid for out of levies Then there are numerous other factors. Rather like the gentleman in compass sport who wrote about entry fees since 1970, even if a relationship is established it is difficult to establish a causal link when so many things affect something as random as a human being.

[Nimby]

Our region (SCOA) has a flat-rate levy for all event types, and it's the same for adults and juniors. OK the amount is far less but I don't think I've heard anyone oppose the actual principal.

Assuming the sceme is adopted, can anyone come up with a more elegant Excel formula for the levy calculation? This works but I feel I've missed a trick or two (in code tags to get the spacing right) :

Code: Select all

     A                B
1 #runners     
2 free             =MIN(B1,75)             
3 at £1.50         =MAX(MIN(B1-75,175),0)
4 at £2.50         =MAX(0,B1-B2-B3)

[graeme]

Coming back to a previous question, how are junior numbers compiled, still waiting for an answer.

Personally, I just look at the attendance and make up a number. Life's too short to bother with the rules on family groups,
juniors running up, people who dont quote their age, BOF policy on students etc.

I imagine most other organisers are the same (just a bit shy about answering your question). But maybe I'm idle, evil and wicked
and will now get banned from organising .

[Simple Soul]

It seems that the main concern about the levy applying to Juniors is that it affects clubs with thriving school leagues. I may be out of touch with school competitions, but I cannot think of another sport that has inter-school, as opposed to Junior, competitions as part of a club activity. Perhaps if these competitions were organised under the auspices of BSOA they could be levy free.

The one or two other Junior club competitions eg the YBT where Juniors predominate, could have the levy dispensation decided by a committee. I would say that where a Junior competiton is run in conjunction with Seniors, then the turnout is greater than if it were a normal club competition with parents and/or taxi drivers taking part. The increased numbers should therfore generate increased income to pay for the extra levy.

[RJ]

......RJ, what would be the effect on your clubs average entry fee if you were to adopt this policy?

So.... £1329 to reecover from the adults...... Our 50 events each year might average 40 adults. That's roughly 70p extra on our senior fee of £2. Assuming the increase in participation at the schools' events is matched by an increase at our informal events for seniors then we will be OK year on year.

That causes me to reflect on the general effect of the new proposal on our current fees. Senior/Junior of £2/£1 for our informal events. The first 75 participants.... no levy.... they just pay for the setting up of the event; expenses, electronic wear and tear, map printing. The 76th competitor will infact pay his/her fee directly to BOF as levy. There will be no surplus. Our events will therefore have a fixed surplus of 75 x £1.50, assuming rough balance between junior and senior..... £112.50, from which you have to run the event and find money for remapping etc. Mmmmmmmm!

Without a doubt the 2009 fees at the informal events will have to increase.... probably to £3.50/£2 Bit of a shocker really!!

[Mrs H]

Yes and let's not forget that the levy proposals come on top of a proposed hefty hoik in membership fees. (all this on top of the ever spiralling cost of getting to the event in the first place )

[Wayward-O]

As has been mentioned in this thread earlier, Brit-O will arrange for junior only events to be considered for levy relief by the Junior Competitions Group. Is there any indication that Schools' Leagues would not be granted levy relief?

Of more concern are the current C4 and C3 events that attract large numbers of Juniors, especially if some advertising to the wider population is organised. Also, how will Juniors be counted? There are one or two Secondary Schools here in Cumbria that bring students to events and (usually) arrange for them to run two courses each (this sometimes results in problems with quantities of maps and dibbers), greatly increasing the number of Junior runs. Will Juniors be counted per individual or per run? I'd assume that as a fee is paid for each run, it would be neccessary to pay the levy for each run.

[DM]

Coming back to a previous question, how are junior numbers compiled, still waiting for an answer.

Personally, I just look at the attendance and make up a number. Life's too short to bother with the rules on family groups,
juniors running up, people who dont quote their age, BOF policy on students etc.

I imagine most other organisers are the same (just a bit shy about answering your question). But maybe I'm idle, evil and wicked
and will now get banned from organising .

I have an answer, it's based on the returns recieved by BOF. If people don't give correct details this introduces errors. If clubs or idle, evil or wicked people give approximations errors creep in as well But at least some numbers have been sent.

If clubs don't send numbers at all then numbers will be more seriously understated. If we are developing the sport and getting numbers up we should be happy to share the numbers and help our NGB build their arguments for more funding from the likes of Sport England.

[RJ]

The 76th competitor will infact pay his/her fee directly to BOF as levy. There will be no surplus. Our events will therefore have a fixed surplus of 75 x £1.50, assuming rough balance between junior and senior..... £112.50, from which you have to run the event and find money for remapping etc. Mmmmmmmm!

Without a doubt the 2009 fees at the informal events will have to increase.... probably to £3.50/£2 Bit of a shocker really!!

