Hi All,
Have you read your BOF AGM pack yet? And will you be voting?
(You should have had your AGM email from BOF on 18 August).
I think all BOF members should consider the implications of BOF's Resolutions 6 and 7.
In particular that if these proposals go through then BOF will take a £2.50 levy (tax) for each newcomer (non member) who runs including at local level D events (many of which are aimed at attractinng said newcomers into the sport).
Yes that's right, you organise an event for newcomers, charge them a £5er and BOF say "thanks very much for your efforts - we'll have half that!"
This measure will in no way help us get more and younger people into our sport.
In fact, it is more likely to have the opposite effect.
Not only that, but BOF are rushing this measure through, without good reason, without adequate consultation with the membership as a whole, and without sufficient time to allow for clubs and members to discuss and take a fair vote on the matter!
Yes, I know I'm only telling part of the story here, in the same way that BOF are only telling part of the story in the AGM pack!
I will post a more balanced and considered response on here in the next day or two, but in the meantime, keen to hear the views of others.
I will be going to the AGM to vote in person and will be happy to vote as your proxy.
You will need my details
Andrew Thornton 323951 MDOC
I will be happy to vote as per your instructions or if you leave it to my discretion I will cast your vote AGAINST resolution 6 and FOR all the other very sensible BOF proposals.
I'm not anti BOF, I'm not anti levy - but I do think they have got this one wrong, and there are much better ways of doing what I think they are trying to achieve.
You can message me on here or email me at 1andythornton at gmail dot com if you wish to discuss further or need help with voting.
BOF AGM Proposal - New Non Member Levy £2.50 - VOTE
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Re: BOF AGM Proposal - New Non Member Levy £2.50 - VOTE
Our club development officer (we are very lucky to have one) has been running fun days over the summer which are free, basic O course, maze O and archery - O biathlon style.
They have been very popular with local children and parents usually held in local parks.
So does this proposal impact free events, not sure how they have been registered, is 'activity' still a level?
So does this proposal only apply if you are charging people?
They have been very popular with local children and parents usually held in local parks.
So does this proposal impact free events, not sure how they have been registered, is 'activity' still a level?
So does this proposal only apply if you are charging people?
- Dewi
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Re: BOF AGM Proposal - New Non Member Levy £2.50 - VOTE
Dewi wrote:So does this proposal only apply if you are charging people?
No levy at all applies to anything registered as an activity, both currently and under the proposal.
Junior event levy is currently 50p, the proposal increases that to 55p for both members and non-members.
Senior event levy is currently £1.50 for both members and non-members.
The proposal would increase that to £1.65 for members and £2.50 for non-members.
I think there is a much more fundamental debate to be had around what we expect BOF to do and how we fund it; but I also think that if you asked 20 orienteers to answer those questions you'd get 40 different answers
- Marian
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Re: BOF AGM Proposal - New Non Member Levy £2.50 - VOTE
The proposal would increase that to £1.65 for members and £2.50 for non-members.
Given that BOF has to raise the money to fund itself from somewhere, the event levy would appear to be the best way to do it. Much better than having a much higher membership fee.
85p extra for a non-member is cheap. At all road races it is normally £2.00 extra for those who aren't members of English Athletics and this doesn't seem to put people off.
As the proposals say, you don't have to specifically pass this on to the newcomers if the club wants to subsidise them.
- SJC
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Re: BOF AGM Proposal - New Non Member Levy £2.50 - VOTE
Around here the common entry surcharge for (adult) non-members is £2. Until now that has all been retained by clubs, and going forward BO are only taking 85p of it. Seems reasonable to me. The logic of an entry surcharge is surely to encourage anyone who comes regularly to join BO, which is in all our interests.
- Snail
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Re: BOF AGM Proposal - New Non Member Levy £2.50 - VOTE
SJC wrote:The proposal would increase that to £1.65 for members and £2.50 for non-members.
Given that BOF has to raise the money to fund itself from somewhere, the event levy would appear to be the best way to do it. Much better than having a much higher membership fee.
85p extra for a non-member is cheap. At all road races it is normally £2.00 extra for those who aren't members of English Athletics and this doesn't seem to put people off.
As the proposals say, you don't have to specifically pass this on to the newcomers if the club wants to subsidise them.
This for me is the correct line of thought/questioning.
If the proposal is to be voted down as has been called for, then we must ask what is the alternative solution?
An increase in BOF membership fee or levy was virtually certain this year - I've seen comments about the fact that BOF has "massive reserves" - without wanting to draw too many parallels, this was the same argument made about local authorities post-2010 and the justification made for central goverment cutting funding from those authorities. Fast forward 10 years and all local authorities of whatever party are struggling financially and some are in real trouble - see Kirklees most recently - one of their solutions is to close leisure centres....not good.
