Alex Holowczak wrote:I am a volunteer, but volunteers can still get reimbursement. By "paid commensurately" I meant in the context similar to the amount of money I receive for doing similar work for other events. I wasn't exactly talking Barbados retirement money...
Oh dear - check this with HMRC. It is legitimate expenses or minimum wage (upwards).
Alex Holowczak wrote:I've got a system that I can run an entry spreadsheet through and it will check membership levels for me, without me having to do any manual legwork
Totally missing the point. At Scarborough many people have paid an ECF membership but the ECF has not yet received it. If you have developed software which can cope with that situation perhaps you could refine it to check football results.
Another point you are missing is that for your events they are spread out over a period of time. With Scarborough there is a very short time frame.
For you chasing non-members might be 15 minutes a day over a six week period. At Scarborough this is several hours per day over a few days as the entries flood in in the last week to 10 days.
At events later in the year (including 4NCL Congresses) we have taken memberships and passed them on. This is also done at Scarborough but the problem is not being able to know for sure if a person has renewed.
This year at Scarborough there was a player who has been a Platinum member for a very large number of years. We accepted his word that he renewed (he thought he had). If the records were up to date then we would have been able to remind him and avoid what turned out to be a time consuming matter involving emails to the office and finally a phone call there as well. In terms of man hours involved the £7 requested would have been exceeded in wages.
I agree with membership but the current system is not fit for purpose. How will it cope with the new FIDE rating system coming into effect in July where games rather than whole tournaments can be rated? Will 2200+ players have to be Gold members or will Silver be enough? Will non-ENG players have to pay the game fee if over 2200? What will the membership requirements be if a league wants to be rated?
[It will be possible to rate an Open with a 3 hour playing session but games involving 2200+ players will be ignored.]