ECF increased membership costs

[Roger de Coverly]

See https://www.englishchess.org.uk/wp-cont ... -rates.pdf

Headline rates for 2019-2020
Platinum £ 75
Gold £ 39
Silver £ 27
Bronze £ 18

Congress "pay to play"
£12 for FIDE rated
£9 ECF graded

Headline rates for 2020-2021
Platinum £ 80
Gold £ 41
Silver £ 30
Bronze £ 20

Congress "pay to play"
£ 11 for FIDE rated
£ 10 for ECF graded

The accompanying spreadsheet notes additional expenditure on "administration" and women's chess. Is "administration" the payment of a development officer? I'd suspect his or her first job would be to counter the potential exodus in protest against the increased costs.

Two of the three candidates for the office of FIDE President note that FIDE is essentially a tax collecting agency. In other words it extracts money from those who would attempt to organise and promote chess rather than by sponsorship attempt to send the flow of funds the other way. The ECF at a national level is also a tax collection agency as evidenced both by these new financing requests.

[J T Melsom]

Still a relatively cheap hobby though isn't it Roger. And the ECF cut of your chess budget is a small proportion of overall spend. I don't find myclub members complaining about this at all.

[Roger de Coverly]

And the ECF cut of your chess budget is a small proportion of overall spend.

Which is why I could never really understand why influential Congress organisers would jump up and down and scream so much about an extra cost of £ 2.50 to £ 3.00 per participant in their tournaments.

[Paul Cooksey]

Chess would still be relatively cheap if they asked for £100. But still...

2012
Bronze - £12
Silver - £18
Gold - £27

2020
Bronze - £20
Silver - £30
Gold - £41

[J T Melsom]

The ECF needs to be funded Roger it really doesn't matter to most people what structure is used, that's angels and pin-heads stuff. The reality is that the largest potential increases come from venue hire and as clubs like yours decline in membership size you either have to cap subs by dipping into reserves or by getting more members. I think you should perhaps focus a bit more on those costs and how they might be addressed than the funding model for the ECF, the costs of which go up by relatively modest amounts under every funding system I can remember.


Paul - what would you do? ECF staff have to be paid, running costs are on the increase. I suspect the costs of a national governing body are modest compared to other activities, and still there are complaints.

[Paul Cooksey]

Well I'd set a budget for each Directorate, including whatever percentage of office support they need, link membership rises to inflation and ask the directors to raise the income through sponsorship or donations if they want to fund anything else. I don't think I'm hopelessly impractical.

[J T Melsom]

I'm not sure that restricting membership rises to inflation necessarily works with small organisations, whose only scope for offsetting savings is to axe activities, which are in any case pretty minimal but its an option. Do we want a shrinking ECF though? Is there no trickle down benefit to clubs in stimulating interest in chess, which many of the Directorates seek to do. Nobody is seeking to splash out thousands, but spending nothing or next to nothing seems counter-productive if not pointless. Do clubs link membership fees to inflation? At Wycombe we link them to costs.

[Roger de Coverly]

it really doesn't matter to most people what structure is used

I disagree. If you want to encourage new players to enter Congresses in particular, then up front costs can matter.

For a player taking part in their first Congress, the cost in addition to their entry fee would be £ 27 increasing to £ 30 in 2020-21. There's the concession of "pay to play" which reduces it to £ 9 increasing to £ 10. On the same site though I find this
https://www.englishchess.org.uk/wp-cont ... tement.pdf
in which

Complete the move to a full membership organisation and phase out Game Fee and Pay-To-Play fees.

which unless not implemented implies a move to a USCF style closed shop in which being an ECF member is a necessary condition for taking part in any form of graded chess.

Also, why are there concessionary rates for juniors? With many of the arbiter and related cabal making money out of junior training through CSC or otherwise, why cannot the ECF have a slice of the action?

[David Robertson]

Approx 1000 players pay *£500+ to play the 4NCL each year (* five weekends @ £100 a pop, with hotel and on-costs). That's roughly £50 per game, not to mention foregone time travelling, hanging about. For those players at least, and for many more, ECF fees are trivial. For the infrequent club player, the marginal cost of a game is 10% of the 4NCL cost. Cheap.

[J T Melsom]

Roger, it really doesn't matter to most people what funding structure is used. Its a relatively cheap hobby. What funding solutions are you advocating as an alternative? What do members at Bourne End chess club get for their club membership fee?

[J T Melsom]

Roger, it really doesn't matter to most people what funding structure is used. Its a relatively cheap hobby. What funding solutions are you advocating as an alternative? What do members at Bourne End chess club get for their club membership fee?

[Roger de Coverly]

For those players at least, and for many more, ECF fees are trivial.

It wasn't however for the 4NCL, who successfully demanded that they as an organisation did not pay membership fees to the ECF. If ECF fees are trivial, why did organisers make such a big issue about them?

It's perverse logic to claim that billing individually the several hundred players who take part in the 4NCL is cheaper than just one bill to the 4NCL.

[Paul Cooksey]

Nobody is seeking to splash out thousands

I have to disagree, they literally are.

I find it a bit frustrating that whenever we discuss ECF finances all our focus is on how much members should be willing to pay, and what mechanism should be used to pay it. I think it is equally important what the ECF spends it on. I don't think most members of Council could say to the nearest £5k what each Director's plans cost. I am not sure most Directors could.

I don't think inflation is a bad rule. Clubs tend to follow it indirectly since their costs are driven by inflation. I'd be more willing to support a step change in fees if the position was that was then a stable position that would be maintained.

[Roger de Coverly]

What funding solutions are you advocating as an alternative?

You know perfectly well what I advocate. That the organisations who control the voting rights in the ECF should also pay for it. A levy based on the amount of chess they organise seems a fair way and if that levy is calculated by reference to the number of graded games, that's a reasonable measure. How they finance the resulting ECF tax demand is their internal affair.

[J T Melsom]

Paul
You are right that the focus needs to be both on the merits of the proposed expenditure and the payment mechanism, but your club-mate sees the balance of the debate somewhat differently and he started the thread. But as the hobby is relatively cheap, perhaps we should accept a higher budget and then revert back to spending priorities. It might be less exhausting for us all, than the debate on two fronts.