How should we finance orienteering

[Arnold]

I think the answer to that one is not paying people to put on events, but rather oeganising fewer of them in the medium term, especially the level b/c ones which take a lot of effort for often only 100 or 200 people.

Then you could probably also charge more per event as people would go less often...

[RJ]

Which part of the financing of the sport are we talking about.

Almost ALL of the cost of the sport, which is the staging of events, is borne by the club involved in those events. Historically events had a budget to break even, and cover all costs. A good budget produced a surplus. Historically all monies remained with the grass roots of the sport, with the club. This is still the case to a large extent. It is the low participation numbers and low membership numbers that are squeezing the income flow. Solve the participation problem and our worries will recede.

Then came BOF and a nice expensive bureaucracy which we have to maintain. Now, how much of that is needed? This is what the levy pays for. So when we say we should fund the sport through a levy, then this is the bit that we are raising funds for. Transparency is all important. Electronic gear and computers are not included. They are paid for by spreading the cost over many of your club events.

[70plus]

An interesting thread, with the usual contributors saying their usual lines. But the words dog, tail and wag come to mind. Like many other things in the modern world, O is on a treadmill of electronic obsolescence. Our club is still pretty solvent, but much of our funds (mostly from event income) go on updating or replacing SI kit and the associated laptops, and if we use vulnerable competition areas (as many non-rural clubs must), topping up the one or two E-boxes that may go missing but aren't worth submitting an insurance claim for. We all enjoy the advantages of E-timing, but it does cost. I don't suppose many would choose to revert to pin-punches, but at least they were relatively cheap (and I haven't mentioned the cost to the competitor if an E-card is lost).

[Paul Frost]

Almost ALL of the cost of the sport, which is the staging of events, is borne by the club involved in those events.

Every club and major event will have been subsidised by grants/funding/sponsorship etc. in most cases this will have been a significant amount of money.

Events like the Scottish 6 Days would need to charge at least double if there was no support towards mapping, commentary, computing, radio controls etc. from organisations like SportScotland, EventScotland or Leader. Look at the Park World Tour website and the list of sponsors. Without the thousands of pounds or services they donated the entry fees would have been 3/4/5 times higher.

[RJ]

Every club and major event will have been subsidised by grants/funding/sponsorship etc. in most cases this will have been a significant amount of money.

I'll have a bit of that then!!

No event in the last 45 years of our club has received any subsidy/sponsorship or funding.... ever!

PWT obviously has received monies from elsewhere. But that is an IOF event.

We have received Awards For All grants for specific development projects however.

[seabird]

For our primarily urban based programme of Level D events we still use pin punches or even no punches at all between start and finish - due to the persistent problem of urban vandalism. Until an ultra-cheap form of electronic timing comes about that situation is unlikely to change. (The worst vandalism we have had for a while has been during these weeks of snow. Is is just that the kites are more visible with a white background?)

Replacing the odd cane, pin punch and kite per event is achievable within the income of a level D event. Replacing lost si units is not.

Re sponsorship I'm with RJ. I've been on our club committee for 20 years. In that time we have not had any grants or sponsorship. To be fair, we have not sought or needed grants. We gave up on sponsorship long ago - much effort required and nil return to show for it.

[Scott]

How many clubs have thousands of pounds of epunching kit which sits idle every other weekend or more? Should we move away from clubs owning their own epunching kit and more towards hiring of epunching kit from big stockpiles? It doesn't cost that much to stick 60 SI boxes and a couple of printers in the post (although the stakes would be a rather different matter).

I know you can already hire epunching kit (from EMIT UK or SportIdent UK, or the North London SI Consortium etc), and I think there are a couple of associations that have communal epunching stores. How does this compare financially to clubs owning kit and bearing the initial purchase and maintenance/replacement costs?

[Paul Frost]

No event in the last 45 years of our club has received any subsidy/sponsorship or funding.... ever!
...
We have received Awards For All grants for specific development projects however.

So which one is it?
If you have had money from Awards for All the club has been subsidised. Whatever the specific development project was it meant you didn't have to fund it from the profits of your events.

I've been on our club committee for 20 years. In that time we have not had any grants or sponsorship. To be fair, we have not sought or needed grants.

Your club is obviously in a very good position, but there are many (I suspect the majority) that could not survive without external support. As I mentioned previously, perhaps this thread isn't relevant to all clubs, it just goes to show that orienteering isn't the same everywhere.

