Membership and levy proposal

[andypat]

IMO its pointless to compare the fees with other sports. The key point (at least for me) is how do you justify that number of paid posts in a volunteer run sport, where those who do the key "jobs" of putting on the events work sometimes huge hours on top of their own work with no recompense.
I pay £280 a year to be a member of my local gym/tennis club and it is well worth the expense not to have to spend hours per week on organising/coaching/events/series/publicity/fielding queries.
I am seriously considering taking next year "off" orienteering and it has nothing to do with either the entry fees or the membership fee.

[maprun]

Mike Hamilton has posted a news item on the website about National Governing Body status and the future funding of BOF.

The Sport England NGB recognition process (not good goverance kite mark status) is shown below with the two applicaction forms, worth spending a few minutes looking at.

http://www.sportengland.org/our-work/na ... recognise/

[graeme]

BOF should ... just generally run a bit more like Scottish Orienteering - by the members, for the members.

I agree with Mike that it is important to have a well-respected NGB recognised by government funding agencies. He is right to point out that if BO fail in that task
some other organisation could decide that it will.

The SOA president today emailed its members to vote against the increase.

[SeanC]

There is another post from Mike Hamilton on the BO website - The Funding Question part 2. There are some figures, mostly the same as in Focus, but some new information I think.

He summarises as follows:

In summary to deliver a viable British Orienteering organisation functioning as a NGB and delivering an operation as minimal as possible will cost £275,000. To deliver what we are currently delivering without the government funding will cost £372,752.

This is against an income that is projected at £240,000 in 2016 with the current membership and levy fees.

Which is quite interesting. According to the figures there are options for us to choose (if we were given the choice) - a minimum increase of about £35,000, a bigger increase of about £98,000 to keep what we've got, or something in between. I assume the 98K has been rounded down to 90K in the proposal?

I also assume "what we are currently delivering" refers to stuff like Focus and athlete support rather than the Xplorer program?

We're promised an explanation tomorrow about why the money should mostly come from membership.

I think Mike needs some help selling what we're being asked to pay for. Headings like "developing the sport" need elaborating. Perhaps one of the directors might help - though everyone's probably busy and knackered.

[greywolf]

Mike seems to have delivered a convincing argument for a "No" vote
It looks like the real shortfall is £35k, which could more or less be covered by £1 on memberships and 20p on the levy.
Maybe some of those staff, once they are freed up from other responsibilities, could explore some alternative fundraising avenues?

[graeme]

I think Mike needs some help selling what we're being asked to pay for.

Nope. He needs to understand that the job of a CEO is to create value.

This is what SOA understands. Take public funding...

We all know that the government is willing to give some amount of cash to a sport, commensurate with its size. And we know they aren't going to pay us fit, middle aged middle class folk to run around England, nor fund summer trips to Europe for our well-heeled offspring.

So Scotland pitches for RDOs to develop in schools, knowing that most participants will never travel far, but many will join clubs, pay membership and levies, and make club volunteers feel valued. The government loves that kids with poor ball-skills get into sport. Everybody wins.
Scotland pitches for enhancements to the 6-day, making it ever more attractive to foreigners come and pay us their entry fees and levies. The government loves the tourist income to far-flung deprived regions. Everybody wins.

BOF pitches for parallel activities with minimal connection to the sport. Sometimes it's a flop: runchallenge anyone?, but even if not (Xplorer) it is exempted from the membership and levy requirements applied to the rest of us. Cui bono?

As I posted above, SportEngland and IOF recognise BOF as the NGB. SportScotland recognises SOA as the NGB. The challenge for Mike is to persuade us that his model of an NGB is the better one.

[maprun]

The £97,752 additional costs from the information available, to go from the £275,000 minimal NGB costs to the £372,572 strategic budget, appear to be in decreasing spend on specific items:

Focus - £25,000.
Performance & WOC support - £21,280.
Developing the sport - £18,000.
Promoting the sport - £10,000.
Events comp. support - £4,000.
Performance TrailO & MTBO - £2,000.
IOF post holders exps - £2,000.

Plus at least £15,472 of overhead costs, mainly travel & subsistence costs (£12,500), staff training (£2,000), pension contributions (£1,420 - auto enrollment ?). It would appear the specific costs above do not include their related travel costs.

