7D. Seniors Memberships (Barron / Armstrong)

[Bob Armstrong]

My question for the movers is: If in fact no new seniors do join, from which budget item do you propose to take away the potentially thousands of dollars in losses from this motion?

Hi Chris:

I seconded this very positive motion to expand our membership into that mega-boomer population, that now has both the time and money to play chess.

What you suggest - not one senior joining in 2014 is a straw man - not going to happen.

And as Paul posted, and his projections seem reasonable, it will likely be a wash for CFC financially at least. I personally project many new senior members, especially ones on lower-income, which is the case for many Canadian seniors, women more than men.

Bob

[Christopher Mallon]

Hi Chris:

I seconded this very positive motion to expand our membership into that mega-boomer population, that now has both the time and money to play chess.

What you suggest - not one senior joining in 2014 is a straw man - not going to happen.

And as Paul posted, and his projections seem reasonable, it will likely be a wash for CFC financially at least. I personally project many new senior members, especially ones on lower-income, which is the case for many Canadian seniors, women more than men.

Bob

Paul never actually posted saying it would be a wash.

[Bob Armstrong]

Paul never actually posted saying it would be a wash.

Hi Chris:

Re-read it - you are right. He implied any financial loss to CFC was trivial, and it might well sell Senior Memberships (right interpretation Paul?).

Bob A

[Vladimir Drkulec]

Hi Chris:

Re-read it - you are right. He implied any financial loss to CFC was trivial, and it might well sell Senior Memberships (right interpretation Paul?).

Bob A

I did not read that the financial loss would be trivial. I read that the financial loss would be approximately $2160 based on certain assumptions. If we don't find incremental revenue to counteract the loss then we would have a $2160 deficit relative to what it would be without the price cut. For the decrease in price to be offset by the increased revenues you would need 90 new senior members based on 180 current senior members as Paul estimated or a 50% increase. We would have to lose one or two governors since I assume that the number of governors based on senior membership would be prorated as they are for junior members.

The actual result will depend on the price elasticity of demand for CFC memberships.

[Paul Leblanc]

I didn't say that $2160 minus any fees from new seniors was trivial. I was only trying to introduce at least a rough estimate of the cost to the discussion.

[Christopher Mallon]

I find even the $2160 figure to be grasping at straws. We have how many annual adult members? If each Governor were given a list of 20 from their province we could probably establish how many might be seniors.

Or even take a random sampling of 100 members and determine what % of those are seniors to have a rough guess.

[Paul Leblanc]

There are 323 players on the CFC list for BC. I know about half of them and I counted 17 that I believe are over 65. Probably of the ones I don't know, most are juniors. I did not include the life members, many of whom are over 65. Let's call it 6% non life member seniors for BC.

[Christopher Field]

I think that the idea may have merit.
Paul's estimate may depend upon how many current senior members are life members.
Of course we do not currently collect birthdates for adult members. We may have dates on file for those who first joined as juniors.
Since a life member's payment depends on age, I guess we would have dates of birth for life members.
Can we determine from this the number of life members who are seniors?

[Lyle Craver]

One thing I haven't heard yet is how the proponents plan on collecting date of birth information. Presumably as part of membership renewals on the same basis as juniors BUT just like juniors it needs to be clear to organizers that the fact that an event has the word senior or junior in the number necessarily "proves" a particular date of birth. In other words it needs to be crystal clear that memberships taken at the discounted rate won't be accepted without date of birth and if that holds up rating of their event? Well we are truly sorry.

I'm still undecided on whether offering a new class of membership is a good thing or not but am definitely not satisfied by what I'm not hearing on the administrative side.

For what it's worth the USCF has two catagories of regular membership (both with and without print magazine ($46 and $40 respectively) a seniors membership ($40 but with print magazine) and two catagories of youth memberships (for U24 and U15). They also have 2 and 3 year memberships which is something I've always felt we erred in getting rid of. (https://secure2.uschess.org/webstore/member.php)

[Bob Gillanders]

Ever since I first got involved in chess politics back in 2007 there has been a persistent constituency determined to lower membership dues in the belief that it will drive up memberships and revenues. (and I would guess the argument has been raging longer than that). Anyhow, I have always argued against it, believing that our already cheap membership rates are not a significant barrier to participation. A few new members is plausible, but a drop in overall membership revenues is likely. I still believe that,……

But, I am actually considering voting Yes! (but undecided at this time)

My reasoning is that maybe we treat this as an experiment. Since the seniors are a small group of the CFC membership, our financial risk is limited to the 2k (+/-). If hordes of new members don't appear, then we have our answer, and we can stop having this argument every year.

So, if I do vote Yes, that is why. It has nothing to do with my age!