CFC Member Inactivity/Lack of Interest in CFC Program

[Alan Baljeu]

Re: CFC Member Inactivity/Lack of Interest in CFC Program

A $75 membership is a bad idea. As someone who enters one small tournament a year, I don't want to pay $100 for the privilege. At $43 I might, and then maybe I'll enter a couple more in the year. At $10 I'll join every year even if I don't happen to play.
Two ideas:
1) Many more members. reduce membership to $25. Offer a bulk discount to clubs so they can register 10+ members at $10 each. Give bonus materials to clubs that join. (TD handbook, rulebooks, page on Cfc site, lecture from Hebert) If all members of all clubs were in the CFC, how many members would we have? Plus many more club tornaments would be CFC rated. I know lots of people who like chess but aren't CFC members. At $10 and with an event, they'd join.

2) how many regions can put on a serious 100 player $prize tournament? What if first prize included an invitation to the Closed and $1000 towards participating? If 1st doesn't go, it gets passed to 2nd. If noone goes it passes to the Closed Fund to offset other players' costs.

[Bob Gillanders]

Re: CFC Member Inactivity/Lack of Interest in CFC Program

Thank you David. You plan seems a lot more feasible than Jean's plan of free memberships for all. :)

[Craig Sadler]

Re: Where, Oh Where, Are the CFC Members??

why not no membership fee and give $15/rating fee to the CFC. pay to play. someone mentioned that currently a CFC membership is less than a round of golf. the difference is that when you shell out $50 for 18 holes you're paying for the golf, not the membership. if i had to pay $50 for a golf membership up front and then pay on top of that, it would have been a deterrent for me to take up the game (whether it was cheaper in the long run or not). that would also collect $$$ from the life members as you're paying a rating fee not a membership fee ;)

but Craig, some might say, how can you calculate how much money the CFC will be collecting a year? you can't...but this would be extra incentive, to keep the CFC afloat, to get the governors to organize tournaments...send out a yearly email to people who have played asking for donations for canadian closed/canadian open/olympiad/whatever

[Jean Hébert]

Re: CFC Member Inactivity/Lack of Interest in CFC Program

Ok, now we have the opposite approach to the one I was describing (and Jean has very good points!) The main obstacle to implementing this is having the courage to slash the membership fees while attempting to maintain even the minimal benefits members now have (all the while hoping that with the reduced fees, enough new members will arrive to create an influx of money to start new or improved programs...)

What I suggested to the CFC some time ago regarding the e-zine was to have two versions of it. One short one (but with all the adds! and some chess content) sent often to all (non paying 'members') and a long one sent less often to regular (paying) members who might have other benefits also. This way you have the current revenues and a long extended mailing list (which can also be called "membership"...) to the benefit of canadian organizers and advertisers. Because as it is the CFC newsletter with a content geared to the hard-core player is of limited use, reaching only a handful of members.
Does it take courage to have the best of both worlds ? :)

[Jean Sasseville]

Re: CFC Member Inactivity/Lack of Interest in CFC Program

What I suggested to the CFC some time ago regarding the e-zine was to have two versions of it. One short one (but with all the adds! and some chess content) sent often to all (non paying 'members') and a long one sent less often to regular (paying) members who might have other benefits also. This way you have the current revenues and a long extended mailing list (which can also be called "membership"...) to the benefit of canadian organizers and advertisers. Because as it is the CFC newsletter with a content geared to the hard-core player is of limited use, reaching only a handful of members.
Does it take courage to have the best of both worlds ? :)

This should be seriously considered. Now that the CFC has moved to an e-zine it has the flexibility of doing this at a minimal additional cost. Why I like it? Potential to attract new members.

[Vlad Drkulec]

Re: CFC Member Inactivity/Lack of Interest in CFC Program

I have been arguing for a while now on the CFC board that we should, instead of charging membership, only be charging a tournament/rating/participating fee.

I feel makes sense since the vast majority of members are buying memberships only to have their games rated, and I feel it is reasonable that if you play 10 tournaments per year you pay ten times what someone who plays one event per year.

For those curious, in order to be revenue neutral such a fee would need to be about $8 per player per tournament.

That means that anyone who plays six or less events per year would save money... more then that and it would cost you more then the current system.

The rating fee should bear some relationship with what it actually costs to provide the service and what competing services charge for the same service. Your proposal would reduce participation in tournaments. Isn't the whole purpose of the CFC to increase participation in chess?

Obviously if we had to pay $8 per event this would kill most of the CFC events that take place in Windsor now which have entry fees in the $10 range. I would not have paid over $400 extra dollars to play the 168 games that I played last year. I suspect that we would go back to doing what we did before the recent resurgence in CFC games played in Windsor and play unrated training games or set up our own rating system similar to the one that I administered for the chess club speed chess ratings in the 1990s. I set up a spreadsheet with lots of if statements which updated the ratings for us. The only thing that I had to do was enter the points scored in the round robin blitz events.