[RJ]

So Scotland pitches for RDOs to develop in schools, knowing that most participants will never travel far, but many will join clubs, pay membership and levies, and make club volunteers feel valued. The government loves that kids with poor ball-skills get into sport. Everybody wins.

Exactly. A small slice of our collective intellectual energy could be diverted to this initiative and similar schemes..... an entry level pathway into the sport for a large number of those 'interested in trying orienteering' people, who can be coached the skills of the sport.... and then a proportion of them will move to the top end of competition and enjoy the sport we all enjoy.

Keeping membership 'reasonably priced' for that group of people is critical to the rate of uptake. They are not a 'cash cow' to be milked, but a resource to provide a viable future for the sport..... ie. planners, organisers, controllers, coaches, committee members etc ..... the people who make the sport work!

[mykind]

Maybe some of those staff, once they are freed up from other responsibilities, could explore some alternative fundraising avenues?

Don't we already have a commercial manager?

[SeanC]

I think the commercial manager resigned.

Graeme - you make some interesting points as always. It depends on your viewpoint. Mike clearly sees orienteering as more than just what happens in clubs. I think many of us get confused because we think British Orienteering should be just for clubs.

Trying to expand a sport outside of affiliated clubs can work - ParkRun. Though that wasn't done through UK Athletics.

BO's current philosophy of pitching for SportEngland funding that is delivered outside of clubs could be interpreted in several ways.

"Unlike in Scotland, SportEngland won't give us money for initiatives that clubs will like to do"

"Clubs are expensive to deal with because they want to do it their way and we (BO employees) will spend our time talking to them/arguing with them, so we'll hit our targets quicker and easier if we pay someone who will do what they are told."

"Club volunteers are knackered and maxed out, we don't want to give them more stuff to do"

Anyway, we're not being asked to pay for this (I think?). We're being asked to pay for Focus, athlete support, some item called development but I don't know what that is exactly. This could and should be sold to us better, irrespective of how we pay for it.

I'm sure elite orienteers, or people involved in elite coaching etc are reading this. Do any want to sell/defend

"Performance & WOC support - £21,280." (£2 per member, per year).

[roadrunner]

Trying to expand a sport outside of affiliated clubs can work - ParkRun. Though that wasn't done through UK Athletics.

If I remember correctly (and I can't find anything to confirm this for sure), parkrun started as a time-trial in Bushy Park which was aimed at club runners (although it attracted others as well, and the rest is history). But it was certainly organised outside the club system and not through UKA. One interesting point is that their officers appear to all be participants and/or volunteers: http://www.parkrun.org.uk/aboutus/

Looking at Mike's latest figures, I must admit that they seem to raise more questions than they answer. For example, Corporation Tax is a tax on profits, so how come it's the same in all three cases? And why show the first two columns with salaries and the third without? Unless the implication is that every role is performed by a volunteer, then some staff (with associated pension contributions and expenses) are required, so why not include them? Finally, one obvious item that could be cut is the mailing of Focus (and indeed everything else); replacing this by email would surely save a large fraction of the £25k. That's a significant chunk of the £90k extra they're proposing to raise from the membership.

[SeanC]

Corporation tax might be for the previous year.

People overall are much more likely to read print than email, especially the orienteering demographic, though I agree BO should look at cost savings.

[andy]

People overall are much more likely to read print than email, especially the orienteering demographic, though I agree BO should look at cost savings.

I have a pile of unread focus magazines in my house, I'd read them if I got sent a PDF version.

[Big Jon]

People overall are much more likely to read print than email, especially the orienteering demographic, though I agree BO should look at cost savings.

I have a pile of unread focus magazines in my house, I'd read them if I got sent a PDF version.

You could always scan them and then read then on your computer...

[daffdy]

People overall are much more likely to read print than email, especially the orienteering demographic, though I agree BO should look at cost savings.

I have a pile of unread focus magazines in my house, I'd read them if I got sent a PDF version.

You could always scan them and then read then on your computer...

Maybe I'm missing a joke here, but if you really want a digital version of Focus it would be a lot easier to just download the PDF from the membership area of the British Orienteering website...