Membership Proposals - Back to the Future

[Guest]

OK, so some of your events will be in a region remote from your base - but in general most participation takes place close to home. So the extra £1 will go to your local RDO. It seems uncharitable to concern yourself with a few quid a year that is ring fenced for development.

Bet you wouldn't worry about paying this 'tax' if you were off to Sweden !

A larger concern for the SOA and WOA in particular is their multi-day events. The document makes no mention of the arrangements that had been negotiated to keep funds generated by the 6 Days and the 5 Days within their own regions for development. Does anyone know what the status is on this now?

If SOA and WOA are still going to get big chunks of English orienteers money from this - then I must have missed the point somewhere !

[awk]

Generating levy income from the C5 level of event.......

Many clubs run these low key sets of events, basically for club members and as an introductory event structure for new potential members. Ours are very informal, organised by one person, and attract ~50 competitors. We make a surplus while charging £1.50/50p. Do they really need to be as cheap as that? You can't do anything else these days for that sort of charge.

The point is RJ is that you can! I participate in a number of sports, and at a local beginner level £1.50 per session is just about in touch with others. Go to £3 per session, and orienteering suddenly becomes easily the most expensive.

The other objection to this is that it is a centralised tax. The club has no control over it. You in WCOC pay for an RDO: 1 day extra per week for the whole of the NWOA, and you have no control over their time - they are working to a BOF/Sports council agenda, not yours. How much of that money's worth are you actually going to see out on the edge of Cumbria, especially as to get to you, they are going to chew up an awful lot of that hard raised money in petrol expenses? It also means that the club has no leeway in trying to raise money from events itself for its own development work: BOF has pushed the envelope to the limit and beyond, and the club can only raise expenses if local orienteering is not to become completely priced out of the market.

I'm also objecting to the fact that is that we are not being asked whether this is what we want. The offer should be a choice: either have extra development officers/development officer time, in which case it will cost X amount, or don't in which case it will cost Y amount. Not, we are going to find a way by hook or by crook of funding these roles, and we'll keep coming back with variations on a theme until we get the money from you.

Having said that, there is I suspect a solution. Given that local events are a fair amount of many club programmes, and they don't benefit from advertising on the BOF fixtures list, and that BOF are now proposing to charge way more than the cost of insuring them, I suspect it may be cost-effective for clubs to seek alternative sources of insurance. In which case they can be taken out of the BOF loop completely: no need to register them at all.

I don't like to suggest this - I do believe in an effective NGB - but BOF Central are rapidly losing my support and good will.

[NeilC]

Interesting scenario - massive increase in levies on local events which helps fund development initiatives which will then report back that the best way to develop the sport is to provide frequent, local and CHEAP events.

Cost IS an issue for many local orienteers who are not (yet) interested in driving round the country in seach of a fix. On a basically break-even budget we charge £2.50 adults and zilch for juniors at our local events. £5 for parents and three kids - that could triple if levies are added.

BOF, please don't tax the development projects that work well.

[graeme]

According to the strategic plan...

hey Graeme where does it say Welsh and Irish RDO's in the document,

BOF strategic plan section 6.11.


http://www.britishorienteering.org.uk/d ... 004-09.pdf

Navigational Challenge - whats the fastest route to this document from the BOF front page? Going via google is cheating (its like running off the map).

Graeme

[Ed]

Navigational Challenge - whats the fastest route to this document from the BOF front page? Going via google is cheating (its like running off the map).

Members>Forms>Documents

or (possibly breaking BOF rules 1.5.1 and 1.5.2 )

Search>"Strategic Plan" only every term/exact spelling>scroll down a long, long way...

[Simon]

Navigational Challenge - whats the fastest route to this document from the BOF front page? Going via google is cheating (its like running off the map).

Members>Forms>Documents

Site Map>Documents speeds that up a bit

Though that probably assumes that it is a score event

[RJ]

Charging a levy per head is not the way to do it. A flat fee would be better, based on the actual cost of insurance, Forestry Commission agreement etc.

I don't think we need the RDOs to tell us about low key informal event structures. Successful models being employed by clubs should be publicised widely amongst us all. Many clubs employ novel formats that add fun and something different to the sport.

The RDOs need to build the school/club links so that new members are brought in by that route. They need to build the confidence of the teachers in the sport so that they will promote it to the kids, and even bring them along. Teachers need to be 100% confident that things are going to work properly, that their kids are going to be entirely safe from injury etc.

Getting insurance for a single club may be more difficult than you think. They need to know that the activities will be run in a predictable way if they are to cover a £3M third party liability. While it might sound like a good route to take, realistically we are stuck with the central BOF structure! But we do have the ultimate control over how the money is raised, how much and on what it is spent. It all has to be agreed at an AGM.

The RDOs are only just getting going. They do produce the goods.... but they are so thinly spread. They can explain to clubs what would be a good idea, how models have worked elsewhere, how to make the best use of their own resources. But.... in the end it is the club members who will do the work. Some guidance on how the best can be achieved from that work would be much appreciated, I'm sure. I have a lot of confidence in the quality of the existing RDOs.

[Mrs H.]

Yeah, yeah - back to the debate guys. Agree with Awk and Neil. A summer evening event which now costs us £5 for the 5 of us and petrol and fish and chips after will suddenly cost in the reguion of £15 - net result - no fish and chips - kids don't want to go - we stay at home - Club (and BOF) lose the money and our good will. Cheap, low-key local events are absolutely fundemental to the future of the sport - whether it be for school kids, families or adult beginners and I suspect Neil is spot on in suggesting that is what any expensively funded study would find.

