Membership and Levy proposal Feb 2012

[mister blobs]

The bulk of the BOF income will now need to be raised from participants at an event ~ the more you participate the more you contribute. Each time you turn up your contribution is the same as other attendees. That seems fair to me.

Just like the poll tax was fair?

[mister blobs]

On the plus side, the cost of entering large events could go down by as much as £2 day, as the levy is currently £3.30 when you go over 210.

I guess one side effect of the proposed changes is that the gap between a local and big event will get smaller. So it might be easier to get those people that at the moment only go to smaller events to step up. If they have been used to paying £2 they probably think they are being ripped off by entry fees of £10 or more.

It also highlights how a few big events and their entrants are currently subsidising the cost of providing the infrastructure of our sport. Now if you think that's a positive thing then you probably don't like the proposals. If you think that the cost should be shared equally across all those benefiting from that infrastructure you will probably agree with them.

But going to big events is already expensive, you have to travel further and possibly pay for overnight accommodation. So adding a few pounds onto entry here is not very significant.

[SJC]

If the assumption is made that behaviour is driven by cost (which may or may not be true) then the result of these changes should be to drive membership numbers up but at the same time participation will go down.

Is this aimed at increasing the figure looked at by the various Sports Councils ?

[Freefall]

Membership rather than participation is a key factor with the support we get from sportscotland. Not our rules, and they apply over other sports too.

[HOCOLITE]

As I understand this it will mean bye bye to our schools championship. Access charged at £1.50 per run plus levy of 1/3 of £1.30 then err maps and toilets and medals How much can you charge schools ????? Then the night league and NSL small low key events but not activities. The idea that the more events you do the more you pay is akin to VAT and the choice is yours. So the decision is do I want to pay the extra entry to cover the levy or do I do something else...... where I don't spend my money on fuel and my time travelling. As we have already decided to give JK and British a miss due to costs I think the idea of increasing our fees for the local events may just be the end.. More volunteers lost.

[awk]

but we are really a low cost sport in comparison with others. A more significant factor is the cost of travel and the other pressures of family and other social life. That is certainly the case as far as I am concerned.

This cost argument is a complete fallacy: we are just as expensive as other sports to participate in. Yes, you're right, that if you stay local you can do it more cheaply, but if you aspire to any sort of challenge or competitive standard at all, you have to travel (except, perhaps, the lucky few who live in the Lakes or parts of Scotland). If I was restricted to orienteering locally, then I would almost certainly stop orienteering within a few months.

The simple fact is that if I want a high standard match or race in any of the other sports I do, I can get that locally on a regular basis. That is simply no longer possible in orienteering. I see nothing fair in me, a full-time earner, paying the same as a full-time student. As somebody else said, the poll tax was said to be fair based on exactly the same arguments.

But even if you do stay 'local', travel costs are still substantial. Aside from the informal midweek type events, I'm lucky to get more than a race a month within 30 miles, and we have a pretty high density of races as far as the country goes. In most of the other sports I play, that would be regarded as a long way away (enough to make it difficult to raise teams on occasions).

So, whilst on the surface it might seem cheap, orienteering at anything other than a very basic, local level is anything but cheap, and we are only fooling ourselves if we think anything else.

The bulk of the BOF income will now need to be raised from participants at an event ~ the more you participate the more you contribute. Each time you turn up your contribution is the same as other attendees. That seems fair to me.

It doesn't to me. I see no fairness in small events being clobbered for the same amounts as big events, and clubs who put on a higher proportion of the smaller events being thus clobbered commensurately harder. The fair system to me would be a sliding scale.

[Clive Coles]

I could concede on that argument AWK

I see no fairness in small events being clobbered for the same amounts as big events, and clubs who put on a higher proportion of the smaller events being thus clobbered commensurately harder. The fair system to me would be a sliding scale

Not sure how the rates would need to be scaled if for example we went for level D £1, level C £2 .....etc.... Someone with access to the estimation model would have to do that.

But for some to liken the levy to Poll Tax is playing to emotions. No one likes paying tax and the Poll Tax is easily remembered as the devil of all taxes.

