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On Tuesday, June 24, the “ gang of 7 “ ( Governors Michael Barron, Barry Thorvardson, Cesary Posylek, Chris Mallon, Gary Gladstone, Mark Dutton and Nava Starr ) submitted to the CFC 7 restructuring motions:
Motion # 1 – Moved – Barry Thorvardson; Seconded – Cesary Posylek : Item 1 set out below is acceptable.
“ 1. Core Roles: CFC will continue its role re FIDE, international and national events, a national rating system, and a website with membership info, ratings, membership sales, tournament announcements, chess club lists, and news submitted by members (highlights of recent tournament, etc.). Maintenance of these functions will be the responsibility of the Executive Director.”
Commentary: We did not try to put into the platform everything the CFC is doing now, or will continue to do. We wanted a clean minimalist platform, that fundamentally dealt with restructuring issues. Therefore, for example, there is nothing about CFC promoting chess here. Promoting chess, which includes renewing memberships and growing the membership, is a main goal of the CFC, and our platform does not affect that ( I can advise we had something in the platform in an earlier version, but in trying to trim it down, and reduce the targets, we deleted it - but this doesn't mean we don't still fully support it as a main goal of the CFC ). For the purposes of this motion, it is assumed the ED functions, website and rating system will stay in-house ( though outsourcing the website or rating system is not necessarily excluded ).
Motion # 2 – Moved – Michael Barron; Seconded – Barry Thorvardson: Item 2 set out below is acceptable.
“ 2. CFC Revenue: CFC revenues to come from memberships, rating fees, investments and donations. With the reduced scope of operation, costs for the organization should be less, and it may be possible to reduce annual membership fees and/or rating fees. “
Commentary : We feel that reducing the annual membership in particular should be a priority, if financially feasible after restructuring, since the magazine will no longer be a membership benefit. But we could not definitely promise it until we see our surplus after restructuring. We have also left open the possibility of lowering the rating fee. But some have also suggested that a modest raising of the rating fee might allow a further reduction in the annual membership fee, and this is still possible under this motion.
Motion # 3 – Moved – Barry Thorvardson; Seconded – Chris Mallon: Item 3 set out below is acceptable.
“ 3. CFC Membership: CFC to eliminate tournament memberships – if you want to play in a CFC tournament, you must purchase an annual membership. To encourage individuals to become members, first time CFC members will be given a 40% fee reduction for their first year. “
Commentary: We must support our organization by membership and annual membership fee, if we want it to exist. CFC must have sustainable revenue. Community input has asked for numbers of special case exemptions/partial exemptions for annual memberships. We wanted to make clear that tournament memberships must go, but this issue can be fine-tuned at the time of implementation if special cases seem warranted. Organizers have told us that the annual CFC membership is a hindrance to getting first time tournament players to sign up for tournaments, so our 40% reduction for first-time CFC’ers attempts to ameliorate this difficulty.
Motion # 4 – Moved – Michael Barron; Seconded – Mark Dutton: Item 4 set out below is acceptable.
“ 4. Chess Canada: CFC will terminate the magazine contract with TKS immediately (with the May 2008 issue being the last issue of the magazine). “
Commentary: A 1000 annual adult member small non-profit organization cannot afford a members’ magazine like CFC has been producing ( see losses over last three years ), nor an online version. But this motion does not exclude the possibility of CFC starting an e-mail bulletin to keep in regular contact with the membership ( we simply didn’t want to add it into the platform at this time ). Such e-bulletins can be cheaply produced, and with CFC maintaining a good “ Canadian News “ website, content for the e-bulletin should be relatively easy to deal with.
Motion # 5 – Moved – Michael Barron; Seconded – Gary Gladstone: Item 5 set out below is acceptable.
“ 5. Retail Business: Sell off the inventory of the retail business; it will be closed entirely. An alternative but small source of revenue could be established through a commission arrangement with other retailers, such as CMA or Amazon.
Commentary: Given today’s competition, and the resources required to carry on an efficient retail operation, we feel CFC should get out of the business. We can use the ED hours to promote chess, including growing membership. But we are amenable to some type of commission arrangement with someone like CMA or Amazon.
Motion # 6 – Moved – Michael Barron; Seconded – Barry Thorvardson: Item 6 set out below is acceptable.
“ 6. CFC Condominium Office: The current CFC office would be placed for sale. The office would then be run out of either a small rental space or a home office. “
Commentary: Without the retail operation, the building is not needed, and it has significant costs to carry it and maintain it. The money invested can generate income for CFC. And if the ED operates out of a home office, no office rental either would be required.