The parallel with UKA seems sensible here. Many clubs already charge non-BOF members more - never been quite sure why, so it seems as though clubs will have to stop creaming this off the top.
The argument for BOF seems clear to me - make the benefits of membership more obvious - if you orienteer 10x per year or more, then it starts to make sense to join your local club.
Is the stick too big and the carrot not big enough? Maybe.
But it seems a sensible suggestion to me unless you can explain otherwise.
If you really want to encourage newcomers to the sport as claimed, then perhaps we should make EOD mandatory for all clubs at all events (except Major champs/JK) - that's got to be a bigger incentive than a small price increase.
The recent Sheffield Sprint missed out on my entry by having no EOD - I could have potentially come and jogged round, but due to entries closing early, I was unable to EOD - and I didn't know that I could have gone until the morning of the event.
- rf_fozzy
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Re: BOF AGM Proposal - New Non Member Levy £2.50 - VOTE
That's factually inaccurate - the proposal is £2.50 for each senior member (M/W21+). Junior members/non-members will pay the same levy (50p IIRC). Its also misleading for people who don't understand the status quo to describe this as though the charge is a new concept - the current levy is £1.50 - its a £1 increase not a £2.50 invention.AndyT wrote:In particular that if these proposals go through then BOF will take a £2.50 levy (tax) for each newcomer (non member) who runs including at local level D events (many of which are aimed at attractinng said newcomers into the sport).
if you are genuinely running a noobie event - perhaps you should have registered it as an Activity and had to pay nothing. When is an event not an activity? When its about competition / results etc - which sounds like a regular orienteer's thing than a come-and-try thing.Yes that's right, you organise an event for newcomers, charge them a £5er and BOF say "thanks very much for your efforts - we'll have half that!"
But do you honestly think you get nothing from BOF in return for your event levy? Because there is nothing to stop a club from constituting itself outside the BOF arrangement and organising its own insurance, cross club promotion/website, results publication, national land owner negotiations, organiser/planner safety training and paperwork etc.
This measure will in no way help us get more and younger people into our sport.
In fact, it is more likely to have the opposite effect.
Most clubs already charge £1-2 extra per non member at level D events. IF your argument is right, then they would appear to be at least as big a problem.
I'm not sure its rushed. There was a consultation with every club in early Spring. I think also open to feedback from all members. The structure they ended up with is based on what clubs/people said they wanted. (Hence the no differentiation on Junior levies, no day membership approach etc). The BOF Board/CEO seem to have been quite open about the plan and shared it before the board papers and then the board papers have been circulated in good time. Nothing seems to be unfair about the process.Not only that, but BOF are rushing this measure through, without good reason, without adequate consultation with the membership as a whole, and without sufficient time to allow for clubs and members to discuss and take a fair vote on the matter!
I think if you actually have meaningful, constructive, costed solutions for this then you should put them forward.I'm not anti BOF, I'm not anti levy - but I do think they have got this one wrong, and there are much better ways of doing what I think they are trying to achieve.
I think what you are saying is BOF should put in place a scheme to subsidise beginners.
There is nothing under this scheme which stops a club from subsidising non-members if that is what the club wants to do (by having all entries the same). That provides local autonomy for the club most likely to benefit from beginners to make those decisions on an event-by-event basis.
Behaviours are changing and people are less inclined to join a club. Clubs need to look at what they can do to make that more attractive. One obvious way is to have a better financial incentive for actually being a member if you run reasonably regularly. I'm surprised there are not any clubs running an expensive membership with free entry to all their local events approach. Once people are in the club you have far more chance of luring them into volunteering.
My concerns are much more practical - how can a local event actually determine if Joe Bloggs is a current BOF member (a) at the entry stage without using a commercial platform at a significant expense; (b) on the day at the event. A membership number is not proof they are paid up (and in Jan/Feb often are not) - where the only impact is on the entry fee, not the levy most clubs don't look too hard and assume anyone regularly doing this eventually renews.
A bigger issue exists in Scotland where a large number of people who never run outside Scotland are members of SOA and the club but not BOF. Those people have qualified for "member" rates at events with different fees, and clubs will need to decide if they need a new tier of fee for them or would subsidise these people. SOA will then also need to find a way for the organisers of an event in Tayside to confirm if someone is a member of ESOC etc. However, I can completely see that a BOF member in Blackburn (Lancs) would be asking why they are subsidising the insurance costs of an SOA member in Blackburn (West Lothian) who runs more often! I think that then makes an English orienteer (if they are aware of the anomaly) question why they need to join and the existing issue perpetuates. I can see why some Scottish only members would feel aggrieved they aren't part of the consultation that impacts them - but of course, they have made a choice not to join BOF so you can't have it both ways.
