Finance Council Meeting

[Paul Buswell]

The ECF Council and Board really think that it can manage to either

(a) to get every league player signed up as an ECF Bronze member regardless of how few games they play
or
(b) to get leagues to pay £ 2 per game per head for non members and that they (leagues) can collect this from clubs

without the third and fourth alternatives becoming popular

(c) the league withdraws wholly or partly from ECF grading.
or
(d) players cease league play and clubs and leagues fold.

I am obliged to say that the planned date of Seotember 2012 does seem wildly optimistic, even if implementation got the smoothest ride possible.

PB

[Roger de Coverly]

No doubt the Leagues in which we play will brief the Hastings Club in due course, and their AGMs will give us the chance for input. But at a more parochial level, what is the situation on Corporate Vice-Presidents? As one such our internal games have enjoyed exemption from Game Fee. Does that continue in any guise? I am mindful also that we paid three years CVP membership up front, as I recall.

Did the Council meeting give any consideration to transitional issues? It's not just CVPs, there are Family memberships which become broken and anyone with a membership stretching past 1st September 2012 needs to know whether this will be honoured and what their terms of renewal are?

The Council blinked on the issue of universal junior membership, similarly I have doubts about the ECF's ability to survive, given the number of less active club players it will have to persuade to become members in order to balance its books.

[Roger de Coverly]

I am obliged to say that the planned date of Seotember 2012 does seem wildly optimistic, even if implementation got the smoothest ride possible.

Crisis time will be August or September 2013 when the ECF tries to collect its £ 2 per head per game. Before that the ECF will take comfort from the fact that if it fails to recruit members playing in leagues and county matches, it can fall back on accruing the non-member charge. Come the crisis, counties and leagues may well turn round and say, "you want how much?". The ECF has already calculated the grades, in most cases twice. You can ban the league from grading in the 2013-14 season, but that's "leagues going wholly or partly non-graded".

[David Sedgwick]

This was lost on a card vote by 93 votes to 84

The report providing an update on CAS Arbitration was rejected on a card vote by 103 votes to 73.

So about 20 votes in support of the President denied to Nigel.

I don't feel that's a fair comparison. The vote on the report was in effect a rejection by Council of the Board's decision to bring the action, not a judgment on Nigel personally. The same cannot be said about the motion concerning CJ which was narrowly defeated.

[Roger de Coverly]

. The same cannot be said about the motion concerning CJ which was narrowly defeated.

Or as Ray Keene tweets it

congrats to ecf president cj de mooi on beating off the attack at todays ECF meeting-cj didnt even need to be present to win!

Hardly a success to go from heavy electorial support at the AGM to a split verdict six months later.

[John Upham]

Having had a lie down in a darkened room I can reveal some poor quality images from the meeting.

[Paul Cooksey]

This was lost on a card vote by 93 votes to 84

The report providing an update on CAS Arbitration was rejected on a card vote by 103 votes to 73.

So about 20 votes in support of the President denied to Nigel.

I don't feel that's a fair comparison. The vote on the report was in effect a rejection by Council of the Board's decision to bring the action, not a judgment on Nigel personally. The same cannot be said about the motion concerning CJ which was narrowly defeated.

I think David is perhaps being a little generous to Dr Short in his assessment. There was expression of dissatisfaction with the board as whole in failing to publish the decision on CAS, for which the CEO took responsibility (the decision was confidential at the time taken, so rightly not published then, but wrongly not subsequently reviewed). But fundamentally it was the FIDE Delegate's report that was not accepted. I do think Council were aware they were slapping his wrist, albeit not more than that.

By comparison to the vote on CJ, CAS was reasonably clear cut as an issue. There was a report to be voted on, giving Council a hook to hang its dissatisfaction on. The was no motion of no confidence in CJ on the agenda, so it could not be allowed. Instead there was an on the hoof attempt to draft something to express Council's concern without being a no confidence vote. One delegate spoke of his reluctance to vote on an important matter which he had not consulted his organisations on. I guess others may have be reluctant to vote for something vague. Phil Ehr tried unsucessfully to get it clarified.

Personally, I have a problem treating t-shirtgate and the sponsorship VAT issue as a single thing. I support CJ in one instance but not the other. But I suspect a no confidence motion would have had a significant chance of passing if it had been tabled in advance, I am not sure why it was not.

[Alex Holowczak]

When do the new rules for the County competitions come into play?

2012/13.

This was the last opportunity for them to change ahead of the 2012/13 season, since most counties enter the 2012/13 competition in July/August 2012, and the next opportunity for changing them would have been October 2012.

I'm actually happy with them - the changes of substance that I wanted to get through all got through. I'll try to post the final ruleset as soon as possible, although a night's sleep is required first...

[John Philpott]

Paul Buswell wrote

But at a more parochial level, what is the situation on Corporate Vice-Presidents? As one such our internal games have enjoyed exemption from Game Fee. Does that continue in any guise? I am mindful also that we paid three years CVP membership up front, as I recall.

This was addressed by the changes to the Game Fee Bye Laws agreed at last year's AGM. The Corporate Vice-President category of membership is closed with effect from 31 August 2012, but this will not affect the rights attaching to any unexpired period of membership (which if a club has purchased a three year membership could be an extended period). The same is true of Family members.