Changing track slightly

What level of income does BOF need?
1. We have evidence to show that significant numbers of orienteering participants are not
members of BOF. For the purposes of this exercise we have assumed that there is
around 5,500 Club-only members giving a potential total BOF membership of around
14,000. If all became BOF members and received membership benefits, BOF would
require around £180,000 per annum to maintain the current level of service. For a list of
services currently provided by BOF see Annex A.
2. BOF needs to invest a further £40,000 in infrastructure to employ the Regional
Development Officers for an additional day per week to meet the demands of the
Strategic Plan. This additional time would be dedicated entirely to the requirements of
the Regional Associations and this money would be ring fenced but split evenly between
regions (to help those regions most in need of development).
3. Bear in mind that the majority of funding is provided by grants from the Sports Councils.
This is currently running at around £600,000 per annum. The recommendation from
Sports Councils is that Governing Bodies of our size should only receive 35% of their
income from Grants!

I smell a rat here. Is this just the thin end of the wedge £220,000 for how long to fund BOF's current level of operation. where are the projections - how much are we looking at in 5 years time (when , remember membership is likely to have dropped even further). at what point does the last straw break the camel's back.

If this goes ahead i make the bold prediction that some low key events will go underground (ha ha ha) with communication at the state it's at it would not be hard to contact a group of die hards and tell them to be at a certain place at a certain time - no insurance, no child protection, no questions asked sounds exciting eh?

[RJ]

Mrs H wrote:

not be hard to contact a group of die hards and tell them to be at a certain place at a certain time - no insurance, no child protection, no questions asked sounds exciting eh?

If you put control points out on the area and are seen running about by the landowner, what do you say when stopped by him? We maybe don't like the way things are going at the moment, the plans for the sport being put forward etc, but UDI just isn't an option.....

[Simon]

Mrs H wrote:

not be hard to contact a group of die hards and tell them to be at a certain place at a certain time - no insurance, no child protection, no questions asked sounds exciting eh?

If you put control points out on the area and are seen running about by the landowner, what do you say when stopped by him? We maybe don't like the way things are going at the moment, the plans for the sport being put forward etc, but UDI just isn't an option.....

One could get permission from the landowner without registering the event.

[PorkyFatBoy]

Is this just the thin end of the wedge £220,000 for how long to fund BOF's current level of operation. where are the projections - how much are we looking at in 5 years time (when , remember membership is likely to have dropped even further). at what point does the last straw break the camel's back.

From the 5-year plan presented at the 2004 AGM (which seems to have disappeared from the BOF webshite) has these figures for members funds (Actual 2003 - £178k) (roughly as I'm interpolating a powerpoint slide).

2004 - £180k
2005 - £205k (big increase for 2nd day for RDOs)
2006 - £210k
2007 - £215k
2008 - £225k

Not sure how they link into the £220 they want now

UDI just isn't an option.....

depends what the alternative is

[graeme]

If you put control points out on the area and are seen running about by the landowner, what do you say when stopped by him?

If he's smiling...
"We're orienteering, its great fun, would you like to join in?"

If not...
"Did you know this would be illegal in England? - isn't Scottish land reform great!"

Graeme

[eldroc]

Her's my 3p worth (at a penny for each thought)-

RDOs

I'm probably wrong (it happens a lot) but, if we need an extra £40000 for an extra day for the RDOs, couldn't we save £40000 by scrapping the day we already pay for?

UDI

Although it might not be feasible for a club to arrange alternative insurance, would it not be feasible for a region or nation to go this route?

What Does BOF provide for its members? (from Draft 3 document)

A lot of what is listed is done by volunteers a very little cost. Until I know how much money is needed for each of these activities, I will be reluctant to vote for any proposal which increases BOFs revenue.

[redkite]

I did do some calcs on the impact of the propsed new charges on our club, and for a variety of reasons our club members will end up paying the same. I have sent to freaky-phil (WOA) so he can use in his dicussion with BOF

My big concern is the increase in levies suggested for local events. How about this for a bit of logic.

No levies on local events but an increase on all events above local. As a consequence we all do less badge events (too many anyhow) but put on and attend more good quality local events. As a consequence of these cheap local events (ours have been known to be free)we get more new members, who inturn eventually start to do bigger events and we all live happily ever after.

However, if we increase the cost of local events the sport will gradually fade away to nothing as we will not recruit new members

[SeanC]

"A lot of what is listed is done by volunteers a very little cost. Until I know how much money is needed for each of these activities, I will be reluctant to vote for any proposal which increases BOFs revenue."

I would like to believe that giving BOF the extra cash will be worth it in the long run, but I rather see the evidence. Please, please, please can someone from BOF get involved in this debate and justify the expenditure. I don't think it's enough to wait for a meeting, or publish an article in Compass Sport. If you could convince the majority that BOF needs the cash, then the debate could concentrate on ways to raise the money. Looking on the BOF website there is a Marketing and Communication manager and a Development Manager (full time paid posts I assume?). I'm sure you're very nice people and are much better informed than I am. If you post a reply I will personally send you my sultana, apple and yoghurt bar that I was planning to have for lunch.