Item 16C - Motion 2011-D - Membership/Rating Fee Restructuring Committee

[Bob Armstrong]

Motion 2011-D - Membership/Rating Fee Restructuring Committee - Discussion

Moved : Stuart Brammall; Seconded : Michael von Keitz

- that a committee be formed to investigate a possible restructuring in the direction of one CFC fee.

This thread is for discussion of the motion only. A separate motion voting thread will be started at 9:00 PM EDT tonight, Monday, Oct. 4.

Bob

[Aris Marghetis]

Motion 2011-D - Membership/Rating Fee Restructuring Committee

Moved : Stuart Brammall; Seconded : Michael von Keitz

- that a committee be formed to investigate a possible restructuring in the direction of one CFC fee.

This thread is for discussion of the motion only. A separate motion voting thread will be started at 9:00 PM EDT tonight, Monday, Oct. 4.

Bob

This seems like a much better idea than my singular motion about one single membership fee. I offer to be part of this committee, if voted to be formed.

[Ellen Nadeau]

I may have missed something, but is the intent of this motion to eliminate Youth membership or youth rating fees?

[Bob Armstrong]

Hi Ellen:

There has been some discussion of eliminating membership fees entirely, and raising rating fees to compensate for the loss of income. But this is a very complex issue, and the movers decided that the committee should look at all apects of the fees structure, and in the process, consider the possibility of melding membership and rating fees in some way as one possible scenario. Junior fees have not been separated out in the discussion yet for any separate analysis.

The mover and seconder can supplement my observations as an outsider.

Bob

[Bob Armstrong]

In terms of moving to one rating fee only, I would note that rating fees only account for roughly 40% if the CFC revenue. About 60% comes from Membership fees ( my figures are rough only, because there are some smaller sources of revenue that I have excluded for the purpose of making my point ).

So based on this rough rounded off analysis, to compensate for lost revenue, rating fees would have to be made to generate 150% more revenue than they do now. And already there are complaints that the rating fee is too high, and complaints that CFC uses them as a source of general revenue, and they in no way reflect the actual cost of maintaining the rating system.

How much worse will the complaints be when the rating fees are raised 150%??

Bob

[Ellen Nadeau]

Thanks Bob, I did find the thread below and read the posts after seeing this thread.

I cannot support any direction where scholastic tournaments become costly. We would have no large youth events involved with schools which do bring Junior members to the CFC.

[Christopher Mallon]

Rating Fees are probably just a bad name for what they really are.

In the other thread, someone mentioned something about how players who play rarely but pay full membership subsidize players who pay frequently. This is not really true, because the ones playing frequently are chipping in rating fees.

Of course we haven't really considered the other end of the spectrum: If memberships account for 60% of our intake, we could increase them by 67% and do away with rating fees entirely (assuming a fully automated rating system that is).

[Aris Marghetis]

Hi Ellen:

There has been some discussion of eliminating membership fees entirely, and raising rating fees to compensate for the loss of income. But this is a very complex issue, and the movers decided that the committee should look at all apects of the fees structure, and in the process, consider the possibility of melding membership and rating fees in some way as one possible scenario. Junior fees have not been separated out in the discussion yet for any separate analysis.

The mover and seconder can supplement my observations as an outsider.

Bob

This might just be my impression, but Bob Armstrong, it seems to me that you often come back to the idea of raising rating fees. However, it seems that the vast majority of people are against that direction. Therefore, I respectfully submit that it is unfair when you return to raising rating fees.

I contributed to the start of this whole discussion by talking about the potential elimination of (some) membership discounts. Unless someone convinces me otherwise, it is my strong opinion that the idea of raising rating fees is a brutal non-starter. On the other hand, I would like to eliminate (some) membership discounts, maybe even increase membership revenue.

[Stuart Brammall]

The idea behind moving to a single fee (one that should in my opinion replace the rating fee) is that, in reality, the rating of tournaments is the only thing of value the average player recieves from this organization. Sure we have a news-letter, but we all know that no one pays a membership if they do not plan to play in tournaments.

When do you use a CFC membership except when playing in tournaments? Never.

We provide one service; we should charge one fee.

When I write a cheque to the CFC, I do it to get my games rated--- That is to say that I am viewing the money from both my membership and the rating fees collected from the events as both going to pay for the rating my events.

The reason why I thing the single fee should be what is now the rating fee is simply because not everyone plays the same number of events. Oubviously this new single fee would need to be significantly higher then the current rating fee--- looking at the budget right now I can see we get aprox. $31,000 from rating fees, this indcated aprox, 10,300 rating fees paid. To make up the total of the current mempership fees + rating fee (aprox $82,000), the new fee would need to be aprox. $8. ---- Probably should be a little higher since I have assumed everyone is using SwissSys and paying the low rating fee.

Why is this more fair?

This way you're not asking someone planning to only play one event to pay $9 per game (($43 ontario membership +$3 rating fee)/ 5 games in a weekender) while I sitting across the board from him am getting my games rated for $1.5 each(($43 ontario membership + (9X$3 rating fee)) / (9 tournaments X 5 games per event))

[Stuart Brammall]

Also, not having to deal with memberships will make life much easier for everyone--- organizer, CFC office staff, everyone.