Realistically what we are talking about here is probably adding £1 to adult non-member entries. If that puts people off orienteering we have a bigger problem. Personally, I think your lobbying at the AGM would be better asking BOF to ringfence all the extra levies they get and use that in a way specifically targeted at promoting membership to 21-40 yr olds - unfortunately, you've jumped up and down and declared you are opposing it and got some backers who are giving you their proxy which makes it difficult for you now to have the reasoned discussion about it you said you wanted to start in the opening post.
- Atomic
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Re: BOF AGM Proposal - New Non Member Levy £2.50 - VOTE
Atomic wrote:But do you honestly think you get nothing from BOF in return for your event levy? Because there is nothing to stop a club from constituting itself outside the BOF arrangement and organising its own insurance, cross club promotion/website, results publication, national land owner negotiations, organiser/planner safety training and paperwork etc.
I don't actually think BOF is expensive, but I also don't think I get all those things, at least in my experience
Insurance, yes - though would be good to understand as one of the mentioned drivers for a levy increase, what alternatives have been explored. How are fell races insured so cheaply for instance? (I believe through UKA, so how do they manage it?)
Cross club promotion - v.rarely
Website - is poor. Doesn't sell the sport. Looks outdated. As fixtures sec having to enter all the same details on our own website, the BOF website, and in some cases a entries website, is a pain. BOF could have set up an enter button on the fixtures page and made a few quid, and made lives easier in levy collection too.
Results publication - again, has to be done twice. Other than ranking points, superfluous.
Land owner negotiations - not going very well, all done locally round here
Organiser/safety training - all the course I have ever done have been delivered by local volunteers with their own material, in their own time. There may have been some central material provided to be fair.
Atomic wrote:Personally, I think your lobbying at the AGM would be better asking BOF to ringfence all the extra levies they get and use that in a way specifically targeted at promoting membership to 21-40 yr olds
This x 10
- Len
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Re: BOF AGM Proposal - New Non Member Levy £2.50 - VOTE
Len - I didn't say any of those things were especially good, but if you don't have BOF someone has to provide most of them even at a rudimentary standard. Be careful what you wish for with a governing body doing entries! British Cycling's portal is only slightly more user-friendly for a novice than Fabian4 and for event organisers is less flexible! It is a shame there isn't a more seamless integration though. Your organiser training would have been run by volunteers (as most BOF stuff is - its a misplaced thought that because they have some staff they don't rely on volunteers) but using a framework designed/agreed with BOF (and I assume the insurers). Its not a great course but its very low input for an organiser to do - and anyone wanting to run outside the BOF framework would need to consider what level of competence was required etc.
The events part of the BOF site is pretty poor and more so because clubs post stuff with half the useful information missing but its content is picked up by EventO, someone else's site that maps it etc, and I think some clubs have an integration for their local events and those of neighbouring clubs? etc.
I don't know if our insurance is particularly expensive, but certainly, it is reasonable to ask how often we've gone out for quotations on alternatives. I can imagine that an underwriter who actually understood orienteering events might see the risk differently from the average fell race (route choice = unknown options and risk of damage to walls/fences and public from unexpected angles; unmanned controls = long time before overdue runner noticed; urban races = fighting with traffic & pedestrians). Personally, I'd be happier to pay more for insurance if it let 14 yr olds run sprint events more easily!
The events part of the BOF site is pretty poor and more so because clubs post stuff with half the useful information missing but its content is picked up by EventO, someone else's site that maps it etc, and I think some clubs have an integration for their local events and those of neighbouring clubs? etc.
I don't know if our insurance is particularly expensive, but certainly, it is reasonable to ask how often we've gone out for quotations on alternatives. I can imagine that an underwriter who actually understood orienteering events might see the risk differently from the average fell race (route choice = unknown options and risk of damage to walls/fences and public from unexpected angles; unmanned controls = long time before overdue runner noticed; urban races = fighting with traffic & pedestrians). Personally, I'd be happier to pay more for insurance if it let 14 yr olds run sprint events more easily!
- Atomic
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Re: BOF AGM Proposal - New Non Member Levy £2.50 - VOTE
Atomic wrote:My concerns are much more practical - how can a local event actually determine if Joe Bloggs is a current BOF member (a) at the entry stage without using a commercial platform at a significant expense; (b) on the day at the event. A membership number is not proof they are paid up (and in Jan/Feb often are not) - where the only impact is on the entry fee, not the levy most clubs don't look too hard and assume anyone regularly doing this eventually renews.
