How to keep people involved in orienteering?

[Paul Frost]

What single initiative will help to keep people involved in orienteering?

This question in the online survey got me thinking...

In a relatively short period of time (2-3 years) EckO has become a vibrant active club with most members travelling to events outside of Argyll. So we can frequently field multiple relay teams at larger events. It's hard to get the kids out of their EckO tops, they have become a sort of "gang colours". The key to this is a sense of belonging, pride, ownership, sharing, sociality etc. These all apply to the club, not British or Scottish Orienteering.

So I believe that the best way to get and keep people involved is if they feel like they have joined something that has a relevant and tangible value to them. Newcomers always ask how to join the club, not how to join the national federation/association.

Posible solutions
a) Allow clubs to manage membership however they want and then pay an affiliation fee to the regional and national bodies. But these fees should be kept low, and the bulk of the income required to run the sport is collected by increased levies.
There are challenges to this method, as some regions don't really need much income, but others like Scotland need a lot. Plus clubs would then need to administer and collect the fees and they may not want to go back to that.

OR

b) Make the membership cost of British Orienteering nominal (£10) and club membership free to avoid confusing different rates depending on which club you join and reduce the administration costs for clubs.
Clubs then raise revenue by increasing the entry cost for events, and increased levies would fund regional and national bodies. So the system becomes more "Pay-as-you-go" and reduces the barrier to joining.

I'm sure some people will have other views on this, but I feel that sorting out the membership issues could solve many of the other issues that are currently dogging our sport and how it should be run.

[70plus]

This all seems very logical, Paul. But isn't the cost of membership more an issue of principle than one which seriously affects whether people decide to join? Once someone decides that O is for him/her, the cost of joining, or even entering an event, becomes fairly unimportant compared with the cost of travelling (especially in Scotland?), buying club kit and shoes, etc. Whatever else O may be, it will probably not be taken up by the financially challenged.

I think it is true that O falls short on the social side, as there usually is no club HQ as such. Nowhere to grumble into a pint or two after a race, unless that race is always in the same place, which rather defeats the object?

[Paul Frost]

You are missing the point 70plus.

It's not necessary the cost of membership that is the issue (although it could be if you are just starting and not sure if you will keep at it), it's the simplicity and identity of what you are joining.
Making membership easier increases the chance people will join, and this helps communication, as you have peoples details to contact them and so encourage them along to another event. We send out email reminders a few days before every event to all members.

By removing the fee altogether you reduce the administration complexity for the club. Collecting money is a pain. It's complex to do on a website, Direct Debit is almost impossible to implement for a small organisation and sending out renewal notices for cheques to be sent in and banked is way too time consuming.

The social aspect doesn't have to be weekly in a club HQ. Meeting up at a coffee shop on the way home from an event, or bring a dish meals at someones house are things we do. But just the banter/camaraderie around the club tent adds to the social feeling of being part of something.

[John Morris]

Paul Frost wrote:-

"It's not necessarily the cost of membership that is the issue (although it could be if you are just starting and not sure if you will keep at it), it's the simplicity and identity of what you are joining.
Making membership easier increases the chance people will join..."

Paul, if you read BOF's Mem & Arts (if all else fails, read the instructions... ) you will dicover that in Article 1 there is no definition of what a Club is (or should be), that Article 6 confirms that Clubs are not bound by the rules that govern members, and that Article 44 confers even greater freedoms on Associations.

In essence, your Club can be what you want it to be, provided that you abide by IOF guidelines and observe a duty of care to participants, and your Association can shapeshift, again provided that it abides by IOF guidelines and observes its duty of care.

And this is all because neither the Club nor the Association is part of BOF. They are 'recognised' but they are also 'self-governing'. See Article 6!

Be what you want to be!

Without a single 'governance' issue arising...

[Paul Frost]

I recognise that the club can be whatever it wants but...

A prospective new member can't just join the club, they have to join British Orienteering first, then Scottish Orienteering and finally the club. EckO don't charge any membership fees, preferring to finance the club through event fees. But whatever we do we can't make joining the club simple or free.

Their membership card shows they are members of British Orienteering not EckO, so it doesn't help the identity issues.

I don't want clubs to be separated from British Orienteering, they provide an infrastructure that is needed and that also needs to be funded. What I want is the club to be affiliated, so when people join a club they are by default members of British Orienteering rather than the other way round.

It's all about ownership, identity and loyalty to a local club, rather than a distant federation. When people volunteer to plan, organise etc. they are doing it for their club not the federation.

[Oldman]

Paul you raise interesting points (as does John Morris).

There was a presentation at the 2011 AGM on a consultation planned about membership and levies and the BOF May Board meeting minutes refer to it further:

PB to take forward membership and levy scheme changes paper and put together a project plan. (PB, by July Board meeting)

This thread might usefully feed into the consultation when it arrives or could develop further when it does.

[Sunlit Forres]

Data Protection: British Orienteering may sometimes be asked to provide contact details relevant to your membership to your Club and/or Association, to another British Orienteering member, to online entry providers (entry to orienteering events) and to Data Processing Agencies working on behalf of British Orienteering. Under no circumstances will British Orienteering provide your contact details to other external organisations. If you do not agree to British Orienteering using your memberships contact details in this way please check this box

We do our best to support BOF's aims, and get all our new members to join on-line via BOF (thru' a link on our web site). Many of our recently-joined members have ticked this box, not realising that it means that the club they think they're joining don't get their details! None of them had even heard of BOF until we pointed them that way.This is not a good thing and I have complained to BOF on behalf of our club. Has anyone else raised this infuriating issue?

