Motion 6.1 - Membership Renewals

[Lyle Craver]

6.1 Moved by Paul Leblanc Seconded by Fred McKim

Membership renewals, if paid within one calendar month of expiry, are deemed to be continuing memberships and the new membership expiry will be 1 calendar year from the old expiry date.

[Les Bunning]

The previous rule was longer than one month. The problem is that players not participating in a tournament for one month effectively stretch their membership from 12 months to perhaps 14 or 15 months. This costs the CFC a lot of money. I suggest that the motion be amended to read 3 months.
Les Bunning

[Bob Gillanders]

The previous rule was longer than one month. The problem is that players not participating in a tournament for one month effectively stretch their membership from 12 months to perhaps 14 or 15 months. This costs the CFC a lot of money. I suggest that the motion be amended to read 3 months.
Les Bunning

Thanks Les. I agree with this amendment and I'll second it. It is also in line with current office practice. Why do we wish to reward those that are tardy in their renewals?

[Paul Leblanc]

This was discussed at the last governors' meeting and most people felt it was unfair to ding people for a full year's membership and give them as little as 8 months. Some members do not play in many tournaments and do not want continuous membership.

[Bob Gillanders]

This was discussed at the last governors' meeting and most people felt it was unfair to ding people for a full year's membership and give them as little as 8 months. Some members do not play in many tournaments and do not want continuous membership.

Paul, I am sympathetic to your argument, those that play only a couple (or three) tournaments a year, are paying more per tournament for their memberships, true. But your solution is problematic. It encourages people to renew late (not until their next tournament) and with TD's and not directly with the office, which we would prefer.

The alternative argument is thus: Is it fair to increase everyone membership dues to recover the lost revenues from allowing some members to stretch their annual memberships to 15 months?

I did suggest some alternative solutions in previous discussions!

[Fred McKim]

Paul, I am sympathetic to your argument, those that play only a couple (or three) tournaments a year, are paying more per tournament for their memberships, true. But your solution is problematic. It encourages people to renew late (not until their next tournament) and with TD's and not directly with the office, which we would prefer.

The alternative argument is thus: Is it fair to increase everyone membership dues to recover the lost revenues from allowing some members to stretch their annual memberships to 15 months?

I did suggest some alternative solutions in previous discussions!

I think the current policy is three months, but I doubt if we are providing these late renewers with access to the issues of CCN they missed. Perhaps Michael VK could answer this. I think three months is too long.

[Vladimir Drkulec]

Paul, I am sympathetic to your argument, those that play only a couple (or three) tournaments a year, are paying more per tournament for their memberships, true. But your solution is problematic. It encourages people to renew late (not until their next tournament) and with TD's and not directly with the office, which we would prefer.

The alternative argument is thus: Is it fair to increase everyone membership dues to recover the lost revenues from allowing some members to stretch their annual memberships to 15 months?

I did suggest some alternative solutions in previous discussions!

I don't see how they are stretching their membership to 15 months if they are not getting services in those three month gaps. The USCF routinely gives 13 months for a yearly renewal in my experience. I think if we can increase the tournament activity then people won't be as interested in having those three month gaps.

[Ken Craft]

An alternative would be to have all of our memberships run from January 1 to December 31 regardless of when an individual paid their membership fee. This however would bring with it a whole host of other problesm although I know other groups do it.

[Vladimir Drkulec]

I am in favour of the original proposal which is to reduce the backdating to less than a month. I would even be in favour of no backdating at all which seems to be the situation in the U.S. Any talk of foregone revenues and need to raise fees because a few people are able to reduce their payments to the CFC are premature and lend credence to the idea that we are greedy and self serving. We have reduced costs with the new RFP for the ED. We have additional sources of funds in the new official bookseller arrangement and the deal with FQE. Our focus should be on what we can do to make people want to rejoin the CFC on time. Part of that will be in better communication so that members know what they are getting for the money that they send to us.

[Paul Leblanc]

I recently renewed my USCF membership after a 4 month gap and my new expiry date is 12 months and 2 weeks from the date of payment.
I do acknowledge that there would be some drop in revenue but those were ill-gotten gains, as Vlad points out. I also think the revenue loss will be pretty small but I don't have data to prove it.