Focus Magazine

[LostAgain]

In another thread it has been calculated that Focus Magazine costs us:

"IF I can understand it the cost is 9700 times £3.48 which is over £30,000 per year."

IF this is correct, then is this good value for money?
Do we, the members, want our subscriptions spent in this way?
Is there an alternative way of letting the membership receive this information?

I do not mean this to be a knocking thread for Focus, which has IMO been a very professionally produced magazine.

[RJ]

This really won't do..... We can't base a discussion on an IF!!!! Someone has said they think they understand it in this particular way. Until we have a definite figure to deal with we are just going to hypothesise.

Unfortunately the Annual Accounts, although stating that there has been a turnover of over £1 million, has no breakdown of the actual costs of Focus. £30k sounds like a lot of money for 8700 copies four times a year. There is also some serious advertising revenue. We need a NETT figure.

Then lets have a debate........

[LostAgain]

[quote="RJ"]This really won't do..... We can't base a discussion on an IF!!!! Someone has said they think they understand it in this particular way. Until we have a definite figure to deal with we are just going to hypothesise.

Please supply?
Or does someone else have a better insight?

Debate should not be prevented because of lack of transparency, dictatorships are run in this fashion.

This seems like an appropriate forum for such a discussion.

[RJ]

Agree with your analysis about appropriateness!!

And back to the figure of £30K. In the original thread that figure was given for the total package including the postage, envelopes and admin(?). The actual printing costs of the magazine would be much much smaller. Postage alone for the 8700 copies must be about 35p per issue per envelope..... £12,180.

The distribution also includes the membership card, JK advert, BOC advert, other leaflets, AGM booklets.

Out of a £1 million turnover are we really studying the right bits!!!!

[Scott]

Out of a £1 million turnover are we really studying the right bits!!!!

I think it's more reasonable to think of the £30,000 as a not-insignificant fraction of the c.£220,000 that comes from "members' money" (ie membership and levies) - nearly all of the grant income is quite tightly ringfenced or tied to the plans/bids that were submitted to the sports councils, so we get very little say in how it is used. What we don't know is how much of that £30,000 is offset directly by advertising revenue, although my (entirely non-evidence-based) personal suspicion would be that it's probably not a huge proportion of it.

[LostAgain]

The cost discussion should not include all of the postage cost as BO would have to send out the membership cards and notification. So these costs would have to be incurred and not allocated to Focus.

I'm guessing BO would find the need to communicate with the membership at least twice a year with or without Focus.

[SeanC]

And how to you measure the benefit?

It's easy to bash the magazine but...

- it must increase participation amoungst our membership by reminding the less keen what a great sport orienteering is.
- it helps communication between BOF and it's members - helping the sport change.
- it gets people thinking about what BOF does and why, which is the first stage to becoming a BOF volunteer, without which we would have no BOF.

The last issue wasn't so interesting, but previous ones have had some good articles.

[Blanka]

I suggest the best way is to ask people to agree to have Focus sent by e-mail as a PDF file instead. As well as saving on cost, it's more environmentally friendly...

(The same could be done for many of the leaflets, which always go straight to the recycling bin in my case, because I can look up event entry details on the relevant websites).

[EddieH]

Oh Blanka that is terribly disrespectful

[awk]

I suggest the best way is to ask people to agree to have Focus sent by e-mail as a PDF file instead. As well as saving on cost, it's more environmentally friendly...

Great idea! I've started subscribing to a mountain bike magazine this year - works really well. I do print off the odd article to read/keep, but most stays unprinted but well read!

[roadrunner]

I suggest the best way is to ask people to agree to have Focus sent by e-mail as a PDF file instead. As well as saving on cost, it's more environmentally friendly...

Good idea - it might be a rather large email, but you could allow people to download it from the BOF website.

Those who want a paper copy could always pay extra with their membership for printing and postage.

[distracted]

If you use your login to the British Orienteering website, you can already download the pdf version of Focus...

[SeanC]

Roadrunner wrote "Those who want a paper copy could always pay extra with their membership for printing and postage."

please no!!! The membership is already complicated enough for beginners. And extra admin costs are likely to negate the savings.

However I'd be happy to pay the normal membership fee, get my focus emailed to me, and any cost savings to go into the development fund.

I have long since forgotten my login. I probably wouldn't read it online without some kind of email alert.

[RJ]

Being able to pick up a copy of a magazine, be it CompassSport or whatever and just flick through it, either to refresh your memory on something or to find an article you want to reread, is so important. E-copies are all very well, but being able to flick through a dozen copies is not easy. Now if all the articles were indexed with a short summary so you could 'search' on the website then that is a different story!

Similarity with the fixture lsiting on the BOF website comes to mind. The printed version is just so much easier to get the details from.

Long may the printed copy survive!!!!

[Clive Coles]

Not sure much has changed in the last 12 months. Isn't it time we made the Focus a selectable membership benefit ?

A simple change to the BOF membership system that yields a saving in printing and distribution costs.