It gets worse...... The whole of the entry fee for the 76th entrant and above will go on levy. The cost of the map for those copmpetitors will have to come from the £112.50..... so..... the more entrants you have, the less you will see of the £112.50!!!! With, say, 25p per map unit, and £2.50 levy at the 250th entrant, the event will just support 279 entrants... with no surplus, and volunteers doing it all for nothing!

Talking this through with others.... we came to the conclusion that at informal event level this is exactly the opposite to what you want to achieve. 'Intro' orienteering should be as cheap as possible; making it more expensive will definitely discourage first time participation.... regardless of whether it is 'Mars Bar' pocket money or not!! Can anyone argue that the £1/£2 fee structure is too cheap, and that we are selling ourselves short.... well, John Morris might have a go, but IMHO it is set at the right level and we should try to protect it as far as is possible.

So, although the new proposal has the clarity of simplicity the actual effect will be to kill the very level of participation that we are all trying to enhance.... the local, club based, informal event. Trying to recover the income from other higher level events won't work, in principle, because the higher levy at 250 participants takes progressively more levy from the successful event.

[PorkyFatBoy]

Can anyone argue that the £1/£2 fee structure is too cheap

If you were planning to set up your informal events from scratch under the new levy system, would you still want to price it at £2/£1 to attract new people? If so then you need to think about budgeting across all of your events over the year rather than each individual event. This way you can raise the cash from “formal” events to subsidise the “informal” events. I suspect that a combination of a small increase (though admittedly large percentage-wise) in the informal costs and similar increases in other events might be able to cover the increase.

Budgeting is all about educated guesses and how you account for different items, such as mapping costs (i.e. are the allocated to the event or held as a central cost). The answer to “are we making a surplus” can be answered in so many ways. As the old accounting joke goes – Question -“What is 2 + 2 ?” Answer – “What would you like it to be?”

I do think that sometimes we are hung up on costs. Compared to other sports, I still think the entry costs (with the exception of JK08 ) are cheap. The main cost is petrol.

Personally, I just look at the attendance and make up a number.

When BOF Central gets is “events and results” section of the website up and running, no doubt someone will be checking on the information and your ruse will be stopped.

[graeme]

Can anyone argue that the £1/£2 fee structure is too cheap, and that we are selling ourselves short....

Personally, I find £1/£2 a rather silly amount. I'd rather the guarantee of quality implied by the sort of fees charged for most
other sporting activities (e.g. £4 to run an interval session on the track in Edinburgh, typically £10 for any school activity), or
the implication of volunteer dedication from free events (like any small training event I organise, unless forced to do otherwise).

Have a look at what my old club did (primarily Mark Frank, its usually one motivated individual who makes it happen).

http://www.dvoa.us.orienteering.org/sit ... /index.php

Their recuitment and turnover is eyewatering, especially by US standards. I know you can't find costs online, but they're also eyewatering
(You're looking at $50 for tuition + an orange course on a Corporate teambuilding event, when they charged $5, nobody took them seriously).

[SeanC]

I would like to argue in support of the concept of experienced orienteers paying levies at local events. About 60% of the events I attend are C5. They keep me in the sport as I find bigger events are often impractical to attend. I find them more enjoyable, the friendliness outweighs the generally lower quality terrain and maps. Why shouldnt I be asked to pay a levy? Its cheaper than driving another 50 miles to a bigger event. Do my local events benefit any less from BOF? The C5 night league (currently on the 24th event of the season) is organised by Nick Barrable who might be doing some other sport now if BOF did not support elite athletes. Im told the C5 day league is to receive a grant from BOF for schools league prizes. Are local events any less insured?

In fact I wouldnt object if I paid levy on all local events, irrespective of the numbers attending if it meant

a) BOF had more funds that eventually ended up helping local leagues (directly or indirectly).
b) I wouldnt have to buy any more of Nick's postcards to support the British Squad.

I have sympathy with the juniors shouldnt pay argument. You can argue it both ways. Sure kids arent free and parents are used to paying for them, but extend that argument and there would be no free education. Extending the levy to smaller C5 events (50 people?) but for adults only might be the answer.

[mike g]

Perhaps BOF should look to economise instead of hiking levies and membership fees. For a start, why does it spend so much money producing an ever-expanding glossy magazine, when most of us subscribe to Compass Sport and could do without Focus altogether.

[IanD]

I wouldn't object if I paid levy on all local events, irrespective of the numbers attending.

Some events are very small indeed, in terms of organisation, often being a one-person affair. Some even save on organising by not charging entry fees. In my view, these smallest events should continue to be free of the bureaucracy of a levy.

I think this is the aim of allowing the first n competitors at each event to be levy-free, and I support that aspect of the proposal.