For EOD (and at the event should anyone feel the need to check that), surely it's easy: just show your membership card. And for entry in advance, does anyone NOT use a commercial platform these days?
But is there really any need for a 100% check on the day: I'm pretty sure that most road races taking on-the-day entry take affiliation status on trust. Bearing in mind that EOD usually costs more in any case, a few people cheating the system isn't going to make a lot of difference.
- roadrunner
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Re: BOF AGM Proposal - New Non Member Levy £2.50 - VOTE
Atomic wrote:L
I don't know if our insurance is particularly expensive, but certainly, it is reasonable to ask how often we've gone out for quotations on alternatives. I can imagine that an underwriter who actually understood orienteerig events might see the risk differently from the average fell race (route choice = unknown options and risk of damage to walls/fences and public from unexpected angles; unmanned controls = long time before overdue runner noticed; urban races = fighting with traffic & pedestrians). Personally, I'd be happier to pay more for insurance if it let 14 yr olds run sprint events more easily!
I agree, on the face of it orienteering presents more risk, however actual incidents seem few and far between thankfully. I can recall a number of incidents in fell running that have made the news in the last few years. Some of that will simply be more numbers/races of course. How much of the insurance cost is borne by the average fell race organiser?
On the basis that insuring non-members has been mentioned explicitly, what % of non-member entries are at level D events, where the risks should be lower, i.e. kinder terrain, shorter distance, assistance/coaching at hand - versus a non member at a regional or above event where clearly any risks are usually much higher. Maybe this has already been taken into account alongside stuff like how many non-members are lapsed members rather than newcomers...
- Len
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Re: BOF AGM Proposal - New Non Member Levy £2.50 - VOTE
Len wrote: at level D events, where the risks should be lower
Are you focussing on the risks to participants? There are many other risks covered by the policy which may actually be higher in benign terrain with more members of the public.
Stolen / vanfalised SI units is the obvious one, but there are also plenty of opportunities for Public Liability claims. For example, we share many country parks with horse riders. One of our controls or a competitor bursting out of the bushes could startle a horse, throwing the rider who is then off work for a few months recovering.
- Marian
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Re: BOF AGM Proposal - New Non Member Levy £2.50 - VOTE
I don't think I get sent a membership card each year, do I?roadrunner wrote:For EOD (and at the event should anyone feel the need to check that), surely it's easy: just show your membership card.
yes a number of clubs still use DIY solutions / google forms etc. As I understand it Racesignup lets you put the number in but doesn't validate it etc. If people are going to start asking for cards they'd better warn people as most take about 15 minutes just to find the number!And for entry in advance, does anyone NOT use a commercial platform these days?
Not sure about running, but cycling take it quite seriously and do require your membership card / race license to be shown at every event (even with pre-entry which is bonkers!).But is there really any need for a 100% check on the day: I'm pretty sure that most road races taking on-the-day entry take affiliation status on trust.
Its not so much the individuals "getting away with it" I'm worried about but rather some creative excuses from clubs that they had no idea people weren't members so paid £1.65 not £2.50. Who knows how that plays out if there is an insurance claim but just in terms of running the sport I'm sure some (especially Scottish clubs who don't want to charge their own SOA members more) will play dumb if they can. Honest clubs will be subsidising the rest.Bearing in mind that EOD usually costs more in any case, a few people cheating the system isn't going to make a lot of difference.
- Atomic
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Re: BOF AGM Proposal - New Non Member Levy £2.50 - VOTE
presumably that is not covered / is below any excess?Stolen / vanfalised SI units is the obvious one,
I think that is much more where the concern would lie. Competitors aren't covered unless the organiser has done something very wrong anyway. Presumably, that's the same for fell runners - so whilst there are occasionally high profile rescues they aren't likely to result in claims. But level D events have often less experienced organisers, no controller, and less experienced competitors in often busier areas. An underwriter's nightmare!but there are also plenty of opportunities for Public Liability claims. For example, we share many country parks with horse riders. One of our controls or a competitor bursting out of the bushes could startle a horse, throwing the rider who is then off work for a few months recovering.
- Atomic
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Re: BOF AGM Proposal - New Non Member Levy £2.50 - VOTE
Atomic wrote: presumably that is not covered / is below any excess?
Oops sorry - wrong insurer. That's covered by equipment insurance which is arranged at club level. And yes, the excess will probably exceed one or two damaged units.
- Marian
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