[RJ]

No Paul, they are completely different things. The A4A grants were for a school initiative, and the mapping of school grounds. Doesn't have anything to do with staging events.... sorry!

[RJ]

How many clubs have thousands of pounds of epunching kit which sits idle every other weekend or more?

Ours is used 60 times a year, and has been for the last decade. The question should be..... how can we make better use of the equipment that we have in the club. If you are only using it four or five times a year then address that rather than sticking with the status quo.

Set out a plan for the club, to use the equipment four times more in 2011, and increase every year for the next five years. I can see how clubs are frightened to spend money on e-equipment when they envisage it only being used a few times a year.

[AndyO]

I agree with you, RJ

For those clubs who are putting on a lot of events, a good stock of epunching kit can be maintained and supported by event entries. Clubs who for whatever reason do not put on so many events can have a smaller stock to suit their own club events and training, and share with neighbouring clubs for events where a higher entry is expected. Clubs in the North of Scotland routinely do this, and kit is transferred not by post, but by hand, being handed over usually at events.

Another way of making epunching sustainable in the longer term is for clubs to set aside an amount from event entries to cover repairs and replacments of kit. Gramp amd Maroc have done this jointly for some time now. It is reasonable and possible to finance the initial cost of purchase by grants from A4A, but a bit ambitious to expect to be able to rely on another successful application when the kit reaches the end of its useful life - it doesn't all go at once anyway.

I can understand the attraction for sponsors of a multi day event or one attracting an international entry, but if any club is able to attract sponsors to support events at level C or D, they are very very lucky.

[70plus]

Scott suggests hiring E-kit from a central stockpile, I presume on a regular basis to save club expenditure. Clubs have to share kit for big co-operative events like the recent Lakes 5-day - though even then there were only two sets of kit, used on alternate days.

In times past I can remember NWOA holding communal hardware, and even operating an integrated system of kite-coding so that clubs could share them without risk of duplicating codes. But in the end planners and organisers usually find the hassle of arranging to borrow, and extra travelling to collect and/or return stuff, enough of a nuisance for a club to invest in their own as soon as they can. Sharing in our neck of the woods is usually only necessary for an event needing over 60-70 SI units - we can cope with those on our own.

[SeanC]

Yes, I would agree with that. That's why we got our own kit in the end, even though the DFOK/Saxons sharing was very efficient. Also it means we don't have to worry if there is a clash and in the very long term an event every week for each club? Why not? There are 2 million people in our areas. We also found that the SI kit helped to increased participation which means we may not be dependant on grants for replacement.

However I would still recommend sharing SI kit as an interim measure, particularly for two small clubs.

I'm relaxed about financing our local events, and the volunteering required for it. It seems very sustainable and growth seems quite possible. However I'm less sure about the regional tier. There is gradual declining participation at these events, but expectations seem quite rigid: lots of courses, re-surveyed map, different area every year, 12 month embargo, entry fees rising at no more than inflation. Entries for next week's Westerham regional is only 170* Are these expectations realistic in the long term?

* On-line entries have been extended to tomorrow (2nd Jan)

[Clive Coles]

Interesting to see that so many clubs seem to have managed to acquire their own kit.

In East Anglia we opted to acquire a set of regional SI boxes (and associated PC's etc) at the outset of the SI era. All clubs in the region contributed to this cost at the time. This pool has since expanded to two sets, both capable of supporting a full 8-course colour coded fixture.

More recently two of our clubs have acquired their own kit ~ some others have purchased the training set for their smaller local events. Their costs were I think largely financed by grants or the pooling of finances resulting from the merger of two adjacent clubs.

There are therefore now 5 clubs in EA land that regularly draw on this pool of regional kit. As we plan our regional event timetable to avoid event clashes where possible, we usually manage to share the kit around the clubs who need the boxes in a timely manner without creating problems for event officials.

When we draw on the regional pool the club pays a levy to the Association which goes towards the replacement costs.

This system seems to work and must surely still be the cheapest way to provide a SI supported event structure for the smaller clubs who do not have the organisational strengh to put on 50 events a year.

[EddieH]

Sean, why do you lose so many controls at urban events? Thick metal cable joined with gripples will defeat virtually every vandal. It needs good wire cutters, some determination, to remove them. I know that if you use too thick cable through SI holes it is harder to get some SI dibbers in, but probably worth it.