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View Full Version : 5A5 - DISCUSSION ITEMS - New Business



Lyle Craver
04-28-2019, 12:16 AM
Any other new business can be posted for discussion here

Vladimir Drkulec
04-28-2019, 01:56 PM
There have been discussions on the CFC forum by John Coleman and Alex Ferreira regarding the email magazine. They (the magazines and not the comments) have been slow in coming. When they do arrive they are usually quite well done. There is also a newsfeed and facebook pages which fill some of the gaps due to a less than regular email magazine. We probably need to come up with a better communications strategy.

Alex also mentioned the idea of eliminating CFC memberships and instead charging more for rating fees. A complicating factor in any such idea if economically feasible is that we have a large pool of life members who would expect a significant refund to make up for eliminating memberships. It is also even more complicated since we have a large pool of funds in what is usually called the foundation which returns interest and perhaps some dividend payments to the CFC in lieu of the membership revenue we would get from the life members. By having memberships any attempt to dissolve the Federation and strip off the assets would have to meet approval from all the members including the non-voting members. If you stop charging membership fees then this safety feature goes away.

Aris Marghetis
04-28-2019, 02:16 PM
I believe our structure needs to keep annual/life memberships, which is what every other "sporting" organization I know of has in place. I propose that we need to somehow "let go" of connecting the magazine with membership. I did that a few years ago,and it removed personal stress (me feeling I was "ripped off"). Now when the magazine arrives, it's a happy bonus. In addition, those magazines are very well done, and I keep referring to them months/years, later, like a good book. My 2c.

Lloyd Lombard
04-28-2019, 06:39 PM
I have "no" idea what chess magazine you're talking about as I haven't received anything in "many" months (I'm thinking "years").

Aris Marghetis
04-28-2019, 07:14 PM
I have "no" idea what chess magazine you're talking about as I haven't received anything in "many" months (I'm thinking "years").

It's a softcopy (PDF) magazine that is emailed periodically. It's quite good, and the CFC Office needs your email address in order to send it to you. Do they have it?

As an aside, where I mentioned above that we should consider mentally disassociating the magazine and membership, there must still be quite a few members like Lloyd who don't even know about the magazine. So we never hear THEM griping that their membership is ripping them off when the next magazine takes too long.

Lloyd, maybe you can even get the back issues, I would say that it's worth it!

Jeremy Sztuka
04-28-2019, 08:20 PM
I agree we need to come up with a better communications strategy. The CFC Newsfeed (which I am glad is updated regularly) combined with the CFC's social media presence (Facebook) serve to cover current events well. For the magazine, in my opinion the best way to do it would be to come up with an exact schedule (i.e. Published every 3 months) and stick to it. If the issues are shorter that's fine. I think what adds fuel to the fire on this issue is that nobody really knows when each issue will come out. This needs to change. I of course agree all of the issues I have seen are well written.

To help finance the costs, maybe further sponsorships could be pursued via offering advertising (I.e. Strategy Games, ChessBase, or even Choice Hotels, in regard to the CFC's group discount deal with them). John Upper (based out of the Ottawa area) covers a lot of the local tournaments which is great. Maybe if others located in other areas of the country could be offered a small stipend to provide a tournament report to the magazine and/or CFC Newsfeed - with photos - this could help draw interest to various chess events throughout the country. This could be as simple as getting one of the many parents who come with their kids to chess tournaments anyway - and offering them discounted or free entry to their kid in exchange to typing a small report and taking a few photos of key matches. Organizers/TDs are often too busy for this but a parent waiting 3-4 hours for their kid to finish their game- not necessarily as much. Just an idea.

Does anyone know how/if back issues of the CFC magazine can be accessed?

I think in the interest of drawing more members into the CFC all copies of the CFC magazine should be available to the general public - or at minimum all current CFC members.

I concur with Aris that the magazine and CFC membership should be dissociated.

