April 2016 Council meeting

[Julie Denning]

Andrew,

If someone is appointed to fill a vacancy between AGMs, the appointment would only be till the next AGM. There's no proposal to alter that aspect of Article 57. An out of sequence election would be expected to be for only the balance of the term left unserved by the previously elected incumbent. The Board needs to retain a degree of discretion over the election rota. For example, if a new directorship was created, that post would need to be fed into the rota.

[Robert Stern]

You are right.The successor does only serve as many years as are left. This is the effect of the first sentence of article 58.

The position in relation to appointments between AGMs is unchanged. Such an appointment would need ratification at the next AGM under article 57.


As regards undirected proxies, I am not sure that there will be any change by virtue of the introduction of the post of Chairman of the Council.

[Mick Norris]

You are right.The successor does only serve as many years as are left. This is the effect of the first sentence of article 58.

The position in relation to appointments between AGMs is unchanged. Such an appointment would need ratification at the next AGM under article 57.


As regards undirected proxies, I am not sure that there will be any change by virtue of the introduction of the post of Chairman of the Council.

Robert

Good to see you posting here, welcome, and hope you are enjoying the Governance Committee

Have you got anything to add to Julie's postings?

[Robert Stern]

Mick

Thanks.

I have nothing to add to Julie's postings; they are very clear (as you would expect from the chair of the constitution and governance review sub-committee!).

[Roger de Coverly]

There's a couple of new papers by the Membership Director.

http://www.englishchess.org.uk/wp-conte ... l-2016.pdf
http://www.englishchess.org.uk/wp-conte ... r-2016.pdf

In the latter paper, he observes

The figures in this table are depressing. The supplementary table here summarises the average age of the members in each adult category. Of even greater concern than the actual figures is the extent to which the comparison between 2014 and 2015 suggests the problem is getting worse.

Those who play in league matches and Congresses will be aware that there's a core group of dedicated players who play year in, year out. With every passing year, they are one year older and so the average age of participants in English chess increases with them. For all the success in teaching chess to eight year olds, you lose almost all of them by the age of fourteen, so there are not enough younger players to rebalance the demographics.

[Adam Raoof]

Give everyone under the age of 18 a free membership and collect their contact details. Get everyone involved in the UK Chess Challenge and all major junior events registered. Send them the newsletter. You will retain far more juniors if they actually know what the ECF is, what it does and hears from them occasionally.

[Mick Norris]

Give everyone under the age of 18 a free membership

Last time I crunched the numbers, Junior membership income was £23,010

There would also presumably be a decrease in game fee, but even ignoring that, where would the £23,010 come from i.e. which adults would be paying more?

The only discussions i have seem revolve around groups of people paying less (e.g. bronze members)

[LawrenceCooper]

Give everyone under the age of 18 a free membership

Last time I crunched the numbers, Junior membership income was £23,010

There would also presumably be a decrease in game fee, but even ignoring that, where would the £23,010 come from i.e. which adults would be paying more?

The only discussions i have seem revolve around groups of people paying less (e.g. bronze members)

Wasn't this the idea behind the free junior silver membership to first time members: http://www.englishchess.org.uk/membersh ... g-the-ecf/ They sign up and you get their contact details and then they will hopefully renew in subsequent years.

[Andrew Zigmond]

In terms of the average age of members (not to be entirely confused with players as you don't necessarily have to be a member to play in ECF rated events) Roger correctly notes that the people playing in leagues and congresses doesn't shift much year on year. Assuming each calendar birth year has a `shadow` of players currently inactive, the late 1950s look strong so the average age may drop as more people from that year retire and take up chess as a hobby.

Other things worry me more. There is a marked drop off between 1971 and 1972 which never recovers although there is a slight spike in the late seventies (did these people watch Kasparov vs Short as teenagers). Even more worrying is the more or less consistent drop as you go down the age range; you might expect a slightly higher number of student age players which tails off when they get to age where they'll be working more and possibly raising a family.

