ECF Office

[Neill Cooper]

A significant proportion (about a third, I believe) of the ECF membership either is not online or has not supplied a valid e-mail address. There is undoubtedly a demographic (age-related) factor in this.

Also many teenagers are poor at email. This is partly because they use so many different forms of electronic communication (mainly instant - text, Facebook chat, Skype instant messaging etc.). It is also because their ability to file things is typified by the state of their bedrooms. I have realised that when trying to organise teenagers to play in chess matches it is much more efficient to use their parent's email rather than their own.

[Alex Holowczak]

A significant proportion (about a third, I believe) of the ECF membership either is not online or has not supplied a valid e-mail address. There is undoubtedly a demographic (age-related) factor in this.

Also many teenagers are poor at email. This is partly because they use so many different forms of electronic communication (mainly instant - text, Facebook chat, Skype instant messaging etc.). It is also because their ability to file things is typified by the state of their bedrooms. I have realised that when trying to organise teenagers to play in chess matches it is much more efficient to use their parent's email rather than their own.

I agree that it is more efficient to use parent's e-mails, coupled with chasing the children up themselves via Facebook etc. in order to hurry the process along. The belt and braces approach.

[John McKenna]

Not that many years ago the approach mentioned was somewhat different - the father wore the braces and the son got the belt. The custom was extended beyond the home - in a modified form (usually gown instead of braces and cane instead of belt) - into the school. Now the shoe, or slipper, is on the other foot - with the backing of the law, to boot, thanks to our politically correct govenors.

[Justin Hadi]

I'm not planning to engage in a long discussion of this, because I've been through it all several times before, including consideration of the feasibility of a virtual office and a dispersed staff working from home.
Whilst it is all very interesting in theory to talk about doing away with paper and postage, etc. and a physical office, the reality is not that simple.

Thanks for getting back to me. I would be interested to see any considerations of a virtual office, for example was a trial period, for one day a week considered? Were there any major roadblocks in implementing a virtual office? Alternatively, if anything was posted on the forum, or the ECF website it would be good to see this. It's not publicly known how to access this information.

I think it is right to talk about the ECF's expenditure. I find it strange every nuance of the ECF's income raising is discussed in minute detail, but its expediture mostly glossed over.

That said, I don't think it is possible to analyse whether the money is being spent well or badly just looking at the accounts.

Agreed, that is where more transparency would help.

The biggest office costs are people, and the infrastructure to support them. Looking at the staff and infrastructure costs, I guess that the cost of a day of office time spent on activity is c.£110-£120. This should be allocated to the relevant Directorate, and ideally by the Director to an activity. I care how much the ECF spends collecting membership fees, running the British, supporting junior chess etc. I don't care how much it spends on stamps or phone calls in achieving those aims, only the totals.

I do care about the small items because if it's not cost efficient to send out postage/make phone calls/etc then it's better to do something else. If what is achieved now can be achieved via a virtual office then why not? I agree that the CEO should be allowed to get on with it, but there is a right for members to know what is going on and make suggestions. It's not as if a standard member can implement changes in an byzantine organisation like the ECF anyway.

Throwing my personal prejudice into the ring, I suspect the Yearbook loses significant money. I suspect most are sold at the reduced rate, there are credit card overheads and ghost writing by staff (at c.£110 a day...). I'd rather spend the money on the International budget. Some people would disagree. But at least if we knew what the ECF was spending on what, we could have a sensible discussion about it. More importantly, so could Council.
To be honest I thought I was plowing a lonely furrow with this point, until the CFGC report recommending management accounts. I am interested to know what form these will take.

Agreed on the yearbooks. We don't know if it's a prejudice until we know how many are sold and at what rates. The reason we can't have a sensible discussion is a lack of information.

[Sean Hewitt]

I'm uncomfortable with this kind of discussion. We elect a board to run the ECF on our behalf (at least council does, on behalf of the members they represent) for a year. We should not try to micro manage the board.

If we don't like what the board are doing we can tell them and elect someone else in their place.

If we really don't like what they are doing, we can vote them out mid-term.

[Angus French]

In my view, it's just ill-thought-out speculation which has been done before. Also, Management Services costs have been significantly reduced in recent years.

[Justin Hadi]

Initially you might have to make a couple of controversial suggestions to get a debate and now we have one. It would be interesting to know the detail behind the numbers, and what the board are doing, and then make a decision on whether we like it or not. For most people the information is not there to make that decision.

[Justin Hadi]

And if a decision was made not to have a virtual office it would be interesting to know the rationale behind it and if this was presented to council or not. The forum is here precisely for speculation/suggestions etc as can be seen from the many threads on membership/game fee/etc. Also, since the term is one year and the CEO is stepping down, I don't see why we can't have this discussion.

[Roger de Coverly]

Also, since the term is one year and the CEO is stepping down, I don't see why we can't have this discussion.

The other "debate" is whether functions should be carried out by the Office or by volunteers and part time workers from the wider chess community. Grading is the obvious example which was out-sourced. Chess Moves and the Year Book used to be mostly or wholly external but are now internal.

[John Townsend]

Going back a few years, wasn't grading usually done on a voluntary basis? I remember Alan Cox, a local grader of some skill. With a network of graders, say, one in each county, and reasonable co-operation between them, why should chess players need to spend a lot of money on grading? It is an ideal computer application, and one might expect no shortage of volunteers up and down the country.

[Roger de Coverly]

why should chess players need to spend a lot of money on grading?

They don't. The ECF's direct net expenditure on grading is under £ 10,000 a year. Even that's more than it used to be, since internet access removes the profits that used to accrue from the sale of grading lists.

The "do it by local graders" approach only really works if players don't travel around playing in national events. You need centralised processing to avoid players having as many grades as different local areas in which they've played.

I could be open to correction, but if you analysed the expenses of the Battle Office by function, next to none of them would be grading. Renting the server space and maintaining the ecfgrading.org.uk domain perhaps.

[Justin Hadi]

It would indeed be very interesting as to how the ECF spends its money analysed up by the responsibilities of directors. At one time, a lot of paper used to be distributed for Council meetings, so presumably there was a considerable Office cost. This would be money spent on Governance, if it was more than was spent on International teams, this would be alarming and support the notion that Council needed reform. But we don't know.

The common theme here is that it's very difficult to know how directors and the board and the office are performing without detail of how much money is spent, probably in the form on management accounts, and what is achieved with that spending.

[John Townsend]

Roger, you said yourself only a few days ago (in another thread) that grading is the main benefit which ordinary players get from the E.C.F. (or words roughly to that effect). If grading could be done entirely on a voluntary basis - not as difficult as you suggest, I suspect - then chess players could, surely, look to avoiding any expenses of offices and staff.

[John Upham]

If grading could be done entirely on a voluntary basis

I believe that ECF grading largely is already done on a voluntary basis. I mean by that the event organisers, graders and (most of) the grading team members are volunteers.

There are a handful of those who receive a honorarium for the exceptional amount of work they do (Richard Haddrell and Michael Bennett being key examples) but, I imagine, 99% of those involved in the grading process are volunteers and give their time freely.

Therefore, "entirely" would imply not making the honoraria payments. Am I simplifying matters too much?

[Roger de Coverly]

- then chess players could, surely, look to avoiding any expenses of offices and staff.

I'd be fairly sure that if it needed to be, then grading could run quite happily without an ECF Office. If the ECF or just its staffed office ceased to exist, what would be lost? Council meetings would be one casualty and the website another. The British Championships are mostly self contained, or give that impression. The calendar of events has been quoted, but that has been run by commercial sites in the past as a means of attracting visitors.