Vladimir Drkulec
04-29-2019, 12:06 PM
One of the highlights of the last few months was that we were finally able to take advantage of FIDE development deal pricing on DGT clocks and boards. The clocks were offered at a very significant discount to even the best prices you can find online. I believe that significantly more than 1200 clocks were purchased by chess clubs and organizers across Canada. I believe there were 46 DGT boards purchased as well, if I am reading the spreadsheet correctly. I would like to thank Larry Bevand of the Chess and Math Association and Strategy and Games which handled the shipping and distribution and without whose help we probably would not have been able to make this arrangement.

Aris Marghetis
04-29-2019, 12:43 PM
One of the highlights of the last few months was that we were finally able to take advantage of FIDE development deal pricing on DGT clocks and boards. The clocks were offered at a very significant discount to even the best prices you can find online. I believe that significantly more than 1200 clocks were purchased by chess clubs and organizers across Canada. I believe there were 46 DGT boards purchased as well, if I am reading the spreadsheet correctly. I would like to thank Larry Bevand of the Chess and Math Association and Strategy and Games which handled the shipping and distribution and without whose help we probably would not have been able to make this arrangement.
That's a good point, Larry and team did a LOT for many people across our country.

Pierre Dénommée
04-29-2019, 01:43 PM
I believe our structure needs to keep annual/life memberships, which is what every other "sporting" organization I know of has in place.

Not totally accurate: Quebec cycling sells licence to ride a bicycle in a competition, Quebec Soccer sells a passport, none of which are membership. Under Quebec NFP Law, non-voting members never vote, and as such are not interesting to organizations.

The registered participants still pays an annual fee, but it is not called a membership and it does not grant any membership right.

Rating fees could be used for VM allocations. ECF use the amount of rating fee paid as a basis for the allocation of VM. Regions with lesser population but with many rated tournament can get more VM this way.

Pierre Dénommée
04-29-2019, 01:44 PM
One of the highlights of the last few months was that we were finally able to take advantage of FIDE development deal pricing on DGT clocks and boards. The clocks were offered at a very significant discount to even the best prices you can find online. I believe that significantly more than 1200 clocks were purchased by chess clubs and organizers across Canada. I believe there were 46 DGT boards purchased as well, if I am reading the spreadsheet correctly. I would like to thank Larry Bevand of the Chess and Math Association and Strategy and Games which handled the shipping and distribution and without whose help we probably would not have been able to make this arrangement.

A big thank you to all those who have made this deal possible.

Vladimir Drkulec
04-29-2019, 02:30 PM
Not totally accurate: Quebec cycling sells licence to ride a bicycle in a competition, Quebec Soccer sells a passport, none of which are membership. Under Quebec NFP Law, non-voting members never vote, and as such are not interesting to organizations.

The registered participants still pays an annual fee, but it is not called a membership and it does not grant any membership right.

Rating fees could be used for VM allocations. ECF use the amount of rating fee paid as a basis for the allocation of VM. Regions with lesser population but with many rated tournament can get more VM this way.

We did look at this idea back when we were going through the continuation process. I think keeping the memberships simply protects us from rapacious members of the board off in the distant future (I haven't seen any rapacious members in the present or recent past - at least at the level of the CFC board). If you try to dissolve the federation you are left with a situation where all the different classes of members, including the non-voting members have to agree with any plan of disposal. The alternative is one where seven board members and a dozen or so voting members could distribute the assets among themselves.

The foundation trustees would put up a fight but would ultimately be unsuccessful in stopping an unscrupulous group with control of the board and control of the voting members if you got rid of the regular (non-voting) memberships. By keeping the memberships you have to bribe 2500 people to be able to pillage the foundation (or least bribe 50% of them) which makes it a much more difficult undertaking.

Lyle Craver
04-30-2019, 09:16 AM
The catch is that if this model were adopted, running totals would need to be kept and published as provincial affiliates would need to have some clue as to how they're doing.

On the other hand, life members like me who don't play much (in my case largely for geographical reasons - I'm on the north side of Vancouver and most of the events are on the south side with few events less than 45 minutes from home) wouldn't count for much.

ECF is England?

In any case this is getting pretty far afield from the post mortem on the DGT deal.