To go back to the beginning ~ we have been discussing the issue of membership fees and levy for years. Many think our current system has become overcomplicated ~ difficult for newcomers and some existing members to explain. We have two tiers of membership, special concessions for families and students, non ~ BOF member surcharges at some but not all events. It's almose fruitless to explain and justify what pays for what ( though some try). The so called package of benefits hardly justifies the current differential split between National and Local memberships.

I cann't believe I am saying this but.... I think this BOF proposal is a step in the correct direction They have gone back to basics and come up with a proposal which they claim is financially neutral and which is simple both to understand and administer. We all pay our contributions to the running of our sport as we participate.

Let's by all means look at a sliding scale so as not to hit the level D events so hard. But, to be financialy neutral any reduction you need to do for level D will result in an increase for levels C, B, etc.

But when it comes to the people based concessions on actual event fees, let the clubs decide what discounts to allow.. The clubs collect the entry fees, they budget so as to cover their known outgoings and set a entry fee structure that suits their expected participants. I don't see why the national body should need to dictate on how every combination of concession should be applied.

[Mrs H]

YES BUT.......why are BOF so blatantly targeting students of all people when in their own discussion paper they stated:

Assumptions
In order to focus discussion, a number of assumptions have been made by the Board: Juniors and students will continue to count as one-third of a senior for levy purposes in line with the decisions at the 2010 and 2011 AGMs

AND this was backed up at the club conference by the consensus that:

Assumptions
Juniors and Students count as a third – general agreement to continue with status quo where this was concerned

Who decided to ignore this and why?
I have enumerated on enumerable occasions how badly students are being served in a sport that so desperately needs them - but to name just a few:
The down grading of the FCC
The removal of M/W 20s from the YBT
The non-replacement of the University Development Officer
The lack of tours for the 18/20s
etc etc

Only Scott seems to be making any efforts on behalf of this sector and if you have any doubt whether they are worth it then you obviously have never been to EUOC's Big Weekend or last year's splendid Harvester.

You could now count the number of viable university clubs on the left hand of a short sighted butcher, this will reduce the number to a simple two fingered gesture.

On the proposal in general I have no objection to direct taxation per se but a sliding scale is an obvious essential.

Make no mistake - this is all about paying wage bills - we either pay through the events we go to or we attend club night style activities which bring in revenue from other sources. It's a win/win for BOF.

Whether you think the staff at BOF are worth the money is another matter completely.....

[Paul Frost]

If I was restricted to orienteering locally, then I would almost certainly stop orienteering within a few months.

Doesn't give community-O much hope for a long term future then does it?

I see nothing fair in me, a full-time earner, paying the same as a full-time student.

We have been here before, but what about the unemployed, minimum wage earners, pensioners etc. We can't build a national entry fee structure taking into account everyones financial status. There is no "fair" method of charging for anything.

One of the biggest demands/reasons for a new membership & levy system was that it should be simple to understand and administer. Every suggested way of trying to make the system "fairer" just complicates it.

[Adrian]

If I was restricted to orienteering locally, then I would almost certainly stop orienteering within a few months.

Doesn't give community-O much hope for a long term future then does it?

Community O isn't aimed at awk.

I see nothing fair in me, a full-time earner, paying the same as a full-time student.

We have been here before, but what about the unemployed, minimum wage earners, pensioners etc. We can't build a national entry fee structure taking into account everyones financial status. There is no "fair" method of charging for anything.

Yes we can and yes there is. Most organisations have a fair and simple system of charging less for "concessions", and there's no reason why we can't do the same.

One of the biggest demands/reasons for a new membership & levy system was that it should be simple to understand and administer. Every suggested way of trying to make the system "fairer" just complicates it.

The only people demanding a simple levy system are the 100 or so people who have to deal with it. No-one else cares whether it's complicated or not.

[greywolf]

One of the biggest demands/reasons for a new membership & levy system was that it should be simple to understand and administer

That's a very good argument for for scrapping association fees and levies as well

Or are you saying that it's ok to have wildly different taxes according to geography, but not to take any account of ability to pay or type/cost of event?

