Outcome of membership scheme

[Roger de Coverly]

Are they really trying to extract a little more blood from the stone or is it just the usual ill-conceived planning to discourage casual players from joining up ?

Apparently by paying the £ 12 or £ 13, you will be encouraged to play more chess, although if you don't have a summer league, an appearance in a Counties sf is a one off appearance.

You local club, league or county may however be about to pursue you for £ 2 per game from earlier in the season, which paying the ECF £ 12 would avoid.

You can argue the disincentives of membership for the infrequent player, but the current ECF Directors just don't want to listen.

The hard line would be to decline to play in the Counties sf and get your match captain to shout at your county delegate for supporting compulsory membership, if indeed he did.

[Adam Raoof]

Are they really trying to extract a little more blood from the stone or is it just the usual ill-conceived planning to discourage casual players from joining up ?

Apparently by paying the £ 12 or £ 13, you will be encouraged to play more chess, although if you don't have a summer league, an appearance in a Counties sf is a one off appearance.

You local club, league or county may however be about to pursue you for £ 2 per game from earlier in the season, which paying the ECF £ 12 would avoid.

You can argue the disincentives of membership for the infrequent player, but the current ECF Directors just don't want to listen.

The hard line would be to decline to play in the Counties sf and get your match captain to shout at your county delegate for supporting compulsory membership, if indeed he did.

This problem only arises from the decision of the ECF to run the memberships on a fixed annual basis, instead of allowing people to either join any time during the year on a fractional basis (or fractional+1 year) or to run their memberships for a calendar year from the joining date (or some other date, e.g. a birthday). I did speak against this several times, but it wasn't considered to be practical ('too much admin'), and thought desirable for the membership year to be fixed according to the chess season.

It would still be to my advantage when trying to sell the membership scheme to punters to offer them the reassurance that they won't be wasting their money if they join well into the membership year. Even my chess club offers a pro-rata membership throughout the year!

[Roger de Coverly]

This problem only arises from the decision of the ECF to run the memberships on a fixed annual basis, instead of allowing people to either join any time during the year on a fractional basis (or fractional+1 year) or to run their memberships for a calendar year from the joining date (or some other date, e.g. a birthday). I did speak against this several times, but it wasn't considered to be practical ('too much admin'), and thought desirable for the membership year to be fixed according to the chess season.

Take a step back. The problem arises from the decision of the ECF to run a membership scheme made compulsory for some events. It doesn't matter whether it's annual or calendar. The calendar approach started to be abandoned when the NCCU were allowed to undercut the rest of the BCF/ECF with their NMS scheme.

[Dragoljub Sudar]

Even at Bronze this is £13 for one county game then £28 for following year

Are they really trying to extract a little more blood from the stone or is it just the usual ill-conceived planning to discourage casual players from joining up ?

Hi Kev,

You played 4 games for Grantham in the Notts league this season, which is £8 in game fee. The ECF will charge the NCA who in turn will charge Grantham who may or may not decide to ask you for the dosh.

If you join the ECF as a bronze member for £13, not only will you be able to play in the counties semi-final but you, or Grantham, will not have to pay the £8 game fee as all your league games since September 2012 will be graded free of charge.

[Neil Graham]

Even at Bronze this is £13 for one county game then £28 for following year

Are they really trying to extract a little more blood from the stone or is it just the usual ill-conceived planning to discourage casual players from joining up ?

Hi Kev,

You played 4 games for Grantham in the Notts league this season, which is £8 in game fee. The ECF will charge the NCA who in turn will charge Grantham who may or may not decide to ask you for the dosh.

If you join the ECF as a bronze member for £13, not only will you be able to play in the counties semi-final but you, or Grantham, will not have to pay the £8 game fee as all your league games since September 2012 will be graded free of charge.

The Notts CA will owe £196 in Game Fee for non-members which includes Kevin's £8.00. A decision is likely to be made to pay this amount and then bill the clubs in next year's fees.

[John Upham]

A couple (or three) questions...

1. Does the PSO application allow one to join the ECF when one is not known to the ECF?

2. As an organisation would you pay someone to make proxied payments via PayPal to yourself using a membership list that you have supplied?

3. Do we know if the current DoMM engages (or has any intention) with this place? I am curious to know what the Marketing part of the role will entail.

