Orienteering Events Should Return a Surplus. Discuss.

[rosalind]

It's not exactly a "make money fast" scheme.
I say there's nowt wrong wi' aiming ta make a profit.
Unless you charge obscene prices that is.
(I say this as someone who has never yet had to pay full adult entries. Yeouch.)

[Adventure Racer]

(in response to graeme)
It's an interesting philosophical question. Of course you also missed off orienteering shops, catering companies, printers (though I guess they're not doing so well any more) and even oil companies. The difference is that all these are providing add-on services which you have to pay for as they have no emotional investment in the event. The person organising the event traditionally does have that sort of investment though (ie doing the job because there is non-financial reward of some type or other), and it's possible the volunteers may not be so keen to be told what to do by somebody making money out of it!

[deebee]

Personally I have no problems with orienteering events making money. They are organised by clubs and the profit goes back to the club.
If you want to put on your own event I presume you'd have to arrange your own insurance, unlike the TCA where any member can organise and obtain TCA insurance. Have a look at the TCA website where some individual is complaining about making only £100 from his Trailquest.

[Barny of Blandford]

There almost seems to be some suggestion that the work 'profit' is a dirty word
If we were all making so much money out of orienteering I am sure a number of people would have set themselves up in business by now to run events
However this does not seem to have happened and I wonder why?
We find that making a 'profit' is sometimes very unpredictable - an event you expect to do well doesn't and one you think never will does
Also costs can be very variable - do you have to budget for such things as loos, paying for access, car parking, bussing or are they not needed or free
Just because my club managed to charge very little for a large event does not mean that the next door club can do the same for a similiar event - their expenses for the event may be completely different and it is often very unfair to accuse clubs of 'hiking' the cost up
Every event is different

[sgb]

it could be argued that there is no reason for orienteers to subsidise somebody else's kids,.

I'm disappointed no one had picked this up as I would be interested to know whether anyone does find this irritating. I was rather hoping for a bit of a dust up.

For the sake of playing Devil's Advocate, I don't see why somebody shouldn't put this argument. There must be people who've taken up orienteering as an adult and introduced other adult friends, who assume that their entry costs could be reduced if it weren't for the silly junior competitions which costs less, demand more volunteer time (fewer entrants per course because there are more classes), attract disproportionate attention (more classes again), and lead to there being kids under one's feet in the forest. There have been times when I've had to slow down because an eight-year old is pelting down a path ahead of me as fast as possible (ie. not all that fast), and have wondered whether a more mature novice might have the courtesy to let me past. Other times when I've wondered how many kids actually choose to come rather than have their parents decide that orienteering is the Sunday morning activity.

Now, in the context of society as a whole, I can see that other people's children are necessary when it comes to looking after the health of the childless as the grow infirm, so it makes sense that childless couples' taxes pay for the education of the next generation of doctors, teachers, etc. But in orienteering, is there any need for kids? Could everybody not be brought into the sport as an adult? When I become too infirm to compete then I'll have the choice of watching from the sidelines or abandoning the sport: neither option will require or affect the next generation, will it?

Mrs H, I think I've convinced myself that orienteering might actually be improved if there were no children's courses, and all those delicate kiddies who currently get under my feet were to be kept in cotton wool until they reach adulthood.. oh, hang on.


Other thing that I'm curious about is that if, as it seems, most orienteers are quite happy with events being run to make a sensible profit, what do they hope those profits will be spent on?

[Knee Deep Mud!]

I don't think the real issue is whether an individual event makes a profit.

Ultimately I think each CLUB should be bugeting to break even on their overall activities, with a reasonable buffer in the bank to ensure the finacial viability of the club in the event of any short term problems.

As someone else has already alluded to, the events that are seen to be making 'profits' are only doing so because the event accounts have not specifically taken account of all the 'overheads' that the event is paying for.

How each individual club budgets is up to themselves, and what they spend their money on is up to themselves.

For the record, my club typically works on the following basis:

Annual badge event - the main source of income for the club. Usually makes a large 'profit', but this funds all our mapping activities, and other club funded activities.

Colour coded events - usually budgeted to break even / make a very small profit, but without usually taking mapping costs into account, as we tend to reuse maps produced for the badge events rather than producing new for a colour coded. Would be run at a loss if this was taken into account.

Summer training events - put on for free i.e. done at a total loss. Open to (and in some cases jointly organised with) neighbouring clubs.

Its also worth noting that it is very hard to budget for an event as you have no idea how many people are going to turn up. Recent colour coded events we have put on have had attendances varying from 200 - 600+ with no rhyme or reason as to why the variation.

[jab]

Other times when I've wondered how many kids actually choose to come rather than have their parents decide that orienteering is the Sunday morning activity.