[Angus French]

It was me who asked for further information about the automated membership system. I justified this by saying that Council had been asked to approve expenditure of £7.5K and needed to know more. I’m not sure that I asked for a copy of the specification (though, FWIW, I had previously requested this in an unsuccessful exchange of emails with the Marketing Director). Anyhow, I was allowed to ask some specific questions at the meeting and these were answered by Andrew Farthing. So far as I recall, the questions and answers were as follows:

Q1. Will the automated system interface with the grading system – thus, when a membership application is made will an input Grading Reference be validated against the grading database?
A1. Yes.

Q2. Will the automated system support the processing of batch applications submitted by Management Organisations (“MOs”)?
A2. No, these applications will have to be entered into the system manually by the ECF Office.

Q3. Will the automated system provide logins for individuals so that they can update their personal details?
A3. Yes, but there are issues to be addressed for existing members and for members who join through an MO.

Q4. Will the automated system support Gift Aid payments (if those become applicable)?
A4. Not yet.

Q5. Will data be migrated from the existing membership list?
A5. Yes

Q6. Who will host the system?
A6. CVent

Q7. What will the costs be: a) for adapting the system to meet ECF requirements; b) for hosting; c) for each electronic payment
A7. There will be an annual charge of £5,000 which will cover both the ad hoc work to adapt the system and electronic payments for up to 20,000 members. There will be an annual hosting charge of £800.

Someone else – Sean Hewitt? – asked what the notice period would be to terminate the contract with CVent. The answer given was: less than 12 months.
Someone else asked how long it would take to adapt the system to the ECF's requirements and, if I recall, the answer given was in terms of weeks. I didn’t comment on this but my experience of software development suggests that a more realistic estimate is a number of months. On delivery of the system, the ECF ought to conduct acceptance testing and an allowance should be made for the time required to make further changes.

There were a couple of questions I neglected to ask:
Q8. Will the system have a database backend - to facilitate reporting and exporting of data?
Q9. What will be done about members for whom no grading reference is provided (I believe this data is required in order to link the membership and grading systems and to be able to determine what game fee payments are due for each graded event).

If I’ve understood it correctly, the answer given to Q2 will have a significant impact on the ECF Office.

[Roger de Coverly]

If I’ve understood it correctly, the answer given to Q2 will have a significant impact on the ECF Office.

I expect there's a Q9 and a Q10 as well.

Q9 is something like, if payments are processed through paypal or similar, what is the transaction cost ?( 5%?)

Q10 If Q9 doesn't apply and the payments go directly to the ECF's bank account, what is the confidence level that the ECF Office can reconcile and correctly report several thousand payments a year, many of them concentrated in a couple of months. The failure to be able to report comparisons of Game Fee paid by individual Congresses from one financial year to the next may also be relevant.

As Angus notes, new players won't know their grading code and unlike MOs there won't be any local knowledge or communication between the local treasurer and local grader to come to the rescue. So someone is going to have to scrutinise and possibly dispute the bills for residual Game Fee. That isn't only a cost to local organisations but also to the ECF Office as the counterparty.

[Paul Buswell]

Paul Buswell wrote

But at a more parochial level, what is the situation on Corporate Vice-Presidents? As one such our internal games have enjoyed exemption from Game Fee. Does that continue in any guise? I am mindful also that we paid three years CVP membership up front, as I recall.

This was addressed by the changes to the Game Fee Bye Laws agreed at last year's AGM. The Corporate Vice-President category of membership is closed with effect from 31 August 2012, but this will not affect the rights attaching to any unexpired period of membership (which if a club has purchased a three year membership could be an extended period). The same is true of Family members.

Thanks John: a link to chapter and verse in the ECF's papers would be appreciated.

PB

[Carl Hibbard]

Q7. What will the costs be: a) for adapting the system to meet ECF requirements; b) for hosting; c) for each electronic payment
A7. There will be an annual charge of £5,000 which will cover both the ad hoc work to adapt the system and electronic payments for up to 20,000 members. There will be an annual hosting charge of £800.

A hosting charge of £800 is a truly ridiculous figure so it would help to know who is validating this overall decision?

It would also be a mistake to go for such a proprietary software choice if that is what this is reading between the lines

[Andrew Farthing]

Q7. What will the costs be: a) for adapting the system to meet ECF requirements; b) for hosting; c) for each electronic payment
A7. There will be an annual charge of £5,000 which will cover both the ad hoc work to adapt the system and electronic payments for up to 20,000 members. There will be an annual hosting charge of £800.

A hosting charge of £800 is a truly ridiculous figure so it would help to know who is validating this overall decision?

It would also be a mistake to go for such a proprietary software choice if that is what this is reading between the lines

As I attempted to make clear at the meeting but which appears not to have registered, the cost of the system will be offset by reduced office salary costs which will cover it in full on an ongoing basis. The net cost to the ECF of the system will therefore be nil.

[Andrew Farthing]

Did the Council meeting give any consideration to transitional issues? It's not just CVPs, there are Family memberships which become broken and anyone with a membership stretching past 1st September 2012 needs to know whether this will be honoured and what their terms of renewal are?

All already in view.

I haven't been able to issue detailed guidance on the new arrangements because I was waiting for the pricing to be confirmed by Finance Council (as was stated in my Chief Executive's report to Council). I could have issued detailed guidance full of provisos on the lines of "Rates have to be set by Finance Council in April and are therefore subject to change, although Council appeared supportive of the advance notice of the proposed rates presented at the AGM in October 2011". My judgement was that this was a dangerous assumption to make and that the potential for confusion if the reality proved substantially different was considerable.

Given what was decided by Council yesterday, this looks like one of my rare moments of wisdom.