[Paul Frost]

Where have you been Sunlit Forres (in the dark it seems)
Are you a secret British Orienteering member?
Details witheld when Joining BOF

I did raise some of my thoughts at the AGM presentation.

[DeerTick]

As an EckO member, I'm with Paul here. The club is my link to O and I joined three years ago (after an absence from the sport of 25 years) simply by asking to be on the email list, no more. After a few club events, I ventured further afield and felt I should contribute financially (and numerically) to the sport by joining BOF, but my loyalty is still to EckO. Like our juniors, I wear my club top with pride and am pleased to be asked where we're from (Six Days, Six Days, Six Days!) or, as today, have people remark how far I've travelled to take part.

Get the club right and we'll not be far wrong.

AP

[SeanC]

Personally I think the way forward is

a) make the membership fee really cheap.
b) charge more indirect /pay as you go fees.

We've been doing quite well with recruitment, but the turnover is huge and many do not stay when the first year free offer expires. Reducing the fees will help reduce this turnover, but it will still be big. Keeping them in the club gives us a greater chance of maintaining these people as irregular regular orienteers, perhaps becoming more regular when their personal circumstances change, and of course they are helping to publicise orienteering by talking to friends and family about events.

However I would expect no concensus on fees given that the number of views roughly equals the number of orienteers so any change seems difficult.

One option (which does unfortunately cost money) would be to upgrade the membership system so that

a) There is no mention of association fee/BOF fee ... just how much to join a club.
b) Clubs are charged X for each member instead of the BOF component of the membership fee, and Y for the association membership fee if there is one.
c) Clubs can choose to recover the amount owed to BOF and the association through a relatively high membership fee, or via event fees, or via any other income generating source.

Over time it will be obvious whether a direct or indirect taxation model works best. Not sure how practical all this is though.

We've just had our first few secret BOF members. It is very annoying.

[Sunlit Forres]

Where have you been Sunlit Forres (in the dark it seems)

Thanks for the pointers Paul. I can't believe that this was raised as long ago as Dec 2009 and it's still not been changed. Not exactly the best way to encourage clubs to promote BOF membership.

I'm afraid that my memory for previous Nopesport topics is about as average as my performance in Roseisle this afternoon.

[Clive Coles]

I am in agreement with Paul in regard to identity

Their membership card shows they are members of British Orienteering not EckO, so it doesn't help the identity issues.

Ever since I have been an orienteer I have always regarded myself as a club member. It probably took me about 15 years before I realised that BOF did anything for me other than run the JK. They just appeared to cream off event levy from the receipts my club received from events we staged.

I am probably a little wiser ( and older) now ~ I know a bit more about what BOF does with the money. But I never the less still associate orienteering with my membership of my club ~ being a BOF member is a secondary matter. I doubt I am alone in this respect.

I would like to suggest we change the membership card to display the Club logo in place of the BOF version. That's the organisation i believe I have joined. You could qualify the level of BOF membership (if this still exists) by the small print on the card, for example:

Affiliated to British Orienteering as a LOCAL [or] NATIONAL member.

This effectively recognises a return to our roots ~ BOF is ( and I believe always should have remained) a federation of clubs.

I do however think it is helpful for BOF to run a centralised subscription service for clubs and for them to issue membership cards. They can operate banking money collections systems ~ something that clubs could find difficult to manage especialy as cheques get phased out by Banks. But they do need to sort out this data protection issue ~ they have to find a way of passing information bacK to the club which the individuals have joined.

[70plus]

... the turnover is huge and many do not stay when the first year free offer expires. Reducing the fees will help reduce this turnover, but it will still be big.(

Back in the heady expanding years of the 70s I was treasurer-cum-membership secretary of our club. I recall that our normal annual membership wastage was about 20%, which we usually more than counterbalanced with new recruits. If today's wastage is about the same level, it would appear to be a measure of the lasting appeal of O to typical novices. But in those days the age-profile was much younger - today, with the peak of the bell-curve somewhere in the upper fifties, turnover is probably much less (I would guess).

[andypat]

I tend to agree with the comments about BOF not being particaulrly relevant to the newcomer. Until I discovered the ranking list I'd say I hadnt any concept of BOF at all.

If I understand what Paul F is saying correctly - make the individual join the club but the club is responsible for the BOF stuff - I'd say that sounds simpler and therefore better for newcomers.

It doesnt necessarily explain what to do with those who might want to participate but not join a club - but the nature of the sport is different to say road running in that unattached competitors are not likely to be a major source of income for orienteering.

[distracted]

Was surprised to read that you have to join BOF to join a club. University clubs are different in this regard... but I also know of plenty of clubs that offer a club/social membership, without you having to join BOF. Just the way people interpret how things work?


Back to the original question - I think there are two distinct areas to consider:

1) How do we keep people already in the sport involved in orienteering - juniors, students, seniors, veterans - do they all want the same things?
2) How so we encourage people new to the sport to come back for more? Is membership the be-all and end-all, or is there something more fundamental that we're missing?