The idea that the members are cash cows who will sit there and take anything that the CFC decides to throw at them is wrong and is part of what got us to the current situation. There are many alternatives and people will explore them if you price yourself out of the market.

One thing that I would look at is the experience south of the border. If we had as many CFC members on a proportional basis as they do USCF members then we wouldn't have any problems as far as the CFC running the risk of insolvency.

[Stuart Brammall]

Re: CFC Member Inactivity/Lack of Interest in CFC Program

The rating fee should bear some relationship with what it actually costs to provide the service and what competing services charge for the same service. Your proposal would reduce participation in tournaments. Isn't the whole purpose of the CFC to increase participation in chess?

Vlad,

You should know that were the CFC to stop providing all services other then rating, the total cost of the rating system would still be about $5.70 per player per tournament.

You should know that right now your playing is many tournaments a year is being subsidised by people who play few tournaments per year. A player who buys a membership and plays one event per year is paying around $10 per game to get those games rated, why is it fair for you to pay $1.50?

I have had many potential new players walk out of Hart House Events when it is explained to them that they need to pay $43 for a CFC membership.
The idea behind such a shift would be to promote new membership.

Each of your players in windsor would save $36 at the start of the year... considering right now they pay a three dollar rating fee, the cost would not be greater then the current costs until you have played at least seven events.

Such a shift would be revenue neutral, as I said. The only difference is the costs of the organization would be divided up proportionally to how many tournaments you play.

[Fred McKim]

Re: CFC Member Inactivity/Lack of Interest in CFC Program

What I suggested to the CFC some time ago regarding the e-zine was to have two versions of it. One short one (but with all the adds! and some chess content) sent often to all (non paying 'members') and a long one sent less often to regular (paying) members who might have other benefits also. This way you have the current revenues and a long extended mailing list (which can also be called "membership"...) to the benefit of canadian organizers and advertisers. Because as it is the CFC newsletter with a content geared to the hard-core player is of limited use, reaching only a handful of members.
Does it take courage to have the best of both worlds ? :)

Jean: The new website will soon be upon us, and I expect that the casual chessplayer will find all sorts of things of interest there, including a News section (probably relying on volunteer help) and I would expect we'd start opening old copies of the newsletter (perhaps once they are a year old).

Once we can judge the value of the new CFC face, we can start figuring out how much membership vs rating fees should be set at (if a change at all is needed).

[Roger Patterson]

Re: CFC Member Inactivity/Lack of Interest in CFC Program

Vlad,

You should know that were the CFC to stop providing all services other then rating, the total cost of the rating system would still be about $5.70 per player per tournament.

.

An interesting number - particularly in view of the fact that over half the games rated by the CFC are junior events with no membership requirement and charged at $0.50/player.

Not too sure where your number comes from but if it is arrived at by taking the present day operating costs and dividing by the number of rated player-tournaments, it does not represent the cost of the rating service. (for example, the present cost of collecting memberships is included, not to mention the whole question of why have an office at all if all you do is rate games and send a cheque to FIDE once a year).

In short, I'm not confident your number is correct.

[edit to correct mistyping]

[Jean Hébert]

Re: CFC Member Inactivity/Lack of Interest in CFC Program

Jean: The new website will soon be upon us, and I expect that the casual chessplayer will find all sorts of things of interest there, including a News section (probably relying on volunteer help) and I would expect we'd start opening old copies of the newsletter (perhaps once they are a year old).

There are thousands of websites for the "casual players" out there, dozens of them offering tremendous content that can keep any individual buzy all day long. There is little incentive for those casual players (like me :)) to pay particular attention to the CFC's, unless it proves to be among the very best in the World, which is unlikely.
Putting too much hope on a website is a mistake. While it has become a necessary basis nowadays, it will not have a significant impact on membership other than possibly slow down its deflation.
E-newsletters or e-zines are different: people have little choice but pay some attention to it because they have paid (or signed) for it and get it in their emailboxes. No browsing necessary. This is our best bet to reach out to potentially "serious" players that will take part in our events and spend some bucks on chess. And let's never forget that among those "potentially serious players" some of them may be potential sponsors or donators.

[John Coleman]

Re: CFC Member Inactivity/Lack of Interest in CFC Program

Vlad,

You should know that were the CFC to stop providing all services other then rating, the total cost of the rating system would still be about $5.70 per player per tournament.

I don't know how you calculated that number, but Tom O'Donnell has (or had at one time) an ongoing offer to input crosstables for rating at $1 per player per tournament. Surely the cost of posting the list on a website can't be very much.

[Roger Patterson]

Re: CFC Member Inactivity/Lack of Interest in CFC Program

I don't know how you calculated that number, but Tom O'Donnell has (or had at one time) an ongoing offer to input crosstables for rating at $1 per player per tournament. Surely the cost of posting the list on a website can't be very much.

