ECF Membership should be voluntary

[Paul Cooksey]

My annual review of potential game fees as a league treasurer today. The stupid admin I am doing myself and passing onto our clubs always puts me in bad mood.

Facing a cumbersome and time consuming system it is tempting to to try to improve it. But to quote Douglass Adams on Sirius Cybernetics products,"(their) fundamental design flaws are completely hidden by their superficial design flaws.”

Years ago I used to talk with Prof David Robertson about ECF membership, here and elsewhere. He argued membership should be voluntary, a very convincing position in his areas of political expertise. I used to argue it was too risky because we did not know how many people would pay if they did not have to. Covid proved me wrong. A shame David does not know he won the argument posthumously.

Even disregarding volunteer time it is clear the extra income the ECF gets from mandatory game fees is less than it costs to enforce it.

[Mike Gunn]

While the detail of how much the subs are/ should be is arguable you need a compulsory membership system to fund what the ECF does. If you made it voluntary (so regular players in tournaments and leagues could opt out of paying) then the ECF would collapse. The membership system is better (because of less work involved) compared to the old board fee system.

[MSoszynski]

Here's a happy compromise. No result can be submitted to (or rather be accepted by) the ECF into the ECF-administered rating scheme unless both players are already ECF Members. If you choose not to join the ECF, you should hardly expect to receive an ECF rating.

I can remember, years ago, my own club having to pay a three-figure sum to cover the fees that leagues (billed by the ECF) required us to pay. We were able to recover most of the money from the players concerned, but I never understood why non-members should have been included in the rating system in the first place.

Nowadays matters aren't helped by there not being a fixed membership year, making it harder for Clubs to track who is an ECF member.

[Ian Thompson]

I never understood why non-members should have been included in the rating system in the first place.

Because members expect all their games to be rated. I don't think it would be acceptable to tell a member that a game they'd played didn't count because their opponent wasn't a member. One option that has been tried in the past is to rate the games of all players, but only to publish the ratings of members.

[Paul Cooksey]

While the detail of how much the subs are/ should be is arguable you need a compulsory membership system to fund what the ECF does. If you made it voluntary (so regular players in tournaments and leagues could opt out of paying) then the ECF would collapse. The membership system is better (because of less work involved) compared to the old board fee system.

I think Mike is wrong. The ECF is spending more on admin than it used to. Membership has not been a simplification. It isn't a simple system. Theoretically it could be, but it isn't.

You might lose half the the ECF income if you make it voluntary but that would be fine if you took away 80% of admin costs. The drop was less than that during covid.

[Ian Thompson]

you need a compulsory membership system to fund what the ECF does.

But we don't have that. We have a voluntary membership scheme with a per event charge for non-members. If we had a compulsory membership scheme the ECF would have to have procedures in place to deal with non-members playing in events that they shouldn't have that doesn't have the effect of the current arrangements where the 'compulsory' membership scheme becomes a voluntary one.

[MSoszynski]

I never understood why non-members should have been included in the rating system in the first place.

Because members expect all their games to be rated. I don't think it would be acceptable to tell a member that a game they'd played didn't count because their opponent wasn't a member. One option that has been tried in the past is to rate the games of all players, but only to publish the ratings of members.

Why unacceptable? Isn't the game worth playing for other reasons?

An option besides the one you mention is not to allow non-contributors to participate at all in serious play. And that's whether it's the ECF or a local club.

[Ian Thompson]

Why unacceptable? Isn't the game worth playing for other reasons?

An option besides the one you mention is not to allow non-contributors to participate at all in serious play. And that's whether it's the ECF or a local club.

It likely would be worth playing for other reasons, but that doesn't alter the fact that members would expect it to be rated and object to rules that excluded the game from rating.

The ECF could have a rule saying that everyone has to be a member. It would then need to have rules saying what happens when that rule is broken. If an event is run by the ECF a membership rule could be enforced to prevent non-members playing. If an event is run by any other organisation the ECF can't prevent non-members playing and would have to deal with the after-the-fact situation that they did.

[GrahamStuart]

I know when I look back on the HCA and WECU archives the old grading systems caused lots of issues, often grades late, players not members not graded (or listed). The current system with compulsory membership can have issues, but I think it works well and the rating from the membership does not have the issues that were there in the past (in my opinion.)

Last season the ECF sent an invoice to the SCL which detailed the 21 games played by non members. From this there were 4 which incurred a fee as they had played more than 3 games (the 3 games before you have to be a member is a good rule). From memory we checked these were correct before asking the clubs to pay the fees (in total it was £36, but some of this may have been queried, due to the rolling membership). As sometimes there are errors to the rolling membership, the ECF must do this using software and wait for this to be queried. For HCA congresses we have certainly challenged and not paid for any who were members at the time of the congress.