[Oldman]

I see no fairness in small events being clobbered for the same amounts as big events, and clubs who put on a higher proportion of the smaller events being thus clobbered commensurately harder. The fair system to me would be a sliding scale.

But I see no fairness in people orienteering at smaller events and not paying their propootionate share of whatever the national cost is. And £1.30 is hardly "being clobbered".

Anyway, it is not the clubs who are paying, it's the individuals who pay the entry fees that include the levy.

[Clive Coles]

Every suggested way of trying to make the system "fairer" just complicates it.

That's the problem ~ quite agree Paul.

We have no mechanism of trying to encode "ability to pay" as a BOF membership parameter. Agree most if not all students are in dire financial trouble but there are other sectors of our orienteering community such as the unwaged that will fall into that category as well.

BOF also don't really have a clear view of who is a student. Undergraduates will be tend to be recorded as juniors at the outset, switching to adult membership when they reach 21. BOF does not record student card holders as such, they are no ways of encoding those juniors who opt for Apprenticeships or vocational training rather than full time university. What might appear for some is fair is unfair to others.

That why I argue keep the National membership and levy systems simple and understandable. A set of rules that provide an even playing field based on definable parameters.

Let the clubs, who tend to know their members, decide where concessions are applied. Cannot remember when I was last asked for my BOF membership card at an event.

[SeanC]

It must be quite frustrating for those who've worked on this proposal to read all of this emotional feedback when so few people volunteered to comment earlier in the review. To paraphrase Delia Smith "Where were you?"

Perhaps the BOF website needs to remind everyone why this was done - I've picked this off the original consulatation paper.

The activities of British Orienteering are currently funded from a variety of sources, public and private. Income from UK Sport, Sport England and Sport NI1 represents about 72% of the annual income and may be used only for the purposes for which grants have been offered. Income from membership subscriptions, levies and major events represents about 17% of the total and may be used for any purpose in accordance with the members’ wishes. All British Orienteering income categories are shown graphically in Figure 1 below.

The current membership structure is perceived as cumbersome, expensive to maintain and, arguably, not sufficiently attractive to potential new members. The levy system is well tried, but currently more than 50% of participant runs are at events which do not contribute to the costs of orienteering through the payment of a levy of any sort. The Board therefore wishes to embark on a consultation process to review the membership and levy structures in tandem, to determine whether these structures are the most suitable for meeting likely future demands.

Within British Orienteering we have been striving for greater efficiency and transparency in the way we spend our income. The staff has been restructured over the past 18 months and its output carefully tailored to the aims of the various funding streams. There is no spare capacity in the resource that the staff represents, but there are evident gaps in the support required of it in such areas as coaching, external publicity and internal communication.

Ignoring the proposal for a minute it must be obvious that the current membership system is a bit bonkers. Non-orienteers scratch their heads and go away rather than join up - and it's not a great impression of the sport. Does anyone think we don't need staff to spend more time supporting publicity and coaching rather than trying to figure out how to do a mid-year transfer from single to family membership etc (or paying for an expensive IT system that can handel the different use cases).

The consultation document doesnt mention the trend we all see towards increased local orienteering - so that figure of 50% of levy free runs will only increase (or BOF income gets squeezed still further). I suspect most of the new joiners are joining at local level so the proportion of local membership rises dropping BOF's income. These two trends mean that every year we must change the levy/membership system.

Personally I would have gone for a system of the clubs being billed for a flat membership fee so potentially being able to go completely towards pay and play - or sticking with a membership model but controlling the benefits themselves (such as reduced entry at local events). Perhaps this would be too complicated?

Mrs. H - you're description of BOF re students is inaccurate, at least from the development committee's viewpoint. The most recent meeting discussed I think two club nights targetting universities and agreed funding for a really good project that Bristol University OC proposed - that's only the bit of BOF I have any great knowledge about.

[Mrs H]

Are you saying that any of the things I quoted or listed in my post are inaccurate?