What is the history of the ecf office

[andrew martin]

I couldnt agree with you more.

[andrew martin]

It would be a shame if it had to bite the dust,right enough.

.

[Simon Spivack]

This is a subject that really interests me because my boss (Howard Curtis) was responsible for the BCF office (as it was) 10 years ago when he became Director of Management Services.

The people I feel most sorry for are the staff of the ECF Office. They are in a state of limbo, not knowing what the future will bring. I have written it before, I shall write it again, they have always been very helpful to me on the rare occasions when I contacted them.

Many posters to these fora know one another. However, those not in these inner loops may not be aware of these relationships.

For the record, I can't claim to know Scott at all well. He was very helpful to me at the time of the Middlesex Centenary international tournament: returning my calls and sending out an email on my behalf when I was hit by a silent withdrawal with days to go. It was a pleasure talking to him. One regret was that I was only able to persuade one person to allow me to forward their contact details to Scott, someone he already knew about. Otherwise, I can't recall any other conversations or emails. My eyesight may be up the Swanee, but, happily, my memory is not. I am grateful to Scott.

Howard is a former civil servant and so understands management and the way government and business works, etc, so very quickly realised that the BCF were on a downward spiral to financial disaster even then. He warned the board at the time that they would lose their grant if they didn't change the way they were structured. I understand it has now recently been suspended pending government requirements including a rescue plan.

This was prescient of Howard. There were much later warnings posted on these fora too.

What I find strange is the lack of foresight shown by some members of the previous Board. Either they were aware of the losses or they were not. The known deficit at the British Championships should have been sufficient warning. Why was money not transferred from the CCL in good time? This crisis may well not have arisen. If a thumping loss was not a good enough wake up call, what would be? I hope the incoming directors insist upon a cash infusion before signing anything.

The inability to appoint a Finance Director who would stick around suggests that something was wrong. Were proper reports of money coming in and going out sent out on a regular basis to the Board? If not, why didn't the Board insist? In the light of the losses, why were staffing levels increased?

There still appears to be an air of unreality. Given the state of government finances, there is no certainty that things will return to normal and the DCMS grant restored. Perhaps the old ECF Board should run the country and the Cabinet the ECF?

There should be a further clearout at the next Council Meeting. This is assuming the ECF is still around. At the moment power lies with those who control the money, such as the trustees of the Permanent Invested Fund. Thus those who imagine that the old guard have gone need a quick rethink.

"The British fight like lions" - Ludendorff.
"Yes, but don't we know they are lions led by donkeys" - Hoffman.

Furthermore he could see that there were a number of problems in the staffing structure of the ECF office. He could see that a management change was needed but was immediately and vociferously attacked by the person's supporters in the chess world when he started to deal with it.
Also, because of what he could see (even then) was happening to the BCF finances, he offered to facilitate the office here at CCF (for a small peppercorn rent) to free finance back into the organisation. Instead of people being grateful for an offer that would haev cost us logistically and financially, he was violently attacked by a number of (probably suspicious) people (including someone still on the ECF board) for that so withdrew after a few months as he could see he was wasting his time. But it would have saved a lot of money for the national federation. A pity.

Even those who complain about negativity should be able to see that the ECF would probably not have been worse off with Howard's proposal.

There was an AGM in which a certain individual wanted a club thrown out because the league fees had not been paid. On the face of it a reasonable position, particularly given that no one from that club could be bothered to turn up. However, that same year I had collected the BCF's Registration Fees (a notably unpopular form of revenue raising) from the same club. I had done so after writing just one letter (after the initial demand had been ignored) and making one phone call. I had no power of sanction. I produced this proof at the AGM. It was clear to me that little or no effort had been made to collect the sum owing. I won the vote.

Regrettably, this person then had the club thrown out anyway at the next committee meeting of the league before the season began. Given that this was a university club that did not meet from June to September, what chance was there for someone who, in all probabilty, was not there, to arrange payment? This seemed a very shabby outcome. I chose not to raise it at the next AGM. After all, if no one from that club was prepared to fight their own battle, why should I?

Of course what I had done did not go down well in a certain quarter. Thus Scott's mention of violent attacking rings a bell. It's such a small list that I am confident I can identify whom Scott means. One of my conditions when agreeing to help run my county's centenary tournament was that a certain individual would have no role to play.

It is all very well saying that everyone should hang together, or hang separately. Unfortunately, a certain level of competence and tolerance for opposing views is necessary to effect an escape.

[JohnPaines]

Even those who complain about negativity should be able to see that the ECF would probably not have been worse off with Howard's proposal.

There is a reluctance to make the financial wellbeing of the Federation dependent on the goodwill of any one volunteer. I say that in general terms and without expressing any opinion on the rights and wrongs of the specific situation described by Scott.

