13. Membership / Rating Fee Restructuring Committee

[Bob Gillanders]

Stuart,

Currently the CFC collects provincial dues with the membership dues and later remits it to the provinces. Under your proposal of eliminating CFC membership dues, what happens to the provincial dues?

Bob G.

[Stuart Brammall]

If we ever get any kind of a concensus on this, I'd like to see the rating fee for active events half that of regular events.

This basically becomes a tournament membership, and it doesn't make sense for full two or three day weekend events to be the same price as a 5 or 6 hour tournaments.

Organizers would then have a choice if they wanted to have an event for novices, the CFC charges could be less.

I disagree, the cost of rating the event is constant whether it is an active or a regular event-- I therefore see no reason why the cost should be less for active events.

[Stuart Brammall]

Hi Stuart:

I was not following your discussions on rating analysis with Roger Patterson a while ago. But I thought one of the conclusions he came to was that the absolute number of tournament players per year was decreasing ( OTB is in decline )?

Is this a concern for your proposed Pay-as-you-play scenario? Will CFC be on a continually declining revenue base? Will it be more pronounced than any annual membership decline we are suffering?

Bob

That was his conclusion-- but surely it is clear that this affect the traditional revenue stream as well. Decreasing participation will always negatively affect revenue.

[Bob Armstrong]

Hi Stuart:

This is not necessarily the case.

Members renew annually at the same rate as long as they are playing, even if they may be actually playing less OTB tournament chess.

So their membership revenue is constant, while any tournament fee revenue from them would be decreasing.

Bob

[Stuart Brammall]

Stuart,

Currently the CFC collects provincial dues with the membership dues and later remits it to the provinces. Under your proposal of eliminating CFC membership dues, what happens to the provincial dues?

Bob G.

I will maintain a consistent position here: the only reason which I give the CFC any money is to have my events rated; therefore they should not be giving any of that money away to organisations which offer little or nothing to the community, and whose mandate is unclear.

It is obvious to me that almost all CFC members only buy the membership for the ratings, if the OCA needs money, let them fundraise it on their own... if their product is marketable they won't have any trouble, otherwise, good riddance.

(I should probably mention that I am an OCA governor)

[Stuart Brammall]

Hi Stuart:

This is not necessarily the case.

Members renew annually at the same rate as long as they are playing, even if they may be actually playing less OTB tournament chess.

So their membership revenue is constant, while any tournament fee revenue from them would be decreasing.

Bob

You are right that it is not the case by necessity; however I maintain that it is likely the case in fact. The decline in tournaments-players is correlated directly with a decline in membership.

Further, I would argue that it is likely the decline is due, at least in part, to the membership fee, and its lack of value, perceived lack of value, or decline in value.

[Ken Craft]

First, the CFC is a federation of Provincial Associations. Provincial Associations set their fee and require their members to also be CFC members.
Second, I became a Life Member while not playing rated chess. I can't remember the last time I played CFC rated chess (2000?). I still play OTB five days a week. I bought a CFC membership without intending to play in rated events.

[Fred McKim]

I disagree, the cost of rating the event is constant whether it is an active or a regular event-- I therefore see no reason why the cost should be less for active events.

At the moment the rating fee is fairly negligible.

If we did away with the annual membership and had to charge a much higher rating fee than now, I'm simply saying that an active tournament would cost way too much in relation to a normal event.

[Lyle Craver]

Roger's feedback is particularly of note since he is president of the BC Chess Federation which adopted such a membership format two years ago.

Thus anyone considering such a thing for the national federation should definitely pay attention to what is going on in BC.

I am undecided in this matter but no question the BC experience should play a big role in Governors' consideration.

[Stuart Brammall]

At the moment the rating fee is fairly negligible.

If we did away with the annual membership and had to charge a much higher rating fee than now, I'm simply saying that an active tournament would cost way too much in relation to a normal event.

I understand your point Fred, but what I am saying is that the two cost the same... Gerry does the same work for both. If you were to charge less for active you would not be reducing the cost, you would only be forcing the players of the regular events to subsidise the cost of the actives.