A fully loaded cost would include over and above Tom's labour input the costs of uploading the data, data checking, amortized software cost, costs of collecting the money (usually involves a bunch of emails back and forth with the organizer), dealing with data that is badly formatted, website costs, costs of creating a data record for new players, etc.. I'm willing to believe that it is significantly more than the effort of just typing in the data.

My experience with the Victoria Chess Cub rating system is that all of that overhead but related stuff is significant although I don't have the economies of scale that the CFC does (I only rate 1 tournament at a time).

Presumably too, Stuart is talking of a vision of the CFC charging only a rating fee - then the CFC would have to add on other unavoidable costs to cover it's expenses (e.g. FIDE membership) which presumably is the lion's share of the number he quotes.

[Tom O'Donnell]

Re: CFC Member Inactivity/Lack of Interest in CFC Program

...A fully loaded cost would include over and above Tom's labour input the costs of uploading the data, data checking, amortized software cost, costs of collecting the money (usually involves a bunch of emails back and forth with the organizer), dealing with data that is badly formatted, website costs, costs of creating a data record for new players, etc.. I'm willing to believe that it is significantly more than the effort of just typing in the data. ....

A couple of observations:

1) Data checking is generally not very labour-intensive. Most people who submitted reports were very diligent in ensuring that they got the CFC numbers right, that results were consistent, etc. I would imagine that, considering even more people are using software to submit reports, that this would make things even more accurate. The difference between when I entered crosstable info in 1989-1990 and 1997-1998 was great. I would say errors or people sending in very sloppy crosstables was down by more than 80% over that period. Again, I am sure that the number of poorly formatted tournaments is almost non-existent now.

2) Collecting monies never seemed to be much of a problem, especially when the CFC had people's CC numbers on file. My opinion is that the CFC shouldn't rate any event until they have received the money. If that means a rating takes an extra week to change, big deal.

3) Creating new players in the database was easy, and now that we don't need their addresses (other than the province, I guess) inputting that info is even easier. True you need emails, but that is a loss less data than physical addresses. I would guess that the average person's physical address changes more frequently than their emails as well.

There are other people on this forum who have entered the data for the CFC and I would be amazed if any of them thought that even with all of the above (computers, websites, etc.) the cost should not exceed $3/player absolute maximum.

[Roger Patterson]

Re: CFC Member Inactivity/Lack of Interest in CFC Program

.....There are other people on this forum who have entered the data for the CFC and I would be amazed if any of them thought that even with all of the above (computers, websites, etc.) the cost should not exceed $3/player absolute maximum.

well, I'm inclined to agree with you although I know that the typical thing is to grossly underestimate overhead type expenses. But, there is one much bigger "but"....

as I have posted before, the CFC is currently running an operation that does already only provide bare bones service of rating & FIDE costs (plus the emag) but it is costing the budget all of the rating fees plus annual membership dues. Bob Gillanders uses a phrase "expenses cut to the bone". So, either something is missing in our understanding of the costs to rate games or there is a big part of the budget that represents money being spent on inefficiencies or inessentials that do not contribute to providing any chess service. I'm inclined to the latter but who knows really what it is going on?

Various people have advocated going to a bare minimum CFC visualizing that the fees would reduce down to only rating fees but you can't do that without explaining how it is the CFC only performs the rating service now and still spends so much money. I'm inclined to agree that a minimal CFC is desirable as it has minimal relevance beyond the rating system to local chess activity and it's fees are a problem for increasing local chess activity but we need to understand how it is that it is spending so much now with so little output.

[Fred McKim]

Re: CFC Member Inactivity/Lack of Interest in CFC Program

well, I'm inclined to agree with you although I know that the typical thing is to grossly underestimate overhead type expenses. But, there is one much bigger "but"....

as I have posted before, the CFC is currently running an operation that does already only provide bare bones service of rating & FIDE costs (plus the emag) but it is costing the budget all of the rating fees plus annual membership dues. Bob Gillanders uses a phrase "expenses cut to the bone". So, either something is missing in our understanding of the costs to rate games or there is a big part of the budget that represents money being spent on inefficiencies or inessentials that do not contribute to providing any chess service. I'm inclined to the latter but who knows really what it is going on?

Various people have advocated going to a bare minimum CFC visualizing that the fees would reduce down to only rating fees but you can't do that without explaining how it is the CFC only performs the rating service now and still spends so much money. I'm inclined to agree that a minimal CFC is desirable as it has minimal relevance beyond the rating system to local chess activity and it's fees are a problem for increasing local chess activity but we need to understand how it is that it is spending so much now with so little output.

Financial statements are all online for those who want to know what the revenue is spent on. Go to the Governors Letter section on the website.