Motion # 7 – Moved – Michael Barron; Seconded – Nava Starr: Item 7 set out below is acceptable.
“ 7. CFC Staffing: In light of the reduced business activities of the CFC office (no retail sales and no print magazine), the Executive Committee would undertake a review of the Executive Director and Assistant positions and would recommend appropriate staffing changes if required. This could be from going to part-time, up to complete eliminating of the paid staff, and performing all CFC activities by volunteers. “
Commentary: This item is necessary because we must live within our financial means in future. If, which we don’t expect, after restructuring, there is still a deficit, then we wanted to be able to downsize staff to bring us on budget. If however, after restructuring, we have a surplus even with existing staff expenses, which we do expect, then the Executive would be free to determine whether to cut staff, or eliminate staff, to generate more of a surplus, or whether to keep staff hours in order to carry out new tasks with the freed up hours due to restructuring.
On Thursday, June 26, the gang of 7 asked the CFC President, Hal Bond, to use his authority as President to direct an immediate e-mail discussion/vote BEFORE the AGM, being held in Montreal, in late July. This would have the effect of making the outgoing governors views known and available to themselves for the outgoing governors AGM , and for the new incoming governors AGM. This might have allowed some immediate decisions to then be made at the AGM ( these motions were only “ straw vote “ motions, and therefore not binding in themselves ).
Unfortunately, Hal replied that same day that he was unwilling to take the individual and personal responsibility for calling for this vote. So the “ gang of 7 “ then, on that Thursday, asked that he let the full Executive decide whether to call an early vote. He never replied to the 7 governors on that point. ( I wrote to him also making the same request on the Thursday, and he didn’t reply to me either ). No vote of the Executive was asked for or taken to our knowledge.
This means that the motions must now go the slow, ponderous Governors’ Letter route, which will take months, and it will have to be dealt with by the incoming new governors. They will delay decisions, needing to get up to speed on all the issues. And there will be a new Executive, and they will want to review everything.
In the meantime, the CFC will have to borrow thousands of dollars again from the Chess Foundation to stay afloat until the new governors make the restructuring decisions. This may be fatal for the CFC. The 7 governors request was reasonable and should have been acceded to by Hal. Now there will be nothing for the AGM.
Bob
Motion # 1 – Moved – Barry Thorvardson; Seconded – Cesary Posylek : Item 1 set out below is acceptable.
“ 1. Core Roles: CFC will continue its role re FIDE, international and national events, a national rating system, and a website with membership info, ratings, membership sales, tournament announcements, chess club lists, and news submitted by members (highlights of recent tournament, etc.). Maintenance of these functions will be the responsibility of the Executive Director.”
Commentary: We did not try to put into the platform everything the CFC is doing now, or will continue to do. We wanted a clean minimalist platform, that fundamentally dealt with restructuring issues. Therefore, for example, there is nothing about CFC promoting chess here. Promoting chess, which includes renewing memberships and growing the membership, is a main goal of the CFC, and our platform does not affect that ( I can advise we had something in the platform in an earlier version, but in trying to trim it down, and reduce the targets, we deleted it - but this doesn't mean we don't still fully support it as a main goal of the CFC ). For the purposes of this motion, it is assumed the ED functions, website and rating system will stay in-house ( though outsourcing the website or rating system is not necessarily excluded ).
Motion # 2 – Moved – Michael Barron; Seconded – Barry Thorvardson: Item 2 set out below is acceptable.
“ 2. CFC Revenue: CFC revenues to come from memberships, rating fees, investments and donations. With the reduced scope of operation, costs for the organization should be less, and it may be possible to reduce annual membership fees and/or rating fees. “
Commentary : We feel that reducing the annual membership in particular should be a priority, if financially feasible after restructuring, since the magazine will no longer be a membership benefit. But we could not definitely promise it until we see our surplus after restructuring. We have also left open the possibility of lowering the rating fee. But some have also suggested that a modest raising of the rating fee might allow a further reduction in the annual membership fee, and this is still possible under this motion.
Motion # 3 – Moved – Barry Thorvardson; Seconded – Chris Mallon: Item 3 set out below is acceptable.