[Richard Bates]

Even those who complain about negativity should be able to see that the ECF would probably not have been worse off with Howard's proposal.

There is a reluctance to make the financial wellbeing of the Federation dependent on the goodwill of any one volunteer. I say that in general terms and without expressing any opinion on the rights and wrongs of the specific situation described by Scott.

So finding a philanthropic banker prepared to provide a fraction of this year's bonus for the cause won't do then

[William Metcalfe]

Getting back on topic now we have established sort of why the ecf office is based at hastings we can now get back to my history lesson hopefully.
The office used to be a one man band who approved increasing the staff to 5 people and what exhactly do the 5 people do.
How much did the grant used to be and how long has it been £50/60k

I can list one very simple item to show how the ecf wastes money as previously stated i am a MO member for some reason the ecf send me and every other ecf member a membership card why do they just not have a online list that can be printed out.
Also why are all the agm and finance meetings sent out by mail to all the deligates why can they not just be posted on the ecf site.

[John Philpott]

William Metcalfe wrote

How much did the grant used to be and how long has it been £50/60k

I will need to research this: if my memory is correct it was around the bottom of this range when I had my first exposure to the BCF Management Board back in the early 1990s when I was called in as a member of the Finance Committee because the grant was then under threat as a result of public expenditure cuts.

William Metcalfe also wrote

Also why are all the agm and finance meetings sent out by mail to all the deligates why can they not just be posted on the ecf site.

I am already on the case, William. If you read my own report to Council, you will see that I said

A specific area which I think should be investigated is the circulation of Council papers by e-mail to those delegates willing to receive the documents electronically. There is provision in the Articles for this to happen where a delegate supplies an e-mail address for this purpose, but no attempt has hitherto been made to adopt this approach in practice.

The posting of all the AGM papers on the website this time around was a first step in this direction.

[Scott Freeman]

Firstly thanks to Simon Spivack for his posting - good to touch base with you again Simon and I'm only delighted I was able to help with the Middlesex event. I have had a lot of "fun" (??!!!) over the years dealing with late drop-outs and have sometimes only solved problems just minutes before an event started! So I know exactly how you felt. Most title players are honourable and do as they promise but others.......!

John Paines wrote:
There is a reluctance to make the financial wellbeing of the Federation dependent on the goodwill of any one volunteer. I say that in general terms and without expressing any opinion on the rights and wrongs of the specific situation described by Scott.

This I totally understand. What John says is indicative of what happened when the offer was made. But if I take the argument to the extreme, let's say that a sponsor puts £20 million into the ECF (OK, so we can dream!) if the office was moved to their headquarters. I suspect we might consider it. OK, Howard was never offering that (how I wish he could!) but was offering the ECF a stability (for next to no return) to stop what has since actually happened. But I think it must have come down to issues of trust and politics. Howard doesn't mess about when he gets into a situation and he will tell you how it is, but this unfortunately seems to have cut no ice with some of the dinosaurs of the BCF at the time - who didn't want to hear what he was saying. As a result, either people didn't trust Howard or resented him (probably moreso now history has proved him to be right) but often these people don't trust anyone and are the stumbling blocks in the way of the growth and development of an organisation that needs to modernise. Sometimes a risk has to be taken or losses have to be cut. We missed an opportunity 10 years ago in my opinion.

Just for the record and for those who still feel Howard wanted to "take over the world" (although how on earth you can do that through chess I have no idea....! ), bringing the BCF office to CCF would actually have been extremely difficult for those of us working here and would have affected the operation here considerably. It would have been a negative to CCF in practical terms and the rent Howard was suggesting would not exactly have had us eating caviar (spelling?), but it was something that the office staff here agreed to because we could see that an organisation we wanted to see flourish was in trouble.

However, I can't see why trust should have been an issue. If the board hadn't liked what then happened, they would no doubt have got rid of Howard at the next elections, seen someone else appointed and moved the office out of here. But I know full well that Howard would have done nothing but the best for the BCF and I have no doubt that the ECF wouldn't be in the mess that it is now. Howard always wanted to do for the ECF what he has since done for the set-up here at Coulsdon where we have an active club membership of over 100 adult players, a club championship now more than 50% FIDE rated (with prizes of subsidised places in norm seeking international events), internal team event and a "World Cup" event for the majority of our members who did not want to play inter-club games. In fact the internal structure is so good that, despite having so many members, we only have 2 teams in the county leagues as players know they get good competitive chess internally (with plenty of opponents) without having to go outside and travel to away matches. And that is aside of the "external" weekend tournaments, the internationals (how many norms have been achieved here?), the school coaching we do (50+ schools in the south-east) and the Champions' League Chess (www.championsleaguechess.co.uk) and English Chess Challenge (www.englishchesschallenge.co.uk). Howard wanted to do all that sort of stuff for the BCF's benefit ten years ago.