The elephant in the room is the lack of interest in chess within secondary schools (even CSC seems largely primary schools orientated and perhaps the gradual retirement of the Fischer generation means less chess player teachers to start a club) and the relative lack of interest of those in chess community in promoting the game to this demographic.

[Roger de Coverly]

You will retain far more juniors if they actually know what the ECF is, what it does and hears from them occasionally.

I'm not sure I see the point of giving free membership to people who aren't playing chess. The relevant statistic to my mind is not the ECF's nominal headcount but the number actually playing.

[Mick Norris]

Wasn't this the idea behind the free junior silver membership to first time members: http://www.englishchess.org.uk/membersh ... g-the-ecf/ They sign up and you get their contact details and then they will hopefully renew in subsequent years.

Possibly, but it is easy to give away membership, less easy to balance the ECF's books

I don't mind costed and thought out proposals, just every April (in particular, to be fair we get them in October too ) we get proposals which appear to be neither

[Mick Norris]

The elephant in the room is the lack of interest in chess within secondary schools (even CSC seems largely primary schools orientated and perhaps the gradual retirement of the Fischer generation means less chess player teachers to start a club) and the relative lack of interest of those in chess community in promoting the game to this demographic.

Neill Cooper seems to be making some progress, just like locally Julian Clissold is doing, and 3Cs have done too

Greater Manchester is booming (economy bigger than Wales or Northern Ireland), which means we have a chance of these (or other) players coming back after University (my own club has a new member who works at the BBC in Media City), but for a long time, developing secondary school age players has been a case of losing them to the South East

Getting retired players back looks a better model to many

[LawrenceCooper]

Wasn't this the idea behind the free junior silver membership to first time members: http://www.englishchess.org.uk/membersh ... g-the-ecf/ They sign up and you get their contact details and then they will hopefully renew in subsequent years.

Possibly, but it is easy to give away membership, less easy to balance the ECF's books

I don't mind costed and thought out proposals, just every April (in particular, to be fair we get them in October too ) we get proposals which appear to be neither

Wasn't that the idea of this though? It was a way of attracting juniors (and their contact details) who had never been members in the hope that after a year of free membership they would then join and pay.

[Roger de Coverly]

It was a way of attracting juniors (and their contact details) who had never been members in the hope that after a year of free membership they would then join and pay.

It was also the ECF trying to make amends for not really noticing that the reductions in membership costs for Juniors were nowhere near the reductions applied to Game Fee. The net effect of this being that the introduction of membership resulted in Juniors and Junior organisations contributing considerably more to ECF income than they had previously. It didn't help that events for juniors were often structured as tournaments and the participants deemed worthy of paying a higher price for their chess than league players.

[Neill Cooper]

Looking at the data there are positive signs:
Junior membership is up about 7% from Aug 2014 to Aug 2015, and the majority of junior members are of secondary schools age (1070 out of 1787). Looking at comparative numbers by Birth year, there was growth this year in numbers of members born in 2003 or after. For instance, in 2014 there were 201 members born in 2003, a year later this had risen to 227. The drop-off for teenage players is on average 11% a year. However, we now have more members aged 12-18 than last year - the 227 born in 2003 being more than the combined 85 1996 players and the 107 in between who dropped out.

The FREE Junior silver membership scheme continues to be very beneficial to junior chess. Yes, the retention rate looks low but that is because it is successful at recruiting members. For instance it is the membership category with the highest proportional of members playing no graded chess. They probably don't renew their membership! The FREE membership scheme has help me recruit ECF members at Wilson's school, though only 14 of our 50+ ECF members are FREE members this year, many have used it in previous years as a stepping stone. It is, though, only of benefit where junior organisers are willing to promote it - there are more ECF junior members in my school than in many counties!

Note that the junior membership data has a glitch with 48 'adult' members born in 2001, many more than the year before or after. I think this is mainly due to some graders entering a date of 01/01/01 for those players without a date of birth. However, I do know various junior players who have adult, not junior, ECF membership.