“ 3. CFC Membership: CFC to eliminate tournament memberships – if you want to play in a CFC tournament, you must purchase an annual membership. To encourage individuals to become members, first time CFC members will be given a 40% fee reduction for their first year. “
Commentary: We must support our organization by membership and annual membership fee, if we want it to exist. CFC must have sustainable revenue. Community input has asked for numbers of special case exemptions/partial exemptions for annual memberships. We wanted to make clear that tournament memberships must go, but this issue can be fine-tuned at the time of implementation if special cases seem warranted. Organizers have told us that the annual CFC membership is a hindrance to getting first time tournament players to sign up for tournaments, so our 40% reduction for first-time CFC’ers attempts to ameliorate this difficulty.
Motion # 4 – Moved – Michael Barron; Seconded – Mark Dutton: Item 4 set out below is acceptable.
“ 4. Chess Canada: CFC will terminate the magazine contract with TKS immediately (with the May 2008 issue being the last issue of the magazine). “
Commentary: A 1000 annual adult member small non-profit organization cannot afford a members’ magazine like CFC has been producing ( see losses over last three years ), nor an online version. But this motion does not exclude the possibility of CFC starting an e-mail bulletin to keep in regular contact with the membership ( we simply didn’t want to add it into the platform at this time ). Such e-bulletins can be cheaply produced, and with CFC maintaining a good “ Canadian News “ website, content for the e-bulletin should be relatively easy to deal with.
Motion # 5 – Moved – Michael Barron; Seconded – Gary Gladstone: Item 5 set out below is acceptable.
“ 5. Retail Business: Sell off the inventory of the retail business; it will be closed entirely. An alternative but small source of revenue could be established through a commission arrangement with other retailers, such as CMA or Amazon.
Commentary: Given today’s competition, and the resources required to carry on an efficient retail operation, we feel CFC should get out of the business. We can use the ED hours to promote chess, including growing membership. But we are amenable to some type of commission arrangement with someone like CMA or Amazon.
Motion # 6 – Moved – Michael Barron; Seconded – Barry Thorvardson: Item 6 set out below is acceptable.
“ 6. CFC Condominium Office: The current CFC office would be placed for sale. The office would then be run out of either a small rental space or a home office. “
Commentary: Without the retail operation, the building is not needed, and it has significant costs to carry it and maintain it. The money invested can generate income for CFC. And if the ED operates out of a home office, no office rental either would be required.
Motion # 7 – Moved – Michael Barron; Seconded – Nava Starr: Item 7 set out below is acceptable.
“ 7. CFC Staffing: In light of the reduced business activities of the CFC office (no retail sales and no print magazine), the Executive Committee would undertake a review of the Executive Director and Assistant positions and would recommend appropriate staffing changes if required. This could be from going to part-time, up to complete eliminating of the paid staff, and performing all CFC activities by volunteers. “
Commentary: This item is necessary because we must live within our financial means in future. If, which we don’t expect, after restructuring, there is still a deficit, then we wanted to be able to downsize staff to bring us on budget. If however, after restructuring, we have a surplus even with existing staff expenses, which we do expect, then the Executive would be free to determine whether to cut staff, or eliminate staff, to generate more of a surplus, or whether to keep staff hours in order to carry out new tasks with the freed up hours due to restructuring.
On Thursday, June 26, the gang of 7 asked the CFC President, Hal Bond, to use his authority as President to direct an immediate e-mail discussion/vote BEFORE the AGM, being held in Montreal, in late July. This would have the effect of making the outgoing governors views known and available to themselves for the outgoing governors AGM , and for the new incoming governors AGM. This might have allowed some immediate decisions to then be made at the AGM ( these motions were only “ straw vote “ motions, and therefore not binding in themselves ).
Unfortunately, Hal replied that same day that he was unwilling to take the individual and personal responsibility for calling for this vote. So the “ gang of 7 “ then, on that Thursday, asked that he let the full Executive decide whether to call an early vote. He never replied to the 7 governors on that point. ( I wrote to him also making the same request on the Thursday, and he didn’t reply to me either ). No vote of the Executive was asked for or taken to our knowledge.
This means that the motions must now go the slow, ponderous Governors’ Letter route, which will take months, and it will have to be dealt with by the incoming new governors. They will delay decisions, needing to get up to speed on all the issues. And there will be a new Executive, and they will want to review everything.
In the meantime, the CFC will have to borrow thousands of dollars again from the Chess Foundation to stay afloat until the new governors make the restructuring decisions. This may be fatal for the CFC. The 7 governors request was reasonable and should have been acceded to by Hal. Now there will be nothing for the AGM.
Bob
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