All I will say now is that there appears to be another chance to push the ECF forward and out of the dark ages (if the financial situation can be resolved). I just hope that the "lack of trust" and "politics" that I feel have got us to where we are is not allowed to prevent things improving from here on in. I wish the new board all the very best to move things forward.

[Laurie Roberts]

I hope you're right in your final point Scott.

However, I do fear that many are resistant to change (others will know better than me). If you want the ECF to do more, at some stage it needs more funds. I'm sure efficiency savings might free up some cash etc but essentially one needs to take a view:

a) do you want low game fee and rely on volunteers to organise events
b) do you want a higher income stream (e.g. slightly higher game fee) and use that money to help pay for even better organised events and initatives

I would be in the latter camp as I think that chess is so cheap for the average club player who plays only locally, that some form of increased payment to the ECF (e.g. higher game fee or whatever) would be manageable and people might be prepared to pay if they got an even better service (that isn't disparaging the work of the volunteers, they do a very good job, but part of the reason CCF events do so well is that Scott is able to dedicate more of his time to them than the average volunteer would be able to)

However, I have come to the conclusion that I appear to be in a minority. People get very exercised about the thought the grading fee for a 3 -4 hour game of chess might go up from £0.50 to £1. (If you assume a game fee of £1 for a 4 hour game, split between 2 people, that's 12.5 pence per hour which seems rather cheap to me. Yet we want to stay in the 6.25 pence per hour world..).

So I think we'll end up with a situation where the ECF will make some efficiency savings, look to break even, and we'll "muddle through" along the lines of the status quo. That isn't what I want, but I see little evidence to the contrary. Hope I'm wrong.

[Matthew Turner]

Laurie,
I really feel that there are two important points here

1. There is no evidence that doubling game fee would increase revenue
2. The ECF's core activity is running an Office. There is no evidence that doubling the ECF's revenue would actually lead to any more chess!

[Roger de Coverly]

2. The ECF's core activity is running an Office. There is no evidence that doubling the ECF's revenue would actually lead to any more chess!

It has to be worth writing down what the ECF raises from various "membership" sources. This is itemised at the back of the accounts.

Game fee raises about £ 55,000 a year. Memberships (before subtracting goodies like the diary, the magazine and the yearbook) about £ 32,000. Northern and the other "£10 a head" schemes about £6,000 each.

The total of graded normal play games is about 200,000 * in a season, so you would raise another £45,000 if you collected full game fee at the current rate for every game. Actually some of the £45,000 is from the ECF's internal events so it would just drop out the other side as an extra loss on the chess activity.

Given that the BCG/ECF's chess activities change little over the years, it ought to be possible to go back to past accounts and do some historic comparisons particularly in years when the BCF made a surplus.

Note added
* this is from a summation of the graded games column of the grading download, so it's "halfgames" in ECF speak.

[Laurie Roberts]

Laurie,
I really feel that there are two important points here

1. There is no evidence that doubling game fee would increase revenue
2. The ECF's core activity is running an Office. There is no evidence that doubling the ECF's revenue would actually lead to any more chess!

Matthew

The only reason doubling game fee wouldn't increase revenue would be if the increase in fee drove sufficeint numbers out of the game that the overall take was lower. As an economist myself, I understand your point in a separate post about the laffer curve. It is my judgment that increasing the game fee per person by £0.25 per game - which is about half the cost of a packet of crisps in a pub - would not lead to mass numbers leaving chess.

I fully accept I have no evidence to prove this. It's simply my judgment.

[Roger de Coverly]

It is my judgment that increasing the game fee per person by £0.25 per game - which is about half the cost of a packet of crisps in a pub - would not lead to mass numbers leaving chess.

Those who believe in chess prevention taxes would probably disagree, but I expect that's mostly correct. It would only raise about enough (£ 25,000 or so) to balance the books. It certainly wouldn't replace the DCMS grant or pay for "professional" organisers.

[Matthew Turner]

Laurie,
There are a number of points about game fee

1. Increasing game fee might not reduce chess, but it might have a significant effect on the number of games paying game fee
2. Individuals don't pay game fee, league and congresses do, so the comparison with a packet crisps is not really relevant. Doubling game fee might mean congresses have to pay £100 or £150 extra. That is a lot to most congresses. I think a significant number would drop out of the system.
3. I haven't looked at the figures scientifically, but it is my impression that game fee regularly rises more than inflation and doesn't bring in any more revenue.

[Roger de Coverly]

Doubling game fee might mean congresses have to pay £100 or £150 extra. That is a lot to most congresses. I think a significant number would drop out of the system.

You don't think they would just add £2.50 to the entry fee for non ECF members ?

For regular players, weekends away at congresses are a form of leisure activity. A bit extra on the entry fee is nothing compared with the cost of travel, food and accommodation.