In our household the answer's 50% (but the sample size is only 2). And for the past 2 years it has been elder child (now aged 11) who has persuaded us to orienteer much more frequently than we used to. So his keenness probably generates an average of an extra 6-8 single-person runs a month - 1/2 of them adult. On that basis he's much better value than an unattached single adult who brings themselves but nobody else.

[Adventure Racer]

And for the past 2 years it has been elder child (now aged 11) who has persuaded us to orienteer much more frequently than we used to. So his keenness probably generates an average of an extra 6-8 single-person runs a month - 1/2 of them adult. On that basis he's much better value than an unattached single adult who brings themselves but nobody else.

Not necessarily - any profit made from the adult run immediately disappears straight back into subsidising the junior ones.

[Jon Brooke]

At the risk of turning this into a thread about double entry book keeping, and even though I am sure AR is playing devil's advocateactually, any junior bringing an adult, or vice versa and talk of subsidies is rubbish.

Most of the costs of the event are fixed. Most of the income is variable.

I would suggest that once an event is put on the calendar that the more juniors that attend, the greater the profit so long as the junior entry fee covers the cost of the map. And if that junior brings an adult that is bound to be the case.

[johnloguk]

Clearly orienteering clubs can't run at a loss overall or there wouldn't be a sport, but every single event doesn't have to run at a profit, no business runs like that. All businesses have "loss leaders", lines or offers that actually lose money but hopefully attract people into their shop to spend more etc.

The last 2 events our club put on no course cost over £1, and one course was free, so they didn't make any profit (oh and one of them was e-punching!). But we chose areas where there isn't a levy to pay and the organiser kept costs right down. These events were put on to attract new people, time will tell how successful they were, 4 new families I think was the feeling after the first event and a whole lot of interest from the Uni.

All clubs have their banker events, often C3s I guess, but I've argued in other threads that there are many other income generation schemes. We cleared nearly £200 by putting on a corporate awayday (well a 2 hour team score course one afternoon actually), I organised it, with an extra helper on the day, and great fun was had by all. I even did an orienteering birthday party once that made a tidy profit

Grants are available for many activities, and yes they do have strings but they are generally orienteering strings like; junior development, schools mapping, attracting groups normally "alienated" from orienteering etc. And all these are things we should be doing anyway.

I suppose the main thing isn't the financial bottom line, it's what you do with the money you make. It seems stupid to me that some clubs sit on bit bank balances just in case we have another 3 years of foot and mouth or bird flu or similar. We need a working margin, but be creative, get grants wherever possible, use the skills and knowledge within the club, be prepared to speculate to accumulate, have dead cheap events every now and again, make it quality and make it fun

And volunteers shouldn't have to give up their lives to do all this, we should pay fair expenses, just in case anyone is thinking that I'm advocating everyone giving blood

[hillwalker2004]

This might be changing the topic slightly but if the general concensus is that clubs should be allowed to make a profit (and overall opinion seems to be in favour of this), what is a sensible amount of money the clubs should have in the bank?

The clubs in my area have around £15k, £12k, and two in the region of £6-8k, but of course this will have been built up over many years and much of which isnt from the staging of events (in fact quite the opposite).

[mharky]

What is the point in having that much money in a bank??? Spend in on development, getting proper maps, making events not crap...

[RJ]

It all has a lot to do with the annual financial turnover of a club. Some clubs may only turnover £5k or less a year. So there is no point in having £7k sat in the bank. Other clubs, and I can name one, turnover £15-20k a year. It makes sense to have quite a considerable balance at the bank.

However, the 'funny' thing is that those clubs who are active and work at development find it hard to spend more money than they already do, and they generally stay in the black!

All development costs money, but like any event structure, in the long term the development must be self sustaining, either through grants, event income or both. We had a turnover on our schools development of over £5k, but still managed a small surplus over the twelve months. With an expenditure of thousands you can't afford to get the sums wrong.... you have to be able to balance income with expenditure. You can spend all your money in one year developing a project or set of events, but if you don't have cash for next year it has all been for nought.

So, in answer to the original topic.... in the long term the sport must show a profit... or at least a positive balance. And if we have any thoughts of lifting ourselves out of our current poor, in membership and participation terms, state, then we will need money. To begin with this money will come from the current membership and event entries. But the more successful we are in development it will be amazing just how much funds we will be able to draw upon. Awards for All bring in £5k at a time.

[johnloguk]

What is the point in having that much money in a bank??? Spend in on development, getting proper maps, making events not crap...

Totally agree, I can't begin to get my head round why a club would need that much in the bank

[Red Adder]

I bet if you added up all the volunteers hours and offset them against total accrued surpluses of all the clubs over the years the average hourly rate would be about a ha'penny.

I don't see why this effort should be used to further subsidise entry fees. All should be encouraged to put something in to the sport. If, for whatever reason, this can't be through helping at least a realistic event entry fee should be contributed.