BOF Development Fund

[SeanC]

I'm surprised how long it took for this to come up on nopesport It was mentioned in previous news items on the website, but perhaps the dev committee minutes puts it in a different way.

A few thoughts on this for you to take to your club meetings.

Quite a lot of the applications over the past year might be called "business as usual"... grants for SI kit, permanent courses etc. Many well established clubs with income through events could fund this themselves, or try for lottery funding (who normally give partial funding). This might be better .. lottery money brings in more money into the sport... clubs have more control and things can get set up quicker. But it might be worse. Development funding is a risk... it might not work, there are those within clubs who will say "we tried that in 19xx and it didn't work" or "it's not going to work because X and Y and Z". Faced with internal politics it's easy to see it as too much hassle. Going to the BOF committee breaks this problem, sceptics dont usually mind if someone else is paying.

So at your next club meeting why not propose that your club starts its own development fund... with it's own development committee to decide how its spent? The club commits to putting in a decent sum per year and the club dev committee has to spend it within X years or it goes back into general club funds?

That wont work for new clubs. If someone wants to start a new club then they have lots of up front costs... this is where central development funds could help. However nearly all the new clubs I'm aware of have been uni clubs, and I'm think I'm right in saying that uni clubs will continue to be supported directly by BOF (in England?) as there is dedicated SportEngland money for this.

A small number of projects the committee approved grants to aren't club projects at all. Open Orienteering Map, the LIDAR study from the map group, junior regional squads. I'm not sure what will happen here.

I would like to think that we (BOF, clubs, regions) could find money to invest in genuine innovative projects that could have a national impact on the sport... there are probably lots of ideas out there related to IT for example.

Final thought... clubs who haven't responded to the development committee yet... with the greatest respect to Scott I don't think it's that important (apart from the principle of keeping a promise). What I'd really like to see is articles on some of these projects in CompassSport or Focus. There are some really innovative projects out there and it would do a lot more good if everyone heard about it rather than dev committee members and those who read minutes. Picking two as examples from the last meeting, MAR are doing some really interesting stuff to get youngsters (who maybe have just seen orienteering in schools) into "real" /forest orienteering... a perenial comment about schools O is that it doesn't translate into participation in mainstream orienteering. Then there is Swansea Bay OC, who account for most of the membership/participation increase in Wales I understand? And they are a small, peripheral club... the sort that are most at risk elsewhere in the country.

The people leading this stuff are maybe too busy to write a long article... but you might not be and there are lots of articulate authors on nopesport. Maybe just pick up the phone and offer to do an article?

[Mrs H]

In particular, the Board is concerned at the lack of spending on volunteer support.

What exactly is volunteer support?

[Spookster]

In particular, the Board is concerned at the lack of spending on volunteer support.

What exactly is volunteer support?

Well, I image its resources (people, materials, advice, training, guidance, accreditation, etc) that would be useful to volunteers (planners, organisers, controllers, mappers, coaches, committee members, etc), to help them provide/grow/develop the sport of orienteering.

For example, Club Leaders looks good (though not a good example of what we could spend money on, because it's free!).

[King Penguin]

From the latest minutes of Development Committee.

Lyn West delivered the following statement regarding the future of the Development Fund:

Development Fund Applications

The British Orienteering Development programme has created a number of Community Orienteering projects throughout England which have increased participation and developed more places in line with the vision of British Orienteering.

.

.. and promptly cancelled a number of them with no notice after just a week or two before it was possible to assess whether they had increased participation !

[obody]

.. and promptly cancelled a number of them with no notice after just a week or two before it was possible to assess whether they had increased participation !

Well precisely. They run out of funds and suddenly the Development Fund is being used 'strategically' to plug the gap??

[graeme]

lack of spending on volunteer support.

What exactly is volunteer support?

It's support you don't have to spend anything to get.
Oh, hang on...

[Mrs H]

....so if we have to pay people to support the volunteers - why don't we just pay the volunteers and cut out the middlemen?

[Oldman]

Because, to me at least, it makes more economic sense to employ and pay one specialist to do lots of things that will help our large number of volunteers to acquire skills than to pay masses of volunteers next to nothing and that does nothing to build our skill base. The person will presumably also look at how we recruit, motivate and retain volunteers without "burning out " the volunteers.

[Mrs H]

Okay...let's just hope the specialist actually knows more than the volunteers then

[awk]

Because, to me at least, it makes more economic sense to employ and pay one specialist to do lots of things that will help our large number of volunteers to acquire skills.....

I thought that was the role of a development officer?

[graeme]

Okay...

This sounds right up your street, I really can't think of anyone better! Why don't you volunteer to be the specialist?

[Mrs H]

.....will I get paid?

[graeme]

Oh, hang on...

[SeanC]

I don't know what Lyn West means by "supporting the volunteers" but there are lots of different ways that volunteers could be supported by BOF. For example:

Publicity officers... difficult job and they're pretty much on their own. Money could be spent on training courses, organising and paying for regional publicity officers conferences so they could share ideas, providing resources like a photo bank, better posters or giving advice on marketing strategies.

Registration/meet and greet. Our front of house people, some online advice on how to be friendly and informative etc. It doesn't always happen.

Coaches/those who want to teach orienteering. More subsidies for coaching courses (these are sometimes cancelled because of lack of numbers, but more subsidy = less numbers required)*. More online resources.

Club website developers. Up to date advice on the best way to build a good, maintainable club website. Feedback on image and how easy it is to find information etc.

Club chairs... the most difficult job in O? Online advice from those who've done it on the best way to handle orienteering personalities . Someone to organise pairing a new chair with an experienced chair?

etc etc re all the jobs that volunteers do.

It's pretty obvious to me that it could be a full time job + a decent sized budget, for someone in BOF to help volunteers in such ways.. and much of this job might be to pass on information that's already out there, or to help orienteers talk to orienteers.

This isn't necessarily going to fall into Ed's job spec as most/all of his funding is from SportEngland. He's pretty maxed out on workload anyway.

Some in big clubs with many skilled people to help within the club might not see the point, but many small to medium sized clubs don't have the full range of skills.

The dev committee have allocated a lot of your money for SI kit, POC courses etc over the years, but without well publicised events, well organised clubs with a good strategy etc return such grants might not be as great as hoped.*

*not a comment on previous projects.

[graeme]

There is an amazing wealth of knowledge and talent among orienteering volunteers. In my club we have website builders, financial wizards, coaching expertise, computing skills, mappers even people who spend their lives trying to manage free-thinking egotists. And as for dreaming up whizzy new formats, one hardly needs to start. For some thing there are even more superskills in neighbouring clubs (andy, lard, SIman etc.).
The list goes on, and if I wanted support for pretty much anything it wouldn't be hard to find.

But, and I've said this before: volo = I wish, and there are a whole bunch of jobs that people simply don't wish to do. Or are crap at. Or are much better at something else and have finite time. That's where we need to pay for help, but help to *do*, not help to advise.

I think marketing is the main one because, ultimately, it takes time. e.g. I'd love to have the equivalent of freefall's promotional 6-day video, but I have no interest whatsoever in being facilitiated to make it myself.

Please hire people to do stuff.