ECF Supporter

[Roger de Coverly]

Gift aid ?

The ECF isn't and cannot be a charity because of the need to support professional chess through the British Championship and the international teams.

That's a reason why the separate "Chess Trust" charity has been set up. The ECF's new scheme does not offer "membership" of the charity. Perhaps it should.

[Nick Grey]

it's bad enough we cannot gift aid current fees etc. Shame but has anyone taken this on board. Or being both.

Something we could do in part for a FA in a Christian Football League. We also gave away 10 percent of each year to charitable purposes. We also continued to do some of that for a few years after leaving the church as we had it in our clubs charitable status until we folded principally because the leisure contractor not providing pitch hire because most of our players were not living in the LA area.

[Roger de Coverly]

The current version of the membership list (dated 26 Jan) has 11,046 members of which 4 are of the category ECF Supporter.

Any update on this?

I noticed that the paper on membership counts presented to the Finance Council meeting didn't mention this category.

[Reg Clucas]

The current version of the membership list (dated 26 Jan) has 11,046 members of which 4 are of the category ECF Supporter.

Any update on this?

I noticed that the paper on membership counts presented to the Finance Council meeting didn't mention this category.

The 4 has now shrunk to 1 on the latest list! (dated 19th April).

[Paul Cooksey]

A couple of directors did ask me about whether I though parents would be interested in social membership, so I think still a live idea.

I'm not really convinced yet, I think ECF membership is for competitive players.

[Roger de Coverly]

A couple of directors did ask me about whether I though parents would be interested in social membership, so I think still a live idea.

In the days when all BCF membership was effectively Platinum, in other words those "joining" the BCF did so because they wanted to, rather than it being almost compulsory, there was a category of family membership. In effect that included parents, even if they weren't active players.

[Kevin Thurlow]

"A couple of directors did ask me about whether I though parents would be interested in social membership, so I think still a live idea."

Many parents will possibly think that they are paying over the odds anyway, but there must be some that would pay extra to be supportive. Perhaps they become normal members and don't play? Anybody want to search the database for people like that?!

[Adam Raoof]

Thanks Angus - this seems to suggest that of the members the ECF has, there are an awful lot of people that join at Bronze solely in order to play league chess. It also hints that there are a lot of people who don't play tournaments because they don't have time, or the money, or joining the ECF puts them off (e.g. students). It would be nice to know what the reason is. Anecdotally I see that fewer people are playing league chess in the evening, and more are playing at the weekend in events like the 4NCL or congresses.

I suspect that monthly grading would attract more people new to face to face competitions to take up graded chess, because this is one of the potential attractions of taking up any sport - immediate feedback on performance. I don't particularly care about Elo style ratings for domestic games - that is just going to get confusing. I do want all games to be taken account of, unlike FIDE rating where only games between rated players count.

[Angus French]

"A couple of directors did ask me about whether I though parents would be interested in social membership, so I think still a live idea."

Many parents will possibly think that they are paying over the odds anyway, but there must be some that would pay extra to be supportive. Perhaps they become normal members and don't play? Anybody want to search the database for people like that?!

Some 2017/18 stats showing counts of members who didn't play a graded game and also averages for the number of graded games played:

NonPlayingMembers.png

Must admit, I'm rather surprised that so many members played no graded games. (I've checked the results and I think they're correct.)

[Ian Thompson]

Some 2017/18 stats showing counts of members who didn't play a graded game and also averages for the number of graded games played:

3 year memberships may affect these figures a bit - how many of the non-players took out 3 year memberships prior to 2017/18, played in their first year of membership, but didn't play in 2017/18?

[Angus French]

Some 2017/18 stats showing counts of members who didn't play a graded game and also averages for the number of graded games played:

3 year memberships may affect these figures a bit - how many of the non-players took out 3 year memberships prior to 2017/18, played in their first year of membership, but didn't play in 2017/18?

I make it that that accounts for 132 of the 1000:

Platinum 4
Junior Platinum 1
Gold 46
Junior Gold 9
Silver 25
Junior Silver 2
Bronze 42
Junior Bronze 3

(BTW, now that three-year memberships are no longer offered, the ECF is missing out on revenue from those that sign up for the deal and then stop playing in years 2 or 3.)

[Kevin Thurlow]

Thanks Angus, so roughly 8 % of members don't play. Interesting.

[Andrew Zigmond]

Thanks Angus, so roughly 8 % of members don't play. Interesting.

The ECF board currently have a 9% non player count (David Eustace who is of course actively involved as an arbiter and organiser). Last year when Traci Whitfield was on the board the count was higher. I can think of handful of players locally over the years who may have been non playing ECF members, either from renewing their memberships when they didn't necessarily need to or being involved in chess in another capacity.

[JustinHorton]

Thanks Angus, so roughly 8 % of members don't play. Interesting.

Well, within certain definitions of "don't play".

[Kevin Thurlow]

"Well, within certain definitions of "don't play"."

Well, don't play graded games then. The 1000 may join the other 599,999,000 casual players... Or maybe, they want to support English chess financially.