Lloyd Lombard
05-01-2019, 06:28 AM
[QUOTE=Aris Marghetis;30339]It's a softcopy (PDF) magazine that is emailed periodically. It's quite good, and the CFC Office needs your email address in order to send it to you. Do they have it?

Sounds great, who do I send my e-mail to to get the magazine ? The CFC has had it for years. Now I'm curious, how does the CFC maintain a members' contact data bank ?

Aris Marghetis
05-01-2019, 10:40 AM
[QUOTE=Aris Marghetis;30339]It's a softcopy (PDF) magazine that is emailed periodically. It's quite good, and the CFC Office needs your email address in order to send it to you. Do they have it?

Sounds great, who do I send my e-mail to to get the magazine ? The CFC has had it for years. Now I'm curious, how does the CFC maintain a members' contact data bank ?
I would send it to admin@chess.ca
I don't know how they manage this
I find many people lose email mistakenly flagged as spam

Vladimir Drkulec
05-01-2019, 11:03 AM
[QUOTE=Lloyd Lombard;30398]
I would send it to admin@chess.ca
I don't know how they manage this
I find many people lose email mistakenly flagged as spam

You really have to check that spam folder on a regular basis. I find a great deal of important stuff winds up there.

Richard Bowes
05-01-2019, 10:09 PM
I have "no" idea what chess magazine you're talking about as I haven't received anything in "many" months (I'm thinking "years").

Loydd,

According to a thread in the forum English Chat the e-magazine is defunct. However, it’s possible that another copy may be issued some day. The last copy I have mainly covered games from 2016. When the magazine quit coming the CFC Exec apparently allocated the budgeted funds for the magazine to the Olympiad team (CFC money tends to gravitate towards the elite players). If it was part of the package when you signed up you could argue that this is a breach of your contract with the CFC. You agreed to pay $x/yr in return for certain stipulated benefits, one of which was the regular delivery of the magazine. However, that may be a tough sell for you since you weren’t even aware of the magazine ;-)

Fred McKim
05-01-2019, 10:31 PM
Richard

The present CFC Board of Directors has a firm commitment to sending teams to the Open and Womens' Olympiad every two years. This has been the case for a long time. Any shortfall in Olympiad funding comes from our general funds. If we had of used all of the money budgeted for the Newsletter/Newsfeed, we probably would have suffered a loss both of the past two years, which would be OK as technically a non-profit should have both years with a surplus and a loss.

What to do with the newsletter has been a topic of discussion, since our current editor stopped producing issues on a regular basis. Perhaps the Voting Members want us to take some action on this, but there hasn't been a strong push so far. I remember when we talked about a newsletter before, a lot of people simply said they never bothered to read it..........

Personally I would at least like to see a document that could be printed, that outlined all National tournaments and significant International competitions our players participate in. Maybe this becomes a quarterly publication, maybe most articles are limited to 2-3 pages and a couple of games. John's critical positions (ie puzzles) are a nice touch.

Thoughts ?

Fred McKim
CFC Treasurer
Newsletter Liaison

Egidijus Zeromskis
05-02-2019, 08:13 AM
After some thoughts - I suggest (move) that a new Editor for the Chess Canada would be searched (and the current one would be terminated). I ask secretary to create a new thread for this discussion.

Fred McKim
05-02-2019, 08:41 AM
After some thoughts - I suggest (move) that a new Editor for the Chess Canada would be searched (and the current one would be terminated). I ask secretary to create a new thread for this discussion.

This would be the business of the Board of Directors, but certainly a healthy discussion of what the VM's want in the way of a magazine is welcome.

Pierre Dénommée
05-02-2019, 02:12 PM
This would be the business of the Board of Directors, but certainly a healthy discussion of what the VM's want in the way of a magazine is welcome.

I agree, terminating an employee can give rise to Civil liability and such decision shall by taken by the Directors.

Vladimir Drkulec
05-02-2019, 02:58 PM
I agree, terminating an employee can give rise to Civil liability and such decision shall by taken by the Directors.

Technically, he is not an employee but a contractor. I am more concerned with losing what he is doing on the newsfeed and facebook than any possibility of legal consequences of anything we do.