During the season LMS allows easy monitoring of players who are not members who have played games, and the SCL Officers and clubs keep an eye out for these and try and raise this with the club if it looks as if a player is going to play more then 3 games. As most of these are new members who require a new membership code this is quite easy to do and the player reports help with this process. We also do the same at club level.
https://lms.englishchess.org.uk/lms/org ... rts/player

I guess I am saying I am in favour of the compulsory membership and would not like it to revert to a non compulsory membership - As someone who has seen members leave a club rather than pay a small memberships fee, and at the same time not quibble when paying 2 x the annual fee for a round of golf I would not be surprised to see only a small percentage pay a non compulsory membership.

[Alan Walton]

We seem to be back here again on membership; it should be compulsory and even £52 a year isn't too onorous a fee (only £1 per week, it costs way more to enter congresses nowadays with associated expenses)

If you feel £1 per week is too much to spend on membership to your national federation for them maintaining some organization inc. grading system, then just play online or freindlies and don't play ECF rated events and accept you have no say in the running of the ECF (don't pay can't complain)

[Adam Ashton]

I agree with Mike. I think Covid was an exception (as many players knew ECF was in genuine financial danger) and in normal times I doubt membership would stay anywhere near that level on a voluntary basis.

The extra spending on admin will not all be directly attributable to membership and if costs were cut by 80% you would also end up paying for a lot of things the office can currently handle, so the savings wouldn't be so straightforward.

There will always be valid arguments about whether the ECF should do more or less. I think there does need to be a compulsory membership system of some sort as it is essential to provide help/guidance (running chess clubs, safeguarding etc) at various levels and to advocate for the game. There must be very few activities where membership of a governing body isn't required for those reasons.

[Roger de Coverly]

We seem to be back here again on membership; it should be compulsory and even £52 a year isn't too onorous a fee (only £1 per week, it costs way more to enter congresses nowadays with associated expenses)

It ceases to be £ 52 a year for someone who just plays a handful of games or even just one.It becomes £ 52 for a month, a week or a day. To what extent do want to turn potential players away by hitting them with an annual fee before you even allow them at the board?

[Alan Walton]

We seem to be back here again on membership; it should be compulsory and even £52 a year isn't too onorous a fee (only £1 per week, it costs way more to enter congresses nowadays with associated expenses)

It ceases to be £ 52 a year for someone who just plays a handful of games or even just one.It becomes £ 52 for a month, a week or a day. To what extent do want to turn potential players away by hitting them with an annual fee before you even allow them at the board?

The problem is that everyone generally expects any game they play (be it one or a hundred) to be ECF graded; now you either go back to the game fee methodology which will rectify your point, or you go just on a memebership basis where you charge £x amount

So the question is are you interested in the players who only play a handful of games or those well into double figures; obviously within either system the price set is down to the ECF to cover services and costs

I am just the kind of person who finds that most chess players will complain whatever you set a fixed fee at; and like mentioned earlier £50 a year is most probably the going rate to join a national federation and I see that as a reasonable amount to pay

[Andrew Zigmond]

By strict pedantry surely ECF membership IS voluntary in that no player (at club level anyway) is obliged by the ECF to join. Whether they play in a specific league and how any resulting charges are accounted for is a matter for that league.

The system isn't perfect but I think is preferable to the old game fee and as it is now embedded (rather more successfully than a lot of people thought fifteen or so years ago) it should remain.

[MSoszynski]

Why unacceptable? Isn't the game worth playing for other reasons?

An option besides the one you mention is not to allow non-contributors to participate at all in serious play. And that's whether it's the ECF or a local club.

It likely would be worth playing for other reasons, but that doesn't alter the fact that members would expect it to be rated and object to rules that excluded the game from rating.

The fact that...? That's debatable, and in any case expectations can be changed, should be changed if wrongful. Clubs and leagues do run some competitions that aren't rated, including ones that could be. There's no particular dismay about them being unrated.

The ECF could have a rule saying that everyone has to be a member. It would then need to have rules saying what happens when that rule is broken. If an event is run by the ECF a membership rule could be enforced to prevent non-members playing. If an event is run by any other organisation the ECF can't prevent non-members playing and would have to deal with the after-the-fact situation that they did.

No, my point was that the results of non-contributors would not be processed. How that affects a non-contributor's scoring within a competition depends on the local organiser. Club organisers may exclude players from starting that aren't club members or may charge them extra compared to members or may exclude them from money prizes, etc. It's perfectly reasonable to treat players who aren't your members differently. Likewise with the ECF.