[Andrew Zigmond]

3. Do we know if the current DoMM engages (or has any intention) with this place? I am curious to know what the Marketing part of the role will entail.

No member of the board is obliged to come on this unofficial (and controversial) forum. However Mr Thomas does have email details on the ECF website and hopefully will respond to reasonable queries from ECF members. That may be the best approach.

[Roger de Coverly]

No member of the board is obliged to come on this unofficial (and controversial) forum.

Maybe not, but does the inclusion of the words "and Membership" in the directorship title involve a commitment to be the public voice of the ECF when communicating with the individuals required to be members of the ECF in order to play chess in England?

[Carl Hibbard]

No member of the board is obliged to come on this unofficial (and controversial) forum.

Could we be classed as controversial?

[John Upham]

Could we be classed as controversial?

I would be disappointed not to be...

[Sean Hewitt]

A couple (or three) questions...

1. Does the PSO application allow one to join the ECF when one is not known to the ECF?

2. As an organisation would you pay someone to make proxied payments via PayPal to yourself using a membership list that you have supplied?

3. Do we know if the current DoMM engages (or has any intention) with this place? I am curious to know what the Marketing part of the role will entail.

1. Yes

2. I don't know, but that's not what PSO do for the ECF.

3. Might be best if you emailed him and asked.

[John Upham]

Here the R&Rs for the Marketing Officer of a sport I participate in:

Marketing, Media & PR for the national governing body (NGB).

Key responsibilities:

* Manage PR/Press relationships
* Promote the sport & NGB
* Working on specific Marketing campaigns
* Implement & Manage Communication, Press & Marketing strategies
* Leading on social media communication & strategy
* Monitor & Analyze PR & Marketing campaigns
* Events Management - Including international competitions and social events
* Brand Management
* New Product Launch
* Creating and collating media content
* Social Networking
* Press Officer - working with Sky Sports & BBC
* Team management
* New CRM system rollout
* Membership recruitment & retention strategy

Which of these would be appropriate for the marketing part of the ECF DoMM role?

[David Pardoe]

Going back to the original thread `title`..
In answer, many people might perhaps feel that the ECF has shot itself in the foot, with its rules for the Finals Stages causing teams to drop out/default, and `loses` boards/matches in somewhat spurious circumstances.
Some may certainly believe that the `wrong teams` are competing in this years Finals, in some cases.
I still feel we need some additional flexible Membership options (as mentioned in other threads..), that will attract more members, including a `bulk membership` and `easy starter` options. Bulk `County` or cheap Bulk Junior options might be worth some consideration. With 80,000 kids in the Schools Mega Finals events, so successfully run by Mike Basman, could a way be found to sign them all up..or even just those who reach later stages...say 10,000 youngsters.
Giving these a `provisional` local grade, administered with the junior community, may be a way forward. These grades, if only rough guidance, could be a valuable starting point...
Is chess a popular game..or cultural pursuit.... You only need to look at the vast numbers playing `web chess`, which dwarfs the numbers playing `club/OTB chess` to see that the potential numbers are considerable. How can we tap into these large interest groups....?
Maybe the ECF should run some online `lunchtime fun` tournaments...for those taking up the `easy starter` Membership option? You could operate at two levels...a) say £5 for those only playing online chess...maybe granting `provisional gradings`, and b) at £10 for those who just want a limited number of OTB graded games, a mixture of say up to 10 games..club, congress & FIDE. Something like this might attract some significant interest.

[Roger de Coverly]

In the minutes of the April Council meeting at
http://www.englishchess.org.uk/wp-conte ... aft-V3.pdf,
the following appears:-

with regards to membership:

Requirements with regard to Speed Play and Rapid Play
Requirements FIDE rate Junior only events
Date requirements for September / October congresses

Date requirements for late July / August congresses
are two memberships required?

No mechanism for juniors to upgrade from Bronze to Silver membership

Board to consider requirements for cross-year events

All very good questions, to which the meeting might well have added the requirement for membership in nominally ECF run Schools team events had it known about it. But were there ever any answers?

[Mick Norris]

The final membership count for year 1 was 9835 - that'd got to be a pretty good result?

The more interesting bit is to see how many renew - nearly 4,000 so far